Posted on 05/17/2008 8:29:12 PM PDT by Cannonphoder
Crude Mistake
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Friday, May 16, 2008
Energy: With the price of oil spiking above $127 a barrel, the search for scapegoats has begun. Some point to the Saudis, OPEC's No. 1 producer. Others blame the oil companies. We have a better candidate: Congress.
As President Bush traveled to Saudi Arabia to ask the House of Saud to open the oil spigots a bit wider, Congress showed once again how clueless it is when it comes to energy policy.
Underscoring its failure to grasp the nature of our current problems, the Senate Appropriations Committee on Friday refused to end its moratorium on oil shale development in Colorado.
"If we are really serious about reducing pain at the pump," Colorado's senior senator, Republican Wayne Allard, said, "this is a vote that would make a difference in people's lives." He's right.
But the shale proposal went down to defeat with Allard and 13 other Republican members in favor and 15 Democrats opposed. Once again, Democrats were on the wrong side, opting to keep oil in the ground and punish you with higher prices as a result.
This was no minor thing. Estimates put the amount of oil locked in shale in both Canada and the U.S. at more than 1 trillion barrels. Pulling out even a tenth of that would quadruple our current reserves.
This is the same Congress that refuses to allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which holds up to 20 billion barrels of crude, or offshore, where another 30 billion await.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Petro Plumber
I guess we are planning to lock up our reserves so the Muslims and Chinese can eventually develop them with our slave labor.
We import 12 million barrels a day, and at current prices send out of the country more than $1.5 billion.
ANWR would cut that by 150 million a day. Colorado could cut that another 150 million and offshore drilling on both coasts another 300 million. That’s $600 million in trade deficit wiped out each day, or $18 billion a month.
Of course, if we actually provided another 4 million barrels a day, oil would be under 50 bucks, which would mean we’d only be spending 8*50=400 millon a day instead of 1.5 billion.
But as you say, it’s like the democrats are paid by Hugo Chavez to keep us dependent on him for oil.
The democrats will do anything if it has the potential to harm our economy. It’s a major part of their pathetic 08 election campaign.
That’s why they want oil to stay in the ground—so gas prices will go even higher.
Come on you idiot democrats, how obvious can you get?
If you like $4/gal Thank Congress in Nov.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
They're just doing what the people back home tell them to do.
Wayne Allard is one of the true heros in the U.S. Senate. Unfortunately, he’s had enought and is retiring. A veternarian by profession, he’s seen a lot of horse’s asses in his lifetime, but never more than during his senate career.
btt
I think you are a lot closer to the truth than people would care to admit.
OPEC shrugs its shoulders: So Americans pays $4 a gallon for gas? So the world pays $130 a barrel for what? So what? After all, it's not like any one's forcing American politicians to take this money...
Think the news media would pay attention to some Drill Now! signs at this point?
Not to mention the thousands of high paying jobs that would be created.
Talk about "settled science!" - the basic economic realities of supply, demand, price, money supply and currency value all get contorted and turned upside down/inside out in the headlong pursuit of a socialist, fascist, populist power-grab.
One would think that the lessons of history (such as, for example, the failed Nixon price freeze, the Jimmy Carter wacko fiscal policies, South American inflations, and the numerous failed socialist/centrally controlled economies) would have stuck with at least a few people who still have a voice. But alas, idiots and fools now blissfully rule; sure to blame yet someone else for the inescapable future dour consequences of their current willful myopathy.
Check out North Dakota oil development. Evidently there could be 500 billion barrels of oil there. Because of the cost of drilling there, they’ve just started to tap into the fields.
Gritty, that’s a poignant statement — if you don’t mind, I’m going to start using that line in arguments with anti-oil idiots.
Oil has not been missing.
The will to get out there and produce either crude oil, or a reliable and relatively easily available substitute for petroleum, is what is lacking. We could have an adequate number of coal-to-liquid fuel plants up and running, as well as a number of new-generation nuclear power generation plants. In fact, the nuclear “waste” we now have in storage in various places around the US would be an important resource in fueling these nuclear plants. We have the technology to separate out the radioactive isotopes that was not available back in 1960 and 1970, so what once was untouchable now becomes just another raw material for industrial use.
There are waste-to-power plants that consume solid-waste trash and rubbish, by a method known as Plasma Arc Trash Reduction, that both eliminates landfills, and produces electrical power generation as well, far in excess of the power consumed to start up the operation. There is carbon dioxide produced by this process, but it is carbon dioxide that would be produced anyway over time, plus no methane or leaching into the groundwater of various contaminants.
