AlexS

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

Fitz, clearly I'm not happy about this news, as you say. I did everything I could to prevent this guy from getting in office. But somebody should point out the likely effects, since so much of the country (and the press) seems to be in never-never land. I think it's sad that much of what you propose has little or no chance of being enacted, including increased use of domestic natural gas. And you're right - we will all suffer for it.

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

Oil and Gas Journal article about Obama's tax proposals and their likely effects on natural gas production. Read it and weep.

www.ogj.com/display_ar...

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

It would be interesting to have more history on the Canadian experience. Here's a link (don't know the date of the posting) suggesting they had some problems:
www.uniongas.com/about...
Of course that was in the 1990s, I guess. A big part of the problem is the energy density. A CNG tank with equivalent range takes up about 4 times the space of a gasoline tank. So unless you have a vehicle specifically built (where the tank covers a large area under the car) it means bye bye to trunk space. And I think natural gas also has an infrastructure problem, which limits the ability to utilize it. They call that "stranded gas", meaning it's there but there's no good way to economically transport it. But .... that doesn't mean it can't be explored. It does mean that it needs more calculation than back-of-the-envelope.

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

Fitz, GTL (Gas-to-Liquids) is a commercial technology. Shell is a leader. Sasol in South Africa takes coal to syn gas to gasoline. They take natural gas to diesel. As an competitor to direct natural gas fueling of vehicles, the GTL advantage is that you don't have to modify your vehicle and you don't have to duplicate service station infrastructure. All in all it might be a good solution for the U.S. But the oil companies will have to scramble just to deal with political pressures on oil drilling and political pressures on CO2 emissions.

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

Agreed, Fitz, nuclear is longer term. Oil and gas in the shorter term. We have a lot of natural gas resources here in the U.S. We have a lot of untapped oil resources as well. So those three areas are what need to be developed. We can talk about using natural gas directly for transportation or liquifying it. A comparison of those two would need cost numbers, etc., which I don't have with me now, and which I don't see in so many discussions of those options. Sad to say, the people in power are not talking about nuclear, and they going to raise taxes and use their power to delay companies finding and developing oil and natural gas. I don't think you and I have an issue with the fact that we need more fossil fuel development. We did have an issue some time back about politics and political parties, but the election is over now (yes and I did read your later piece about your unsuccessful attempt to influence the Obama group). My side lost (they may not have been much better but maybe) and we are now getting very bad "energy policy". It's very frustrating.

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

Of course I read your articles, Fitz. And for the record I am gung-ho all in favor of nuclear energy, nukes, breeders, etc., and I think that's really the only answer we have to long term energy. All else (solar, wind, biofuels, etc.) is at this point just a distraction. Oh, and I very much think we should drill for more oil and gas here. Unfortunately, the people in power do not think these things (not my doing, I assure you). So, actually, it really doesn't matter what I think. Like the rest of the masses, I get to draw a couple of lines on a ballot every 2 years. And post stuff on the web.

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

Thanks, longoil. I'd heard that before. Actually the variation I've heard has the company giving credits to its officers and employees, so the idea that Gore "purchases" anything never enters into it.

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

R, regardless, if we had politicians in charge who actually cared about energy independence, we would pushing nuclear, offshore U.S. drilling, extending tax credits and deductions for domestic exploration. Instead we have Ken Salazar shutting down shale development, Congress pushing higher taxes on Gulf of Mexico exploration, sitting on the fence with nuclear energy, and constantly threatening to put our domestic coal industry out of business. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say that DECREASING energy independence is a goal of this Congress and this administration. Maybe it has to do with all that Mid East money flowing into the Clinton Foundation.

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

Why do we need to be energy independent? We haven't done it so far. And we haven't declared that we need to be anything else independent. We haven't decided, for instance, to be food independent. Why energy? And besides, with Congress and Interior stomping on oil and gas drilling, and the enviros still shouting "Three Mile Island" whenever anyone says nuclear, and bad mouthing coal to the bank, we have about as much chance of being independent in energy as ..... as ..... well, you get the point. Heck, we're not even independent on defense material.

