Respirate

The Pickens Plan: Where Are We One Year Later?

Mr Fessler, your voice is among many in the seekingalpha community in promoting US energy independence and increasing use of North American natural gas.

It will take a long term vision and supportive national policy initiatives beyond the immediate gratification focus of market trading to be able to exploit all abundant domestic resources in a timely manner. There's no need to wait for a crisis to develop.

Contributor Michael Fitzsimmons has carried that banner for some time. As you both state, "the fundamental realities of worldwide oil supply/demand are the biggest threat to the United States economy" and our national security. While precise numbers concerning reserves, consumption rates, and years of supply are debatable, the need has been well established by Pickens and others.

Discl: Long CLNE and several companies in the NG E&P / supply chain.

Making Natural Gas Transportation a Reality

Michael, thanks for another exceptional article tying together the topics and constructive comments of the past several weeks. IMO this is by far the best written and most persuasive of the series.

You've convinced me that we could be very close to reducing our gasoline use and foreign oil dependence IF the national will were there. Unfortunately ours is a reactive, not proactive society. Despite our self image as a forward thinking people, the reality is that precious little is accomplished proactively, little sacrifice for our future is made, unless it involves lining our personal pockets. Therein lies the key to acceptance of NGVs. It has to be advantageous economically, either now or projected into the immediate future.

Action may be forced upon us the next time oil prices skyrocket, or if (heaven forbid) crude supplies become interrupted. That's exactly the wrong time to find panic-driven "solutions" - a la ethanol, or spin-doctoring "clean coal" and other non-solutions. No, I'm not very optimistic for thoughtful planning to find intelligent solutions for our energy problems. Still, I'll voice my enthusiastic support for an NG bridge solution to my local legislators and others, using some of your text (with credit given) if that's ok.

I'm sick and tired of this great nation making bad choices and failing to take timely actions, leaving us at the mercy of outside forces. By acting now we can preserve our freedom of action and do better for our posterity.

--R

A Natural Gas Centric Strategic Long-Term Comprehensive Energy Policy

Hi Michael,
Excellent, persuasive article on your favorite topic! NG transportation happens to be important to me also, and that's largely due to some of your recent articles.

I’m frustrated beyond belief that our country is so sluggish to do anything to address the energy noose around our collective necks. We just continue to kick the can down the road. That’s been a 35 year road by my count. Ho-hum. Oil is relatively cheap now. Life is good. We can fill our gas tanks for less than two bucks a gallon. Funny how the sudden price drop makes everything seem so warm and fuzzy. Problem solved, another crisis averted by that trusty American standby -- procrastination.

The need to supplant at least a portion of our oil imports is obvious, as has been successfully argued in your posts many times.

It's hard to believe that NG/CNG is virtually ignored as a motor fuel, for all the reasons you mention. It's a proven technology that we can use NOW! Guys have been doing self-conversions of cars and pickups for over two decades. Local government fleets have proven the technology.

That NG would reduce air pollution is obvious. It's a much cleaner burning fuel, so much so that people somehow find a way to burn it in their kitchens to cook dinner. It's long been known that lubricant oil changes can be extended to the durability limits of the lubricant itself, because it doesn't become contaminated by gasoline combustion byproducts.

I suspect that the main drawback in the minds of many people is along the lines of concerns raised by User283977 in another post, whether " ... we have sufficient natural gas reserves to meet 10, 20, and 30% of transportation demand over the next 20 - 30 years ...".

Another huge concern is the impact on NG supplies and prices. That really needs to be addressed in a convincing way by anybody arguing for using NG as a motor fuel. Many people, especially politicians, would cringe at the thought of burning NG in competition with the mom and her shivering kids who already have a hard time paying for home heating in the dead of winter.

People just need a bit more reassurance on availability of supply and price. Don't get me wrong. I want that Toyota NG-Hybrid today! I believe NG is a viable and immediately available supplement to petroleum distillates for transportation. I look at it this way: political will and popular support were able to push ethanol forward until it became painfully obvious that it was a very bad idea. The US went to ethanol because it's easy. It was easy politically because it immediately appealed to the grain belt states, and it’s easy to produce using old technology, and it blends into the existing fueling infrastructure - except that it must be transporting by trucks, not pipelines. If we can develop ethanol despite its net consumption of more energy than it provides, NG as an intrinsically superior alternative, should be a fairly straightforward sell to the American people.

--R

Open Letter to Boone Pickens

Hi AlexS --

I won't even try to launch into a diatribe on the critical importance of energy independence. It's as basic as weighing the importance of energy to our economy, national security, and (comparatively luxurious) way of life.

Conversely, energy Dependence weakens our nation in every way.

Energy independence is an incredibly important factor guiding our foreign policy. Lack of energy independence puts the US and our closest allies in a subservient position and limits our freedom of political movement with major oil producing nations much as the case with debt and China. Energy dependence cripples our relations with middle eastern nations and the Sov ... , I mean Russia. (Cold war's over, right? Ha ha haha ... hahaha ...)

As providence would have it, much of our cash outflow goes to unfriendly, perhaps dangerous nations and organizations. How much terrorism against the US and our allies have we funded ourselves, directly and indirectly? You're a smart guy so I'll spare the lecture.

Failure to achieve energy dependence is the greatest single blunder of the US in at least the last 50 years.

Regards,
R

NBC Refuses Pickens Plan Ad

I think the post above is correct, to which I would add that T. Boone Pickens matches and raises those two corporate slugs in terms of disgust factor.

I wholeheartedly recommend Pick's plan to unite Americans in the worthy fight to unshackle our economy from foreign energy suppliers, something "we" as a complacemt and selfish nation failed to initiate between 1973 and the present.

And yet Pick played a sleazy and substantive role in 'electing' the ultimately ineffective and unimaginative chief executive. Pick pertetrated the swiftboating of our nation into additional years of retrograde action on the energy independence front.

Now he tries to assume the role of uniter and energy dependence savior? A sudden change in values and purpose? I don't buy it. Pick earned his stripes as a divider and as perpetrator of the lowest common denominator of disinformation in public discourse.

The mantle of leader and motivator doesn't fit the man.