I filled up my 25 gallon truck today at a whopping $4/gallon , and tomorrow we will purchase our quarterly 3-400 gallons of propane here on our ranch, which I assume will also be about $4/gallon. We can afford it....yet I think about some of our kids and those millions of Americans that cannot.
We need to drill for oil! That statement will draw the wrath of my environmentalist friends. I am an environmentalist myself, but I combine my environmentalism with a healthy mixture of common sense and realism. Mention coal, oil, or nuclear power in the same sentence with sources of energy and many people cringe because of what they constantly hear from the main stream media:
- drilling for oil destroys the environment and creates more CO2, which adds to "global warming"
- new oil refineries will destroy local environments and are not the answer
- nuclear power creates radioactive waste that is dangerous and impossible to dispose of
- coal causes pollution and should be left in the ground.
None of the above is true, but let's assume it is...then what do we do in the short term?
We import 60% of our oil needs, half of that from countries that hate the USA. Most experts agree that at best, conservation could only reduce our usage by 10%, and we should all try to conserve by this amount or more, but from a practical standpoint that will only result in a small change.
During my 30 year career I worked very close with the offshore oil industry and the nuclear power industry. I also have some experience with solar energy development and worked for a few years with a company that supplied wind power stations for remote environments. As an engineer I have even been exposed to research on hydrogen powered energy sources. I am not a novice, or just another right wing "wacko" that could care less about the environment.
Of course we need new, safe, "clean" power. But from a practical standpoint it is 20 years away.
Those that have driven through Tehachapi or Palm Springs, California have seen the hundreds of windmills on the hills "humming" away. They supply power to a few local towns, but even thousands of these windmills could only supply a minuscule fraction of what would be required to power the adjacent Southern California population's energy requirement.
In the California desert there are solar power installations that cover acres of land. These solar panels are exposed to bright sunlight more than 325 days a year, yet even these "acres" of solar cells can only supply power to small towns in the immediate area. Wind and solar energy sources, although safe and "clean" are simply not practical for the power needs of this country. And "hydrogen" is decades away.
A nuclear power plant can supply megawatts of "clean" power to large metropolitan areas but none has been approved in over 25 years. Yes, there is the problem of handling and disposing of nuclear waste but solving that technical problem is probably much easier to solve than trying to come up with another 'clean" source of energy during the next few decades. And it is a fact that US nuclear power plant designs are by far the safest in the world.
So this brings us back to oil and coal. They, along with nuclear, are our only practical energy sources for the next 10-20 years, whether we like it or not. Advances in technology now allow us to drill in an environmentally safe way, both onshore and offshore. In addition, technology is close to solving the problem of burning coal in a clean way.
During the 1990's Congress approved drilling in the Anwar area of Alaska but Bill Clinton vetoed the bill. If we had started drilling at that time, we would now be producing an additional million barrels of our own oil each day, which could replace what we get from Saudia Arabia or Venezuela. This is also a national security issue, so it seems to me that we need to pursue our energy requirements on three fronts - aggressively work on conservation, aggressively pursue development of "clean" sources of energy (nuclear, clean coal, wind, solar, hydrogen), and in the meantime drill for oil.
Epilogue: Today as I write this blog, President Bush is in Saudi Arabia asking them to produce more oil for us - something we refuse to do for ourselves. What is wrong with that picture?
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3 comments:
It's been known for many years that global supplies of fossil fuels are dwindling. Our nation's dependence on oil from unfriendly countries is hardly a new phenomenon. Yet in all these many years, what real progress have oil companies made in developing alternative energy sources? How many of those untold billions of dollars in profit have been spent on such research? And frankly, how is it in their interest to do so? Why would a cocaine dealer invest money in building treatment clinics to get his customers off cocaine?
To let oil companies drill in ANWR is simply giving them a free pass to continue with business as usual. They've had no incentive all these years to change their ways, and if we just let them suck out oil from new sources, we'll just find ourselves in the same place 20 or 30 years from now (except parts of pristine Alaska will now look like Carson, California).
