"Notes and Quotes"

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. - Elbert Hubbard

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Energy Independence

Sep 03, 2007



One of the most serious issues facing this country today is painfully obvious. One solution is equally obvious.


THE U.S. NEEDS TO BECOME LESS DEPENDENT

UPON FOREIGN OIL SOURCES NOW.


I make no claim to originality, only a restatement of an obvious problem and a thoughtful workable solution that fixes the problem. This is not a radically new proposal. It is, however, a loose blueprint of how to achieve the goal in a cost effective timely manner.


The fact is that we have a 200-300 year oil supply available today, but our refining capacity has not been increased in the last 30 years. India and China as well as other developing nations are exponentially increasing their energy need, thus creating an additional drain on world supplies.


Building new refineries requires funding. The government should provide generous tax incentives to private industry to encourage the expansion of refining capacity. This capacity should be increased to an appropriate level such that we are no longer just trying to keep up with demand. I would suggest at least 20% above current capacity. We should immediately accelerate our drilling for oil in places like A.N.W.R., and off the coasts of California and Florida. It is inexplicable to be sitting on a needed asset, spending billions of dollars per year buying that same asset from foreign governments. Many of these governments are bent on our destruction. By taking action now to reduce dependence on foreign oil, we can then take the time to more fully develop effective alternative energy resources.


Mike Blair of the American Free Press reported on May 21, 2006

"While Washington dithers over exploiting oil and gas reserves off the coast of Florida, China has seized the opportunity to gobble up these deposits, which run throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and along the U.S. Gulf coast. The Chinese have forged a deal with Cuban leader Fidel Castro to explore and tap into massive oil reserves almost within sight of Key West, Florida. “

One has to live in an alternate reality to not see the folly of this behavior on the part of the United States.

We have no time to wait for the commercialization of immature technologies such as hybrid fuels, and biofuels like ethanol which currently requires more fuel to produce than it yields. Ethanol use has several negative side effects such as increased cost of corn based food and livestock feed. Ethanol presents additional problems such as storage and the inability to deliver the product through a pipeline. Most existing engines will require significant costly modification to operate properly using more than a small percentage of it. The United States should only implement technologies that have been certified by the Department of Energy and can be commercialized rapidly. To the extent possible, solutions should be compatible with the current infrastructure.


In an excerpt from his book "Nuclear Iran" Victor David Hanson said:


“Americans must gasify coal, diversify fuels, drill for more petroleum and invent new energy sources. Only that can collapse the world price of petroleum. At $60 a barrel for oil, Ahmadinejad is a charismatic third world benefactor who throws cash at every thug who wants a roadside bomb or shoulder-fired missile — and has plenty of money to buy Pakistani, North Korean or Russian nuclear components. But at $30 a barrel, he will be despised by his own people, who will become enraged as state-subsidized food and gas prices skyrocket, and as scarce Iranian petrodollars are wasted on Hezbollah and Hamas.”


To accomplish this NOW we should create an agency which would operate similar to the WPA of the 1930s. The goal should be to increase refining capacity by at least 20% in 3 to 5 years. A special EPA panel should be tasked with fast tracking environmental approvals and permits of each plant. The approval process should be confined to no longer than 6 months.


During WW ll the United States turned out Liberty Ships at the rate of three per day, creating 2,710 of the vessels by the end of the war at 18 shipyards. Hoover Dam was completed in less than four years. The Empire State Building was built in one year and 45 days. As remarkable as these seem, it also shows what can be done when there is a will to achieve a task. It is time or past time that we establish a national will to become energy independent. There is simply no reason that these plants cannot be built in a timely cost efficient manner. We have the technology and the manpower. Do we have the will? Does our congress have the will to make it happen?

We are not using any less oil or polluting any more by burning the oil of our enemies. All we are doing is funding their continued bad behavior.


Of equal urgency is the building of oil shale, oil sand, and coal gasification and liquefaction plants along with the requisite refineries. storage facilities, and pipelines.


The technology has been available since 1922 to extract oil from oil shale and oil sand. The technology is also available for coal gasification and liquefaction. We have an approximate 300 year supply from this source, 500 years if you include Canada's supply. A similar fast-track program as described above could be put into place to take advantage of these resources as well.


In August 2005 the United States Department of Energy announced the results of a land survey. It was conducted to determine the official amount of oil one thousand feet deep in the Rocky Mountains. They reported the following: The U.S. has more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.


