posted 08-09-2002 10:56 PM               

quote:

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I like to think that more often than not we can have our cake and eat it too, but maybe I'm being overly optimistic.

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We can have our cake and eat it too. There are plenty of ways to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels. Conservation, for one: With about 5 percent of the world's population, the US consumes something like 20 percent of its resources. Honestly, turning off lights when we leave the room and computers at night may seem like a pittance, but it adds up in numbers that would probably surprise us.

In a recent article in Mother Jones magazine, New York energy analyst Charles Komanoff claims that we could save 7 percent of the gasoline used in the country if we would all eiminate one car trip in 14. He also notes that if half the drivers in two-car households switched a tenth of their travel to the more efficient vehicle (take the Honda instead of the SUV), we'd save 1 percent of our oil. (This all comes from Bill Kibben's "It's Easy Being Green," Mother Jones, Aug. 2002)

Another article -- I'll let you know when I read it -- details the growing popularity of wind power in the US.

One thing that I've always wondered about automobiles is this: How close is Detroit tied to Big Oil? It seems to me that car companies might not care what their cars run on, as long as people are buying them; hence the (slowly) growing number of hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles rolling off the assembly line. If people are more willing to buy a car that costs less to run -- and I don't know why they're not, dammit -- then the auto industry will provide it.

posted 08-10-2002 02:51 AM               

quote:

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In Pennsylvania, we can choose our own electric provider, and we can all choose which cars to drive. These choices can be active ones, or they can be made for us by lobbyists and Madison Avenue.

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I'm not going to touch that first one. We had that in CA and it helped to fuel the energy crisis of last summer (along with other factors).

posted 04-11-2003 01:05 PM               

Ah, ANWR.

The difference between ANWR and many other refusges is that it is pristine. Only a narrow area along the coast has ever really been used by man in modern or immediately pre-modern times.

The estimated resources are not significant in the context of our national ebergy consumption issue. Even doubling current throughput of the pipeline, now a million barrels a day, is not a significant contribtion.

Oddly, Alaska oil production has often been surplus to U.S. needs, because it exists on the west coast, while the market is in the industrial east. Oil imported from Venezuela, Africa, and the Middle East is cheaper landed on the Gulf Coast or Atlantic Coast than Alaska oil. Alaska oil excess to West Coast needs has to be taken to a pipeline in Costa Rica, pumped across to the Gulf, and then re-tankered to the Gulf Coast, all at a higher price.

ANWR could be useful in terms of Alaska economics simply to help keep the pipeline fuller with higher coast oil, this means what we in Alaska call hot oil. There is a hugh supply of what is claled cold oil, or heavier oil, at and near Prudhoe Bay. This will be more costly oil to lift, and less profitable, but as prices rise this oil can be used to maintain flow in the Alaska pipeline.

Energy companies right now want to use the crisis, and high oil prices, ironically caused more by the politial crisis in Venezuela than the Iraqi situation, to get favorable tax concessions they can then hang on to as oil prices fall. The time is ripe politically for oil cronies to work their political magic.

By the time any oil could come from ANWR are current crisis will be well over. By the time a leasing plan is developed, geophysical done to guide bidding, a lease sale held, then an EIS, we are looking at about 2010 to 2012. Then there is development drilling, pipelinmes, and etc. Alaska oil has nothing to do with the immediate crisis.

A far more worthwhile project is a natural gas line from Alaska is access so-called "stranded gas" at Prudhoe Bay, gas with no market and no transport system. Gas is less risky, at least environmentally, to transport, and provides cleaner energy. 25% of the gas reserves of the U.S. are stranded at Prudhoe Bay. Why aren't the oil companies as hotshit for the gas line? it's not as profitable. Gas travels into price regulated markets and is more highly regulated.

There is no chance for "windfall" profts from gas. Also oil companies tend to own the whole oil structure from exploration to your car's gas tank. In gas, the product quickly flows into the hadns of utilities.

posted 04-16-2003 10:03 PM            

It is tough to argue that we don't need the oil. You can certainly wish we needed it less (I do!) but that doesn't change the fact that we do.

I also don't agree that we subsidize SUV's. You could argue that we have a defacto subsidy for motor vehiles over mass transit, but that benefits Eco-V's just as much as SUV's.

I don't think subsidizing hybrid vehicles is the way to go. Hybrids are nice, but they are essentially a stop-gap solution. Subsidizing them just draws resources away from the real show - fuel cells.

posted 04-16-2003 11:45 PM               

"The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there are 11.6 billion barrels or more of crude in the coastal plain of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refugee, which comprises about 8 percent of the total wildlife refuge.

The Geological Survey estimated that at a market price of $24 a barrel, about 2 billion barrels could profitably be recovered from the wildlife refuge. The United States now imports about 9 million barrels per day of oil, so 2 billion barrels of crude from the refuge would be equivalent to about seven months of imports at current rates of consumption."

I'd also refer you to the above post that points out that by the time you transport it, it's cheaper to import the oil from Venezuela or elsewhere. So, no, it's not impossible to get the oil to the East Cost. But market factors mean that probably no one on the East Cost is going to want it.

Plus there's the thread right in this forum about, among other things, the way the tax code subsidizes large SUV purchases at a far greater level than it incentivizes hybrids.

And why not support hybrids as a stopgap over the next decade or so? You can't tell me that by being fuel efficient on a national scale, we couldn't achieve something on a par with those 2 billion gallons at a much lower cost.

So actually, it's pretty easy for me to argue that we don't need this oil. It won't noticeably change our economic situation, our dependence on oil imports, our national security, or anything of the sort, but it will noticeably change our environment and raise the risk of catastrophic damage.

posted 04-17-2003 10:08 PM            

My 15 billion gallon figure came from the Department of the Interior. Their range was 9 to 16+ billion. I rounded to 15 for the sake of brevity but I think that is a valid estimate.

The 2 billion barrels at $24 per barrel is way off. I am looking right now at a USGS document that says at $13 per barrel the estimated yield is 3 billion. If I recall correctly OPEC aims to maintain a price of $20-$30 per barrel. So the likely realistic yield is much higher.

posted 04-19-2003 02:52 PM            

(Edited by Dave to repair HTML link.)