Posted on 07/29/2007 8:11:31 AM PDT by NRG1973
The choice is ours: Big Oil or Chavez?
As we wait for emerging energy forms to develop, we should create policies that support oil companies
In the coming century, the world will transition from cars that run on liquid fuels to cars that run on something else, perhaps electricity or hydrogen. Until then, we have a choice. Either support the "Big Oil" companies that are SEC and IRS regulated, traded on the major stock exchanges, contribute to our economy and national security, and whose employees are our neighbors, or butt into energy myths and stand by idly (gleefully?) while Hugo Chavez ejects "Big Oil" from Venezuela.
The American public is severely misinformed about energy. A few energy myths:
• American energy independence is possible. • "Big Oil" companies control gasoline prices. • "Big Oil" companies make obscene profits. • We are running out of fossil energy (oil, natural gas and coal). • There are renewable (clean) alternatives to oil, natural gas and coal available today. • People will pay more for clean energy. • The oil industry is a major polluter today. • Energy efficiency and conservation can solve the problem.
Here are a few energy realities.
• Political spin has little basis in energy reality; talk about energy independence is misleading and naive. America is energy interdependent for the foreseeable future and policies should be made accordingly. • The cost to transition the transportation infrastructure to nonliquid energies is in the trillions of dollars and will take many decades, even if we implemented a full-scale commitment today. • Big Oil companies combined control less than 10 percent of the world's conventional oil reserves. So "Big Oil" cannot control gasoline prices. • U.S. political leaders beat up on Big Oil with unfounded rhetoric about obscene profits. Big Oil companies, even in the past few "obscene profit years" have typically made less than 10 percent profit annually, which is not very good relative to many other industries. A healthy industry does not exhibit the kind of layoffs and mergers that continue to characterize the U.S. petroleum industry. • Oil, natural gas and coal provide 86 percent of global energy. Consumers must be prepared to pay for cleaner forms of fossil energy, such as electricity from gasified coal plants that are ready to sequester carbon dioxide emissions underground, and unconventional oil and gas reserves whose exploitation demands more expensive technology. • Because of its massive pursuit of coal-based power, China must be a major part of any global strategies to reduce carbon emissions.
Energy can do many things, but it cannot be renewed. Sources of heat and motion that seem sustainable on a human time scale, such as wind, solar and geothermal, supply only around 1 percent of the world's energy.
Research on solar energy makes eminent sense and should be embraced; it will be needed later this century. Wind, geothermal, tidal and hydro make sense as regional supplements. Nuclear energy is a viable, scalable, clean alternative for power generation. Biofuels require more research; currently the cost in soil, water and energy to convert a carbohydrate into a hydrocarbon is simply too great.
Since the dawn of energy as a commodity, people have made choices based largely on price. There is no sign that will change, regardless of how we respond to clean energy polls; when the price of gasoline, heating fuel or electricity rise, the consumer yelps.
Combustion of any fuel produces emissions; everyone who drives a car, turns on a light or heats and cools a home is likely combusting fuel. Emissions standards, oil and gas operations and coal mining practices have and should continue to improve.
We can and must become more efficient in how we use and save energy; it is a significant part of the solution. But global demand will continue to grow; there are simply too many people consuming and modernizing and we can't "save" our way around the problem.
While emerging energy forms take shape, we still need to run the planes, trains and automobiles of the modern era. Until we define and can produce at scale the next major transportation fuel, we owe it to ourselves to develop national energy policy with a mind toward supporting the major oil companies that provide the energy required for a healthy economy, which is in turn required for a healthy environment. To do otherwise would put control of oil, and global security, in the hands of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and a few countries with major reserves of conventional oil.
The choice is ours.
The answer from the moonbat left is easy....It’s Chavez by a wide margin. That way not only to we get to punish big oil but we get an up and comming socialist dictator hero to worship. After all, Castro as wonderful and true a hero as the left could ever want isn’t going to be around for ever.
