Sensible Drilling: Gone With the Wind?

Barron's ^ | April 11, 2009 | Jim McTague

[reaganaut1]

Interior Secretary Ken Salazr, the Obama administration's energy architect, apparently thinks the answer to all our energy worries is blowing in the wind.

Salazar has slammed the brakes on efforts to develop vast new gas and oil fields offshore and in his home state of Colorado. During the campaign, candidate Obama said he would drill to find oil offshore. But Salazar now says he needs six months to formulate a comprehensive offshore-energy plan and to have "an open and honest conversation" about it with the American people.

Increasingly, Salazar sounds like a man bedeviled by the winds. In speeches he suggests that huge wind turbines placed off major cities on the East and West Coasts will generate 1,900 gigawatts of clean and relatively cheap electric power, double the current total output of all U.S. power plants.

He doesn't say how long it would take to achieve this. But if it were so, there would be no need to build new coal or nuclear plants. We would, in Salazar's rumination, simply breeze along.

He must be thinking of a whole lot of windmills. I don't know for certain, because my multiple phone and e-mail entreaties for information from spokesman Frank Quimby went unanswered. But we can assume he is thinking half a million or more of the gigantic contraptions. I derive the estimate from a wind project planned off Nantucket involving 130 wind-driven turbines. These big machines will generate a total of 468 megawatts, which comes out to 3.6 megawatts per windmill, or .0036 gigawatts.

Divide Salazar's 1,900 gigawatts by 0.0036 and the result is 528,000 windmills. I threw in some extra turbines because on any given day some of these gadgets will break down.

[reaganaut1]

Later in the article McTague writes that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there are 1.5 trillion barrels of shale oil in the Eocene Green River Formation in Colorado", but the Interior Department is not granting any more R&D leases.

[Da Coyote]

Ask the Salazar-loon do define a “watt”.

Director of energy?

The next thing you’ll be telling me is that a “Community Organizer” who hides his grades and cannot talk without help is our president.

[muawiyah]

Salazar is clearly severely mentally ill, but then again so are virtually all of Obama’s appointees.

[I_Like_Spam]

Thankfully we’re in a recession now, so that energy consumption is staying relatively low.

I think we’re going to have real problems if there is an economic recovery.

[yankeedame]

...to have "an open and honest conversation" about it with the American people.

Ha! He wouldn't dare.

[saganite]

“I threw in some extra turbines because on any given day some of these gadgets will break down”.

There will need to be more than “a few extra” windmills thrown in because at their most efficient they produce at about 30% of installed capacity. Some windmill farms don’t even approach that lofty percentage. Try tripling that amount to say, 1.5 million wind turbines and you’ll be in the ballpark. It won’t ever happen though. The transmission of the electricity to the market will require so many transmission lines the US will look like spaghetti.

[mulligan]

Why would expect stupid people to do sensible thinking, like drilling for more oil to reduce our dependence on foreign sources.

[Rumplemeyer]

Salazar is doing exactly what the Environmental Lobby told him to do, the lobby is funded by OPEC.

So much for saving the planet.

[cgbg]

You will probably like my tagline.

[Foolsgold]

This is still what we must do, send letters letting your congress people know how you feel

The new congress will kill the newly approved offshore drilling bill and it will go away so we need to get back to pushing all involved understand that we cannot be dependent on foreign oil and allow a windfall tax on the oil companies. (I got a letter from Boxer and she took pride in the fact that she sponsored that bill)

Save the offshore drilling and Help Sarah open anwr
Its all about National Defense, Drill for Oil Now

[reaganaut1]

This is still what we must do, send letters letting your congress people know how you feel.

For some Freepers that may be worthwhile, but I am represented (not!) by Ed Markey of Massachusetts!

[Foolsgold]

I have Boxer and notsofeinstein, Plus Susan Davis, But letters are letters

[kitchen]

The transmission of the electricity to the market will require so many transmission lines the US will look like spaghetti.

How many tons of copper are required per megawatt? Where are the new copper mines coming on line to produce these quantities? I'm sure Salazar (commie, Mexico) is fast-tracking the mining permits even as we speak.