Carbon dioxide is plant food. In fact, to get a greener world, we may have to step up the proportions of CO2 in the atmosphere, or dissolved in the oceans of the world, just to boost the photosythesis activity of plant life, so we are assured of sufficient free oxygen in the atmosphere.
The watchword is actually to produce more and more of our energy in the form of electricity, by fueling the generators with compressed natural gas, drawn from the depths of the ocean as Methane Hydrate (just LYING there, people!), or from using the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert any of a number of carbon compounds to syngas, and using that to drive power plants. Syngas is made up of equal quantities of free hydrogen, which may be used directly in a fuel cell, and carbon monoxide, a deadly poison to almost all forms of animal life, but an excellent fuel in its own right.
The total number of alternative energy delivery systems is staggering. It is something of a puzzle why we continue to place so much of our reliance on a substance like petroleum. It is great stuff to make plastics with, and goodness knows, it can be transformed into any number of useful products, so its value is probably far greater than just as a means to generate heat.
If we NEED petroleum, we can manufacture it out of otherwise waste organic material, by a process called Thermal Depolymerization, which converts a slurry of organic wastes and water into a grade of kerogen with the application of heat, pressure, and a couple hours of time.
This could be used to reduce the effluent in wastewater plants, sending all the wastewater through this system, and letting the steam produced in the process cool and condense as distilled water, free of minerals, contaminants and pathogens. The heat could be supplied as a by-product of the operation of a nuclear power generation plant. This is essentially how clean water is supplied to the crew on a nuclear-powered warship at sea.
And you didn’t even include the new discovery of som 600 billion barrels of oil under North Dakota...
And you didn’t even include the new discovery of some 600 billion barrels of oil under North Dakota...
Oh-—and Cuba is slant drilling into US oil.... but we are not allowed to drill it.
Mark for later.
BTTT!
Once again, the truth is that the Democrats don’t want a strong America. They want us weak and beaten in the face of our enemies. Unfortunately, we’ve just nominated one of them to be our presidential candidate.
Who the hell are they to tell the people of this country that they can’t drill for their own oil? The oil doesn’t belong to Congress.....it belongs to the people of this country.
Satellite surveys indicate that the world is more highly forested today than at the dawn of the space age -- and the forested area is expanding year-to-year.
Maybe all that man-made CO2 is being put to good use by Mother Nature...
yes, and those alternative sources powering our electricty stations will be charging many more and more electric vehicles as companies like tesla motors, aptera, and phoenix electric cars take off. The new lithium nano batteries will take those cars 120-250 miles per charge...more than enough for almost all drivers. About 135 mpg equivalency due to lower costs of electricity and more torque and much less maintenance costs.
I meant to give this one. Let's try it again, shall we?
HMMMM.... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017556/posts
A great lie being forced on the American people.
We have plenty of oil and should be paying about a dollar a gallon.
But politics has in it’s delusion of grandeur stolen from us what we own.
It’s shameful.
Congress is pissing on us and telling us it’s raining and they that we should not go outside and that they are protecting us from the bad rain.
And most Americans stay inside.
“If we NEED petroleum, we can manufacture it out of otherwise waste organic material, by a process called Thermal Depolymerization, which converts a slurry of organic wastes and water into a grade of kerogen with the application of heat, pressure, and a couple hours of time.”
Is it cost effective? Does it work as good as oil?
But the shale proposal went down to defeat with Allard and 13 other Republican members in favor and 15 Democrats opposed. Once again, Democrats were on the wrong side, opting to keep oil in the ground and punish you with higher prices as a result.
This makes me incredibly angry. Frankly, this is a borderline criminal and treasonous vote, not a mere difference of opinion.
I hope the brainless heads of the GOP (i.e., the stupid party) have the sense to trumpet this unceasingly through ever means possible. This vote, by itself, should show the perils of giving Democrats power. They are unfit to govern.
My God, how can they be so irresponsible?
Of course, so does mankind breathing. Which they will outlaw next. When 95% of the human race has died of starvation, the "moderates" among them will consider it sufficient. By then the radicals will demand they go all the way to human extinction instead.
So why not just cut to the chase and use greens as fossil fuel, now?
This insane refusing to use our own oil stuff is JUST like the novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’.
The democrats want to stop the motor of our world.
Note that the 15 who voted to give the oil sheiks more of our money include alleged “moderate” Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Tim Johnson of South Dakota.