Here are the official estimates:


• 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia

• 18-times as much oil as Iraq

• 21-times as much oil as Kuwait

• 22-times as much oil as Iran

• 500-times as much oil as Yemen ...


Most significantly, it's all right here in the Western United States.


James Bartis, the lead researcher with the study said, "We've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East." More than 2 TRILLION barrels in an area known as the Green River Formation. "That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today," reported The Denver Post. And best of all the United States government already owns the land.


The Green River Formation is loaded with oil shale. Oil shale extraction may involve either ex-situ (above-ground) or in-situ (subsurface) processing. By applying heat on large scale via the in-situ (subsurface) method, the oil separates itself from the rock and sand and then flows like crude oil.


America has over 72% of the world’s known supply of oil shale. Of the 2 trillion barrels of proven oil in the Green River Formation—between 800 billion and 1.6 trillion barrels are recoverable. That’s the amount of oil we can realistically get out of the ground and use. There are over 16,000 square miles of oil shale in the Green River formation alone and the federal government owns 80% of this oil-rich land. Each acre holds 2 million barrels of oil—it’s the most concentrated energy source on earth, according to the Energy Department.


According to the RAND Corporation (a public-policy think tank for the government), this small region could produce three million barrels of oil per day. That translates into more than $20 BILLION a year. These are conservative estimates. The United States Department of Energy estimates an eventual output of 10 million barrels of oil per day.


According to energy analyst Matt Badiali over the past 125 years, oil shale has been an oil source for several nations. Specifically:


• China's been using oil shale since 1929. Today, China is the largest producer of oil from oil shale. It plans to double the daily rate of production soon.

• Estonia is an oil shale dependent economy. Over 90% of the country's electricity is fueled by shale oil. Electricity run on oil shale is a chief export of Estonia.

• In 1991, Brazil built the world's largest oil shale facility. They've already produced more than 1.5 MILLION tons of oil to make high quality transportation fuels.

• Jordan, Morocco, and Australia have recently announced plans to utilize their oil shale resources. All 3 governments are currently working to build oil shale facilities.


Combined, the oil shale resources of these countries pale in comparison to the United States which has over 72% of the world's known reserves. It is estimated that tapping U.S. oil shale would decrease domestic oil prices by as much as five percent a year. That may not sound like much, but consider that a 5% drop in oil prices would save Americans $15 - $20 BILLION a year at the gas pumps.


Making oil from oil shale, oil sands, and coal is not some pie-in-the-sky dream, but something scientists and engineers have known how to do for quite a long time. The problem has always been cost—which, with current technology, hovers around $30 per barrel. As long as oil is selling north of $60-$70 per barrel it makes little sense to not to actively pursue this obvious solution. Even if the oil price temporarily collapses to $30 per barrel or less it is still sound energy policy to be on the road to energy independence for the long run.


Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by several different processes. The United States Department of Energy estimates coal reserves of about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Were consumption to continue at the current rate those reserves would last about 285 years.


I propose, upon completion of one year of successful operation, offering private industry a 100% tax credit for new refining plants, pipelines and storage facilities. Similarly I propose a comparable 100% tax credit to private industry for plants to process oil shale, oil sand, and coal gasification and liquefaction.


A carrot to encourage private industry will be a five or ten year contract (at world market price) from the United States government to buy up to 50% of production capacity for military use. If no private industry steps up, the United States government will complete the task for it's own use. Result: either way more fuel will be produced and refined, the government’s needs will be filled, private industry is given the first opportunity to build the plants, refineries and pipelines, and we slow down or stop lining the pockets of our enemy.


Clearly, between our known oil reserves and our rich supply of oil shale and coal the United States has the resources and know how for complete energy independence. I am mindful of the need to produce this fuel in a clean environmentally friendly manner. None of this suggests bypassing that process. I am also mindful of the need to ultimately develop alternate energy sources for the long range future. There is plenty of time (300 - 500 years or more) to do so. We have a solution to the problem NOW and we should pursue it with great vigor.


This is just a broad summary. There are obviously many more details which would need to be addressed. There are hundreds of reasons why we could not do this, but our goal should be to find reasons why we can. The government needs to work quickly and efficiently to encourage private industry to meet the need today.




