Posted on 07/15/2008 8:09:31 PM PDT by Kaslin
Following are the remarks President Bush made at Tuesday's White House news conference about energy issues.
To help address the pressure on gasoline prices my administration took action this week to clear the way for offshore exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf. It's what's called OCS. Congress has restricted access to key parts of the OCS since the early 1980s; I've called on Congress to remove the ban. There was also an executive prohibition on offshore exploration. So yesterday, I issued a memorandum to lift this executive prohibition.
With this action, the executive branch's restrictions have been removed, and this means that the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the U.S. Congress. Bringing OCS resources online is going to take time, which means that the need for congressional action is urgent. The sooner Congress lifts the ban, the sooner we can get these resources from the ocean floor to refineries, to the gas pump.
Democratic leaders have been delaying action on offshore exploration and now they have an opportunity to show that they finally heard the frustrations of the American people. They should match the action I have taken, repeal the congressional ban and pass legislation to facilitate responsible offshore exploration.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
This is a bubble just waiting to get popped, but the President and Congress needs to act to drill, drill, drill, plus do everything we can to look for alternatives and things like nuclear plants. That would pop the oil bubble overnight.
Congress will drag their feet until after the election, nothing will change because of those traitors.
Though President Bush was remarkable today.
Loved every minute of it.
Keep on congress.
Pelosi AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
Does anyone have an email for dirty harry
wont let me call or email him if not from his district
DRILL OR GET OFF THE HILL!!
Contact your Congress critters to let them know that you are tired of high gas prices.
Here are some interesting ideas:
Four Ways to Solve the Energy Crisis
Except for government mandating flex-fuel cars - if it can be done so cheaply, car manufacturers could just start designing them that way to get competitive advantage - there is not much wrong with these ideas.
Well done, Mr. President. Even as recently as two years ago, the public might not have been interested in this issue, but you can be sure they are now!
Congress has really screwed up the alternative fuels market by putting all our eggs in the corn derived fuels basket. There are so many other plants, like sugar cane, which was mentioned in the article, which could be used to create alternative fuels. Research isn't necessarily being done on them, because the Agriculture lobby has a stranglehold on the ethanol market.
Sugar cane used to be grown in the Deep South. I see no reason why it can't be again. If the farmers think there is money it it, believe me, they'll grow it! And using sugar cane won't screw up the prices for food, because they won't be using something that everyone eats everyday, to burn in automobiles. For that matter, I'd love to see someone do some research to see if kudzu would make a good alternative fuel. That stuff grows like wildfire, and EVERYWHERE in the South! I do remember the President talking about switchgrass once, in the context of alternative fuels, and I believe it grows pretty quickly, too, and in soil that isn't the greatest. Let use some areas for growing this stuff that can't be used for food crops, without otherwise heavy amending of the soil.
Just one problem in choosing ‘magic’ grass for biofuel / ethanol is to get the highest oil content from the plant, be it kudzu, jatropha, mustard seed, rapeseed, kelp / seaweed etc., even if genetically modified to increase oil yield.
The bigger problems are that derived ethanol in general is not really that efficient or ‘clean’, even compared to either methanol or butanol, and even bigger problem is what we have found with corn ethanol - the scale. Once the ‘crop’ starts being used as biofuel, on a large scale it begins to crowd out other ‘crops’ as growers switch to more profitable ‘crop’, unless we grow it in Africa somewhere, which is what one New Zealand company is trying to do now due to lower labor cost which is the driving factor in final cost. Think of it as growing coca in South America or poppies in Asia. Another problem for growing biofuels is that it’s horizontal and not vertical - on a large enough scale it WILL require large swaths of land that will not be “renewable” fast enough, and not without damaging the soil for other uses, like food. In the end, biofuel becomes almost as expensive as gasoline, if for no other reason than “because it can” - it’s just an additive, not a replacement. It’s like a ‘wind energy’ of portable / car fuel, a relatively small percentage of “feel-good” but not really economic energy.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/biofuel/index?tab=articles
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/biofuels/index?tab=articles
Just think how much Brazil and their sugar ethanol was touted before our corn ethanol craze started on a large scale. Yet Brazil is so happy to have found large oil field off its coast and Petrobras is expecting to contract our oil companies to drill, drill, drill. Brazil is not much in news anymore.
The point is, we really don’t need to ‘create’ these ‘new’ fuels. Synthetic fuels from coal or ‘black liquor’ are more efficient and cheap, and there are huge quantities of it in US alone. If we can build nuclear plants to offload electric energy derived from coal and some oil, more will be available for portable fuel. There are also trillions of cubits of frozen methane which can be developed and used for gas. Even solar could later be used, but only for storage / capacitors and batteries because of its unpredictability and unreliability.
But we DO need to find and drill for more oil, because clearly gasoline is what is going to be used for the foreseeable future.
Re electric, you might enjoy this thread :
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2039639/posts
Re nukes, I think we should follow John F. Kerry’s 2004 campaign advice and “learn from France” - they reportedly use nukes for around 80% of their electric energy, while we do for only about 20%.
Yes, we need to drill more, drill everywhere including here and drill now, in places that we already know have oil while we are looking for more.
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