As painful as $5/gallon gas prices are, such pain is the only way to generate enough inertia to effect major change. People express eco-friendly sentiments as they fill up their SUVs. Politicians pretend to be outraged while they take money under the table from oil companies. The government claims they want to exploit domestic sources of oil, but their war machine loves the huge budgets they get because of wars in the Middle East.
Let's be honest: the ONLY way to change people's behaviors is to hit them in the wallet -- hard. I'm no altruist; I am a former SUV owner. That's why I know feel-good eco-activism won't accomplish anything, nor will maintaining the status quo. It's time for the American people to rise up and say to their government, "I'm mad as hell at the oil companies, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
This is classic eco left wing dribble...
First of all, why is it the oil company's responsibility to develop other sources of energy...their business is oil. I designed and built underwater cameras most of my career, why would I spend my company's research and development funds on something other than our area of business, except if in our long range plan it expanded our business into other profitable areas. Oil companies are responsible to their shareholders, if developing other sources of energy will expand their business and provide a return to their shareholders, they will do it. In the meantime, if they don't provide a good return to their shareholders, those folks will just take their money elsewhere.
And accusing oil companies of raking in excess profits is bunk and buys into the Democrat and enviro whacko line. Business research shows their profits to be no more (as a percentage of sales) than Wal mart, GE, ADM, or any other major corporations. Their profits are high because revenues are high, but their cost of a barrel of oil determines their price. Let gas go to $10/gallon as I have said in the past, and maybe we will drill then. There is not a shortage of oil. Recent studies in Montana have produced estimates of 40-50 billion barrels of oil just from shale. As I said in this blog alternative sources like wind, solar, geothermal, etc. are 20 years away to be able to support our economy. In the meantime why not use our own oil?
If politicians are taking money under the table from oil companies, why has the Democratic House and Senate done absolutely nothing the last two years to try and solve this problem? Your comment about the 'war machine" makes no sense at all. If we wanted to get out of these messes in the Middle East, the quickest way to do it is to become energy independent...in every aspect, as I described in the blog. Then we could tell the Arabs to go to hell.
And I agree that sooner or later people will rise up and say "I'm mad as hell...", and hopefully they will then tell their politicians to "Drill dammit!"
Ad hominem comments like "classic eco left wing dribble" and "Democrat and enviro whacko line" are so easy, but are also the reason why this country is so polarized. It's easy to dismiss opinions that differ from yours by lumping them in with an entire group you disagree with. But don't worry, living in the Land of the Liberals hasn't fully corrupted me yet; I just think you're wrong.
Actually, you are half right -- but I just think your "drill, dammit" sentiment is short-sighted. That is, it's a solution, but it's a short-term solution. I think you missed my general point, but that's my fault; I probably didn't express it well, because I didn't have the time to write a treatise -- and an issue this complex needs a treatise, not a blog.
I understand your capitalist argument that it's not the oil companies' responsibility to come up with alternative energy sources and technologies. From a free-market perspective, I agree with you. But at the same time, drastic times call for drastic measures, and in this specific case, I think higher taxes on the oil companies (and on consumers of gasoline, let's spread the pain) need to be implemented to fund research of alternative energy/technologies. This is a crisis.
I'd have to think longer and harder than I currently have time for to figure out exactly who to blame, but my basic point is that we're having a debate that people should have been having 20 years ago. You talk about "safe, clean energy" being 20 years off. Well, why the hell are we just now working on the problem? If we started 20 years ago, maybe we'd be close to having "safe, clean energy" NOW. But again, it gets back to free-market behavior. Nobody (generally speaking) will bother until it hits their wallet.
We waited too long, and now oil and gasoline prices are going through the roof, and our national security is more jeopardized than ever. But maybe that's what it takes to get us as a society to finally start talking seriously about funding -- I mean REALLY funding -- alternative energy and technologies. Fund it like we fund the War on Terror or the space program, not like it's some "enviro whacko" idea.
"Drill, dammit"? Fuck that noise, "research, dammit!"
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