Respectfully,




H. Steven Mishket

Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

"Notes and Quotes" Archive

  • **“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.” – Justice Tom C. Clark (1899-1977) US Attorney General, 1945-1949
  • **"If the Constitution no longer matters, then the federal government no longer exists. The same document that restricts the federal government is also the document that created them and gives them their authority. Either it is in effect, or it is not." Gary Henderson
  • **"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in the time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." Dante
  • **“When anyone gets something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something.” -Anonymous
  • ** "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane" Author unknown
  • ** “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter F. Drucker
  • ** “If getting employer benefits without paying union dues is BAD, why is getting government benefits without paying taxes GOOD?”
  • ** “It's not that ‘the rich’ aren't paying their ‘fair share,’ it's that America isn't. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it's not willing to pay for.” - Mark Steyn
  • ** "One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." ~ Plato
  • **"Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured...but not everyone must prove they are a citizen."
  • **If it matters, measure it: How do you know how much you’ve slipped or improved in an area unless you measure it? How do you take something “to the next level” if you don’t know what level you’re already at? How do you set concrete goals without a sense of where you are and where you want to go? If the success of your venture depends on it, you need to find a way to measure it.
  • **The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain
  • **Political correctness is an approved form of censorship.  Based on emotional appeals at the expense of reason, political correctness mandates that inconvenient truths or facts be swept under the carpet.  Or else. Free speech, guaranteed to all Americans under the First Amendment, is on its way to becoming moot.  The political, media, and intellectual elites who control the terms of national debate and the rules of civil society have succeeded in censoring opposing views, limiting debate, and demonizing dissent.  Perception is on its way to becoming our new reality. Nancy Morgan
  • **Ronald Reagan once defined an economist as somebody who sees something working in real life and wondering if it will work in theory.
  • **"Fathom the odd hypocrisy that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but they don't have to prove they are citizens." ~ Ben Stein
  • **“America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”--Dinesh D'Souza
  • **No politician has any business talking about tax increases until ObamaCare is repealed. It’s the most comprehensively failed legislation of the modern era. Like a taxi that runs on plutonium, it’s costing us a fortune, and making us sick, even while it’s sitting there and doing nothing. Sold with fanciful promises and fraudulent cost estimates, it’s another expensive scheme to buy votes with taxpayer money, ending with a planned crisis the government will be only too happy to step in and “solve” by seizing even more of our wealth and liberty. Its passage stymied serious attempts at real improvements to our health-care system, including tort reform and allowing the interstate sale of insurance plans to increase competition. As with so many other delusional Big Government programs, the opportunity cost of passing ObamaCare, and passing up on reasonable plans that enhance individual liberty, rivals its staggering price tag. We’ll come trillions closer to a balanced budget by shredding it. -- Dr. Zero
  • **'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel' -- Benjamin Netanyahu
  • ** This is almost unbelievable. Barack Obama is more concerned about Jews building homes in Jerusalem than about Iran building a nuclear weapon. --Ben Stein
  • ** I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts. --Ronald Reagan
  • ** "As an American I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials." - - Newt Gingrich
  • ** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
  • ** The banking crisis wasn't caused by a lack of regulation. It was caused by regulation that pushed banks to make bad loans. --John Hawkins
  • ** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
  • **Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.--Ronald Reagan
  • ** A final word on Tea Party numbers.  The Obama Inauguration left in its wake 100 tons of trash on the Mall that required herculean efforts by the District and the Park Service to clean up.  And it devastated the grass surfaces of the Mall that necessitated budgeting millions of dollars to repair.  Saturday’s Teapartyers left behind a west lawn and Mall that could be used for the U.S.Open.   The sparse trash that was left was neatly stashed in and closely around the too few receptacles provided.  And police reported zero arrests.-- William Campenni
  • ** There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress. --Mark Twain
  • ** What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. --Edward Langley
  • ** To be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
  • **"Free speech does not include the right to deceive". --Author unknown
  • ** Although racism certainly exists in this country, it has become blessedly rare and marginalized. Some of the best evidence you can find for that is Barack Obama's election as President. Only in a country as colorblind as America could a black man easily win the Presidency when 75% of the votes were cast by white Americans. --John Hawkins
  • **I think we need a Constitutional Amendment that says: 1.  Congressional salaries are tied to increased jobs, per capita income and increased GDP. 2.  Any raise for any member must be approved by a super majority in his/her home district or state. --Tom Hall
  • **There is a certain irony in an administration denouncing ordinary Americans who get together to express what they believe and to confront authority, when that administration is led by a man who began his career as a community organizer, whose job, as I understand it, is to take ordinary Americans, get them together to express what they believe, and express demands against the authorities. So it's unbelievably hypocritical. And, of course, as we just heard, this only happens when you have a conservative protest. It is called a mob. If it's a liberal protest, it is called grassroots expressing themselves. -- Charles Krauthammer
