Posted on 07/30/2006 8:06:15 PM PDT by tomzz
The one question I don't seem to be able to come up with any sort of an answer for regarding this "War on Terror" is how Ike and FDR would have managed to fight WWII while buying oil from Adolf Hitler for $75 a barrel and up.
Moreover, if even a third of what I read is true, then even discounting the likelihood of money we spend on oil coming back to us in the form of aircraft crashing into our buildings, the United States should very definitely not be importing oil. If anything we should be exporting it. If a third of what you read is true, then the US has several different potential oil resources, any one of which should suffice for all our needs well beyond any point at which we cease using oil as a fuel.
The question is, how do you get from here to there, and the answer is the same as the answer to "How do I quit smoking?" Basically you just stop.
What I would propose would mess us up about as badly as we were messed up during WWII for somewhere between six months and two years, probably more like a year, but it would put every terrorist regime on Earth totally out of business since oil is 100% fungible and the price of oil would collapse worldwide. It could only be done with a total and permanent ban, so that OPEC could not simply drop prices to ten dollars a barrel for a year until the problem went away.
Such a policy would likely have to include:
Like I say, I can't picture Ike et. al. trying to fight Hitler while buying oil from him.
According to Senator Hugh Chance of Colorado, he asked a Richfield Oil executive how much crude oil was in Alaska's North Slope. The oil man said there was as much oil there as in all of Saudi Arabia. So why does our government insist on relying on forgeign oil when we have enough to supply all of America for 200 years? Ask your Congressmen. Ask your Senator.
Why not ban ALL vacations. The time could ba better spent at our jobs increasing productivity.
Take your tin foil hat off. Why don't we use ALL the middleast's oil now, so 25 years from now they will back to riding camels across the desert.
The more we use, the sooner this will happen. Why stretch it out for 50 or 75 years by letting them swim in it?
There is no need to tap our 500 year supply of coal for oil until we have to.
Because we don't - and didn't in 1966, which would've been the last time anyone asked someone from Richfield Oil that question.
Plus we have enough crude anyway. We have more crude than the entire Middle-East. We have over a trillion barrels in shale oil, and uncounted amounts in our continental shelf. It would take some time and work to begin pumping it, but remove the restrictions, and increase demand for domestic oil and the problem would be solve itself. Plus we would not ban oil from Canada, as they are our friend. Nuclear could replace heating oil, and anything else that can be done with electricity. Hybrids could reduce the demand as well. We have the technology, with a little work we could be completely independent excepting Canada.
Something has to be done. The average joe is getting reamed, and his money is going to fund the next 9/11. I don't see the terrorists ever growing corn in the desert, so ethanol is all right by me.
This is the way of government
The only possible and realistic 'alternative' to oil would be natural gas, like burns in stoves and water heaters. Its a clean burning fuel. Like oil, the government has badly restricted it and helped us get addicted to gasoline.
ethanol is a joke. It produces cancer-causing agents. Its expensive, requires masive subsidies. Its 1/3 less powerful than gasoline. Ethonal is nothing more than badly spent money by government.
Absolutely. I would not buy a product from any company that did a tenth of what most of these oil producing nations have done. Let them see if their psycho buddies can fill the gap that will occur when the US kicks petrol. They hate us? Cool. Have a massive loss in sales, and compete with the new product that American ingenuity produces. It's chic to hate America. They can have their chic and pay a massive price for it.
Same arguments were made by the whale oil people about crude way back in the day. And by the buggy whip manufacturers about cars, for that matter.
Reamed? Not really, just paying the inflation adjusted price for fuel from 1980.
A bunch of that money is going to develop production in Canada and right here at home, too. You can't drop the price of crude oil without undercutting the domestic effort as well.
It takes about 4.5 million to bring one of these wells (Middle Bakken Formation, Williston Basin, ND/MT) on line, from spud to production.
At $10/bbl, short of serious deflation across the board, that just won't happen.
The whole system relies on American wealth. The sell it cheaper at home and to China, they sell it to us higher because we can afford it. If we pulled out, the whole OPEC/Axis of evil cartels would collapse.
and they made the same arguments for MTBE as they now do for ethanol
Yeah, they'd have to sell something else to fund their bomb making.
The price went from an (inflation corrected) low for the century to a price which reflects better the supply/demand situation. Part of the supply problem was caused by the persistent cheap prices. Virtually every other commodity increased in price, except food which is heavily subsidized.
The prices you decry are what makes the current rash of alternative energy development possible, in an economic sense. The money/financial incentive has to come from somewhere.
Sure you can. Get a job in the ethanol industry.
Until folks are drilling for ethanol, that won't do me any good. I am a geologist.
I'm not sure how you'll keep the price of oil over $30 once there is competition.Will the new fuels be economical at a $30/bbl equivalent?
Even if you could stop using oil for a motor fuel tomorrow, it is still used for lubrication and the chemical base for everything from plastics to asphalt. It won't go away.
By all means, develop alternatives, they will augment oil as a fuel, but they won't replace it in the short term.
While that will cause price fluctuations, those are normal in the industry, anyway.
Oil was on the way up before Chavez started his bit and things really got going in the mid-east, primarily due to demand in Asia increasing, demand which was not foreseen by the EIA in the late '90s when they forecast a worldwide glut of oil. That set up the current price cycle.
Hurricane damage, some still not repaired, contributed, and geopolitical consideratons added too.
It has been a 'perfect storm' of market factors, all contributing to the price, but what you pay at the pump is paying for ethanol additives as MTBE is being phased out, in addition to the rest.
The changes needed to make the former infrastructure work with a hygroscopic additive, coupled with importing some of that additive, (and the tarrfis on that) all add to the cost at the pump.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1674915/posts
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.