Posted on 01/20/2016 9:01:20 PM PST by artichokegrower
The U.S. Navy will formally deploy its so-called “Great Green Fleet†on Wednesday, sending warships to sea on biofuels even though oil prices have dropped 70 percent since congressional Republicans first criticized the high cost of alternative fuels.
(Excerpt) Read more at gcaptain.com ...
I used to work across the street from the South San Francisco company that makes this biofuel and it costs $150 per gallon.
yes you read that correctly.
The company is named Solazyme and it is owned by big time donors to Obama.
the US Navy bought something like over 1 billion dollars of this bio fuel and word is that it screws engines up hugely.
Since we’re killing the planet, why have a Navy at all? /s
“it screws engines up hugely.”
Well of course! Does anyone think the Obamatollah actually wants a Navy ship to be able to overtake a Muslim pirate boat and sink it? /s
Wonder if those patrol boats were using bio-fuel when their engines failed and they had to surrender to the Iranians?
Did the USN boats captured by the Iranians run on veggie oil? Their diesel range is 300+ miles. The transit was 200 miles. The latest story out of the USN was they had to stop mid-way for refueling. Why? Or did the “organic green multi-fuel-plexi-adapter-adapter kit” malf again?
Going to Diesel engines using corn oil. lol
Ping
DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP
Bob Lonsberry©2016
The account of two U. S. Navy vessels being seized by the Iranian navy earlier this week seems completely implausible.
No part of it makes any sense.
The story is that two river patrol boats – bristling modern-day incarnations of the Vietnam swift boats – were navigating south from Kuwait to Bahrain. At some point, via some means, the two boats, with their contingent of five sailors each, surrendered to the Iranians.
Two accounts have been offered as to how that happened. The first was that one of the vessels lost its engine and that they both then drifted into Iranian waters. The other was that the two boats had been operating fine, but inadvertently navigated into Iranian territory.
Simply put, they got lost.
Neither account seems possible.
First off, if one of the boats broke down, and the sailor aboard trained to tend the engine couldn’t fix it, the other boat would merely take it in tow and they would proceed on their way. That is not a novel maritime undertaking.
The second scenario – oops, we got lost – is even less likely. It turns out that navigation and navigation equipment are kind of a high priority for the Navy. Boats don’t get lost. Highly technical navigation equipment on both boats would have told crew members exactly where they were.
And in the unlikely event that both boats lost all electronic navigational equipment, and the compasses lost track of magnetic north, there is the simple fact that sailing from Kuwait to Bahrain pretty much involves nothing more complex than keeping the shore on your starboard side. And should you lose sight of shore, and can remember that the map has safety to the west and danger to the east, you’d think that the position of the sun in the sky or the fact that prevailing winds in the Persian Gulf in the winter are northwesterly, would somehow have allowed our sailors to find the Saudi shoreline instead of Iranian waters.
And all of that presumes that these two boats were operating alone in the open seas, which they presumably were not. There is, in fact, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle group operating in the Persian Gulf.
The USS Harry S Truman owns the Persian Gulf these days, and the significant American military presence in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – lands immediately proximate to the waters where our sailors were operating – makes us the biggest dog on the block.
And we’ve got radar and helicopters and airplanes and stuff like that.
And if an American vessel breaks down at sea, or strays from course, under those operational conditions, there are a lot of American assets that would both notice the problem and be able to offer relief.
Yet no one did.
We’re supposed to believe nobody radioed a couple of inexplicably lost boats to ask where they were going? When one of them supposedly broke down, a carrier battle group had no means to come to their assistance?
That makes no sense.
It’s completely unbelievable.
So is the apparent conduct of the sailors in the face of a supposed challenge by the Iranian military.
If one of the vessels was disabled, as is claimed, and hostile craft are approaching, bringing with them the prospect of capture and captivity, don’t you put all 10 sailors on the able boat, sink the disabled boat, and race the bad guys back to international waters?
From the Iranian video, it looks like two or three bass boats and four guys in mismatched uniforms, with a couple of AK’s, captured two far-larger and better-armed American boats, both of which were bristling with mounted machine guns.
Here’s a fact: When you’re kneeling on the deck of your own boat, with your hands clasped behind your head, and some guy’s shouting at you in terrorist language, things didn’t go right.
And yet, that’s exactly what supposedly happened here. Ten American sailors, successors to Captain James Lawrence, are on their knees next to their unfired guns, in the face of a smaller and less well-armed opponent – with little American flags snapping in the breeze.
This is not the stuff of Commodore Perry and Admiral Farragut.
And you wonder whose call it was.
How far up the chain of command did they have to go to find the cowardly lion who ordered this genuflection before a bunch of savages? Did this get bounced all the way to the Pentagon, or the Situation Room? Which secretary of what made the decision not to put a squadron of naval aviators above those two boats to keep the camel jockeys at bay?
It is shameful, a worldwide embarrassment for the nation and the Navy.
And it is topped off by an obsequious videotaped apology, and pictures of our sailors, captive in hostile hands, the female with a towel over her head.
The President can ignore this.
But we can’t.
We got pantsed. We got humiliated. We showed either weakness or incompetence. And unfortunately either one only invites aggression against us.
It is inconceivable that you could find 10 Americans willing to surrender themselves and their equipment without a fight. It is not plausible that any young man or woman entering into the naval service would willingly kneel on the deck of a combat-capable ship.
Somebody told them to give up.
And that somebody, and the philosophy he represents, will be the death of us.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2016
Biofuels? Isn’t whale oil a biofuel?
At $149 per gallon.
EXCELLENT question..!
Forced requirement from a muslim CINC.
Well as a reserve option it ought to be tested. After all, Rudolf Diesel designed his engine to run on peanut oil.
I am all for supporting efforts to keep the world clean. But you have to balance that with navy that is effective in delivering on their mission first. If these ships will be able to defend the US, be green, and cost effective, then it doesn’t bother eme.
But if the ship cannot keep up with the fleet because of the availability of bio fuel at a distance...then it’s a waste of money.
Because the 0bama regime hates the US Navy.
Navy Takes Biofuels Campaign Into Uncharted Waters
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2011/January/Pages/NavyTakesBiofuelsIntoUnchartedWaters.aspx
January 2011
Since 2006, the Defense Logistics Agency has procured more than 36 million gallons of ethanol-and-petroleum blends for the military. The Navy in September ordered an additional 150,000 gallons of algae-based fuel from San Francisco company Solazyme. The new agreement is seven times the size of the initial 20,000-gallon contract awarded last year. The Navy is paying big bucks for these fuels.
The service consumes an average of 1.2 billion gallons of petroleum each year at a cost of $3 billion — about $2.50 per gallon. The service paid Solazyme $8.5 million to provide just 20,000 gallons of algae-based fuel —
$425 per gallon.
At that rate, it would cost the Navy some $142.8 billion for the 8 million barrels of biofuel needed to meet its 2020 goal.
Camelina-based fuel is a bit cheaper but still more expensive than petroleum. In September 2009 the DLA’s defense energy support center paid Montana’s Sustainable Oils $2.7 million for 40,000 gallons of camelina-based fuel. That comes to about $67.50 per gallon.
At those prices, alternative fuels will never be commercially viable. The program should be renamed the “small green fuel company welfare program.”
Ouch.
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