The Democrats will continue to play the evil-oil card for all they are worth, because it has worked so well for them, and the media will continue to eagerly push the Communist line and shut out the truth.
They are the ones chiefly at fault for our current mess, but I would also fault President Bush for not pushing more strongly for his sensible energy plan. He had a majority in congress for six years, but he never twisted any arms or bothered to explain why it was so important that we should open the north slope for drilling and why we should ease the crippling regulations on refineries. He let Lincoln Chaffee kill drilling in Alaska by one vote, and then gave him money for his primary campaign. It was not skillfully handled.
Also, someone should point out that “Big Oil” is no longer big oil. Even ExxonMobil is dwarfed by the state controlled oil companies in Russia and elsewhere around the world. The Seven Sisters, now sadly reduced, no longer have more than a small piece of the oil market. And that is rapidly decreasing, even while the Democrats play political games and the President shrugs.
Increased CO2 is a plus for plant growth, and thus food production. We should not discourage it.
“..electricity or hydrogen..”
Proper containment of hydrogen at high pressure is a bitch - smallest known molecule in the universe.
That is incorrect. We have vast stores of energy in this country via coal, shale oil, and nuclear power which could provide every watt we need if it were politically acceptable. The hardcore leftists are also the hardcore environmentalists and oppose every effort for us to achieve energy independence. They want this country to fail. That is their objective.
The real beauty of nuclear power is that it can generate the electricity we need and using "breeder reactors" the fuel available can be measured in hundreds of years. The one thing that shale oil and coal to liquid hydrocarbons need is a lot of heat to extract the hydrocarbons and or convert them to liquid hydrocarbons. Nuclear power can provide this heat. Nuclear, coal, and shale oil energy can give us independence.
We do not have an energy problem we have a political problem.
It was a good article from the writer. He got my attention. Which means I need to see another article before I write him off as a blind squirrel.
Now he should write an article about how we should drill ANWR, liquify coal and build a few nuke plants.
That will keep me coming back for more.
Hey Houston Chronicle, This is how you sell newspapers.
You mean THIS moonbat left...
Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations.
Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott! by Jeff Cohen
[published on Monday, May 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org]
No, it is a BITCH AND A HALF. liquid hydrogen take cyrogenic tanks to hold it and it can not hold it forever. Just think about a closed parking garage with hundreds of cars "leaking" a little hydrogen into the air. This is not good. If you use high pressure gaseous hydrogen you are talking about a tank of gas under several thousand pounds per square inch of pressure. Not good, not good at all!!!!Also, due to hydrogen embrittlement you can not use high carbon steels as a containment vessel. Unless they solve the problem of storage via metal hydrides hydrogen will never be a source of power for cars and trucks.
Ofcourse. Their official stance is "anyone but Bush".
Yes, indeed. They will pay and pay.
Any place which has a “Citgo” sign out front isn’t any place I’d even stop to take a leak, much less purchase ANYTHING.
Remember the Hindenberg!
No wait, lets all grow our own food, build our own houses and cars and machines, kiss off the phone and communications industries, do our own medical care, make our own antibiotics, shovel our own manure from all the low carbon footprint horses, etc., etc., etc. It was such a big success in China during the “Giant Leap Forward” wasn’t it? Everybody can make steel in their own back yards.
That’ll make everything more efficient and “environmentally “green” and correct won’t it?
“Big Oil”? It belongs to America, the UK and Western civilization. We found it, we got it out of the ground, we developed it, it belongs to us.
Screw the 3rd world. Their misery is their own damn fault because of their stupid religions, lousy repressive governments and their lousy choices.
I get tired of the rantings over big oil, would we rather the biggest oil co. in the world were somewhere other than the USA so we could be sending all this money overseas.
I’m not even going to him them the thrill of a hit on their web site. From your little blurb description I can tell there a bunch of unhinged moonbats. And here I thought I was writing a little tounge and cheek. It just goes to show no matter how absurd you try and make the left sound with parody they can always top us with their actions.
It is a great article.
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