  • **Government does not solve problems... it subsidizes them! --Ronald Reagan
  • **When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President -- I'm beginning to believe it.’ - Clarence Darrow
  • **The liberals will give free medical care to illegal aliens who are on welfare but will deny it to American citizens who have worked all their lives and made their contributions to American society.-- Charles Hakes
  • ** Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country. -- Virginia Postrel
  • ** You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
  • **We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. --The Talmud
  • **You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
  • **We're getting too much lip service and not enough action from the Obama administration on nuclear power, and the impression is being left that we can run this big, complex country on electricity from the wind, the sun and the earth. ...Climate change may be the inconvenient problem, but nuclear power is the inconvenient answer. -- Lamar Alexander
  • **The government may very well come up with a health insurance product that is cheaper (to the consumer) and more effective than those offered in the private sector. Think about this though ... Could that possibly be because the government will be under no pressure whatsoever to make a profit on its health insurance? When you can operate at a loss indefinitely you have no problem undercutting your competitors. When you can call on endless government subsidies you can run anyone you chose out of business. -- Neal Boortz
  • **I'd like to quote from an e-mail I recently received from a reader named J. Pyle. In response to a piece I had written ridiculing the state of higher education, he wrote: "I remember when 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies' meant trying to figure out what's wrong with those people. In fact, if your child is majoring in something that ends in 'Studies,' you better not turn their bedroom into a den, because that one is coming home after college." --Bert Prelutsky
  • **People are gushing over the late Michael Jackson. I suppose they will honor him on a postage stamp, in a new “Famous Child Molesters” series, to go with Elvis from the “Famous Drug Abusers” stamp series. Meanwhile, men and women dying to protect an America pass with little but perfunctory notice. One wonders, in the black hours of the night, if this nation deserves protecting. -- Robert Hall
  • **I sincerely hope that when the president goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors at Bethesda will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran. --Bert Prelutsky
  • **"Even if the majority agrees on an idiotic idea, it is still an idiotic idea." Sam Levenson
  • **The most hilarious thing about the Democrats' attempt to engulf the health care industry in the inky blackness of the federal government is their primary selling point: that a government takeover will actually lead to reduced costs. How's that plan working out with Medicare so far? Oh yeah, it's on track to bankrupt the entire country. So let's expand that -- what could go wrong? Well, besides all the features that usually come along with socialized medicine: reduced quality of care, long wait times for operations, and allowing old people to die in order to cut costs. Obamacare would lead to health care with the compassion of the IRS, the competence of FEMA, and the well staffed work force of our border patrol at a much higher cost, but on the upside, you won't live as long, so you'll have less time to complain about it. -- John Hawkins
  • **President Obama wants greater transparency from businesses, banks, the government — everyone except the union movement. This clearly benefits the union leaders, who will become less accountable to their members. But it’s hardly the change Obama promised to bring to Washington. — James Sherk
  • **Being politically correct is, unfortunately, not the same thing as being correct politically.-- Bert Prelutsky
  • **If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a "stimulus," then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power. -- Thomas Sowell
  • **“The big mistake of Republican leadership is thinking that going through the motions of listening to their ‘base’ is the same thing as actually listening to the base. They keep trying to drag us to where they think we should be instead of joining us where we are.” -- John Hawkins
  • ** Torturing prisoners should never be our policy, both because it's immoral and because it's usually ineffective. But it's madness to declare that there can never be exceptions. Forget the argument about the "ticking bomb" and the terrorist who might have information that could save numerous lives. Let's make it personal. Whether you're left, right or in between, ask yourself this yes-or-no question: If torturing a known terrorist would save the life of the person you love most in the world, would you approve it? If your answer is "no," you're not a moral paragon. You're an abomination. And please make your position clear to your husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter. Just tell 'em, "Sorry, honey, but I'd rather see you dead than mistreat a terrorist. It's a moral issue with me. --Ralph Peters
  • **The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. -- Teddy Roosevelt
  • **The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital... if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today. -- William Henry Harrison
  • **The price of a postage stamp has gone up to 44 cents. The government says they had to raise the price because fewer people are using the mail these days. That's government thinking for you — "Hey nobody's buying our products . . . let's raise the price!" --Jay Leno
  • **If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand. -- Milton Friedman
  • **Since torture doesn’t work but waterboarding did work on KSM, doesn’t that prove that waterboarding isn’t torture?
  • **"The world is controlled by those who show up." --George Allen
  • **John Maynard Keynes, responded to a challenge about his changing views, saying, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”