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

So instead of getting your fuel from the Middle East (and the U.S.) and your Phill from Canada, you propose to get your fuel from Canada (and the U.S) and your Phill from China. I'm not sure I see the advantage. As you say, though, the EPA is certainly an impediment to getting all this done, including I suspect even allowing NGV from being imported into the U.S. And I'm not sure that a Phill per household is a very good investment. A couple thousand per household vs an installation cost of zero for a gasoline or diesel fueled vehicle. Maybe it would be better to convert that natural gas to gasoline and diesel and leave the infrastructure alone.

California's Fuel-Efficiency Battle and Peak Oil

Fitz, as you say, nothing I say will change your opinion. So I'll just get back to work.

California's Fuel-Efficiency Battle and Peak Oil

Bellard, your article has some good points. I would take a few exceptions. First, a lot of oil is produced on private lands. What has happened in the fairly recent past is that the Feds have identified potentially productive land and then basically seized it, and then set out to benefit from the fees or stop development altogether. I would say ANWR is an example. In that case it takes some gall to accuse companies of shortchanging the entity who seized the land. Second, if carbon dioxide is taxed as a pollutant, does that mean that everyone who breathes will be taxed as a polluter? How about all the natural sources of CO2? It seems a politicians tax heaven. Third, I don't look at companies as polluters when they produce energy. People are polluters when they consumer energy. However, I know Washington prefers to tax people through companies rather than directly, when they can.

Fitz, you really do Bush bash too much. As an example, you take Bush to task over the Gulf of Mexico contracts but as we all know those contracts were negotiated (and the escalation clauses left out) during the Clinton administration. Are you blaming Bush for Clinton's shortcomings too?

California's Fuel-Efficiency Battle and Peak Oil

Energy has been brought to us by energy companies not by energy policy. A good part of energy policy lately has been to slow or stop the energy companies from doing what they do best and to attempt to control the energy markets. Trying to control what someone else produces is not a legitimate energy policy. Nor is blaming the energy companies, nor holding countless hearings, a legitimate activity. If politicians want to be movie stars they should resign and go to Hollywood with the rest of the crowd.

California's Fuel-Efficiency Battle and Peak Oil

These conversations end up being variations of kicking the can down the road. Mike likes natural gas, Econ says natural gas is about out too and points to electricity. But electricity is not free either, and in the main is generated by coal (dirty dirty), with new plants from natural gas, so it begs the question. Nuclear. Three problems. 1. Fear from the public, exacerbated by lots of politicians. 2. Jimmy and the Congress outlawed breeder reactors back in the 70's, so existing uranium supplies only last a couple hundred years. 3. because spent fuel cannot be reprocessed, nuclear waste ends up being 50 times greater than if you could reprocess it. So where to put it and how to secure it? Plants are just putting it out back. Yucca Mountain, the best technical answer, is opposed by some powerful politicians, who will probably be even more powerful in the next 4-8 years (if the polls are right). Heck, they're even talking about banning nuclear in some states and some countries. Plants need time to be built. Politicos just keep kicking that can. Someone needs to pick it up. The road is ending.

California's Fuel-Efficiency Battle and Peak Oil

I will add something about the technical aspect of calculating fuel economy. If GM makes a flex fuel vehicle, the fuel economy of the vehicle is calculated assuming E85 is the fuel in use (although of course they mostly use standard gasoline) and the fuel economy is calculated on the gasoline part of the fuel only. Thus a large vehicle, if it gets, say, 15 mpg (like a Hummer), if it is flex fueled that is counted as a 40 mpg vehicle, for CAFE purposes. The auto makers are using this to store up credits for future "tightening" of fuel economy numbers. It's true that the latest energy bill lessens the use of this E85 fudge factor in the future. Time will tell of course if the politicians choose instead to extend it if their constituents are cool to very small vehicles. Beware of calculations in the hands of the politicians. As my sixth grade teacher used to say, "Figures never lie, but liars figure."