There is no such thing as a “moderate” Democrat.
The Rats are strangling America and the Repubs will catch the blame.
Amazing.
Why do we sit here and wring our hands?? Why do we not go out and drill for oil? If Congress doesn’t like it, then let ‘em come and stop us! This is getting to the point where it’s going to be a shooting war. I’m sick of idiots who have no concern about Americans struggling sitting back in their ivory towers doing nothing. They don’t fear for anything; maybe a little fear is what they need.
We have sky rocketing gas prices and no domestic product to speak of for one reason only - congress wants it that way.
The people in DC have become detatched from reality. It is of no importance to them that some people struggle with four dollar gas.
I am actually beginning to think they LIKE to see the people struggle a bit. Why else would there be this nutty push to not dig for oil? It amuses them from high upon their thrones in the imperial city.
They got caught up in the circus of ruling men and have taken far too much for granted.
Well, one day, our leaders are going to be called to answer for their ways IF they refused to change. This isn’t a game; it’s people’s lives they are playing with. I really think they feel completely insulated from reality but that could end in a rude awakening. We have a revolutionary spirit way down deep in our American souls and it could burn again, I truly believe, if our leaders abandon us.
I heard Glenn Baeck say that China alone will use all the world oil, at currnet production levels, in 10 years.
“I guess we are planning to lock up our reserves so the Muslims and Chinese can eventually develop them with our slave labor.”
Democrats would have no problem at all with that idea. In fact, they encourage it.
I guess the one silver lining to all of this is that American oil isn’t going anywhere (at least that on our mainland). IF it all comes apart in a few years, and everyone else is tapped, at least we’ll have our supply. I just hope that our political will to use it isn’t completely gone and the Muslims have overrun us by then.
I dunno...I think they pretty much have us at the moment. Not a thing we can do.
It is AQ, the DC dolts and a hundred other things. And it has become politically impossible to get anything worth doing done.
We cannot even build a fence! A simple old fasioned fence of all things.
I think you’re right!
They don’t have to contribute to their “campaign fund” but in the Swiss Bank Account thus avoiding having to report it.
And they can get the money when they leave Congress or some other “payday”! All without doing anything illegal!
I wonder how many of them become millionaires since beginning service in the Congress. We need to check this out!
We are being hoodwinked!!!
btt
That may be true, but Americans voluntarily allow themselves to be ruled and not governed. And, in that case, it's no surprise that the government's position is that everything, including oil deposits on lands within its jurisdiction, belong to it.
How can this great nation have so many asinine politicians making critical decisions on energy production? The Founding Fathers never meant for so much to be left up to rot like these sleazy zits.
Why go get more oil when you can simply use less?
Now smoke your pot and keep voting Democrat. :D
Extremely expensive and a CO2 emitter. See SASOL in South Africa
There are waste-to-power plants that consume solid-waste trash and rubbish, by a method known as Plasma Arc Trash Reduction...
Gasification more expensively done by electricity
The watchword is actually to produce more and more of our energy in the form of electricity, by fueling the generators with compressed natural gas, drawn from the depths of the ocean as Methane Hydrate ....or from using the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert any of a number of carbon compounds to syngas
First if you suck it up from the ocean it's no longer compressed. This has been looked at for years and still isn't feasible.
Fischer-Tropsch doesn't make syngas; it uses syngas as a feed.
If we NEED petroleum, we can manufacture it out of otherwise waste organic material, by a process called Thermal Depolymerization This could be used to reduce the effluent in wastewater plants....
Pyrolysis has been around for years and is still too expensive. Even Union Carbide gave up on the Purox process. Also produces a lot of bad materials (phenols, etc.) in the wastewater.
.
While I admire your enthusiasm, you really should stop reading all of those DoE labs, university seeking funding, and process developer press releases. If there were any good cheap solutions, they would have been done by now.
One of the things that frosts me most of all are the number of process developers trying to get rich by selling poorly thought out, obviously uneconomic process concepts to politicians! [ethanol from corn]
If you have a good economic process, you don't need to sell it to politicians as the market will do quite fine with it. We would not be in this mess if congress wasn't composed of lawyers who don't know a damn thing about engineering or economics!
I think Alaska should tell the Feds that they are going to drill in ANWR. If the Feds try to stop them they should then explain to the Feds that Alaska has chosen to secede from the union and will be taking over all federally held ground and armed forces on Alaskan soil.
If any state could secede and survive it would be Alaska. It’s time for the states to start standing up and taking back more state’s rights.
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