Posted on 11/08/2007 9:42:18 AM PST by neverdem
Edited on 11/08/2007 9:48:34 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Oil is nearly $100 a barrel. Gas may soon reach $4 a gallon. And Americans are being bitten in almost every way imaginable by this insidious oil hydra.
Two billion people in China and India are now eager consumers. They want the cars, gadgets, and lifestyle that Westerners have claimed as a birthright for a half-century. Their growing energy appetites mean that the international petroleum market may remain tight, even if Americans — who use almost twice as much oil per day as China and India put together — cut back on imported energy.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Nah. Just drive them away from the oil wells for a while, suck the wells dry and pull out. The desert will do the rest.
Seriously, we need to develop our coal reserves, go back to nuclear energy for our power plants, drill more wells in the U.S. and restrict or ban the exportation of fossil fuels by oil companies.
The government should also provide tax incentives for the development and production of alternative fuels like ethanol, etc.
Our problem is we are addicted to cheap foreign oil, not that we are addicted to oil. Anything that prices ME Oil higher is a good thing.
Only problem is the Saudis are not stupid. They know full well they can only hold on to their “American Slaves” by feeding their cheap oil addiction. Watch the ME pumps go into over drive to flood the world with cheap oil.
How odd. A VDH article which suggest the government should have been interfering more in the market.
What’s wrong with $4 gasoline forcing the market to adjust? He seems to argue that we shouldn’t have let it get to this point, that we should have forced the market to adjust earlier.
Even now, oil companies are wary of spending money on expensive new wells because they don’t trust the price will stay this high. Ocne they are convinced we won’t end up back at $30 a barrel, they will be able to bring a lot more oil into play.
Meanwhile, we need to build nuclear generating facilities. Nuclear fuel is cheap and abundant, and we get it right here at home. It’s absurd to be using a mobile limited energy source for fixed-location energy needs.
Just relax people. Capitalism works. It will fix this problem just like it always does.
The best thing the Govt could do to help the process is do a top to bottom review of the regulatory process and super streamline the process for new refineries, drop a bunch of the regulation, RD grants etc and othrwise just simply get OUT of the way.
there was something VDH had that I thought was incorrect. The how much it costs to pump it out of the ground; I was under the impression the Saudi’s do it cheaper than anyone else because the have large easy to find fields. Thus historically it’s been easier for them to bottom out the market and when they do that it discourages our producers from producing.
Companies would happily develop alternative energy sources if there was any money in it.
To do so when there was NO money in it would have meant draining tax dollars out of the economy and spending that money in a wasteful and inefficient way.
What wouldn’t have happened over the past 30 years while we spent the money on replacing what was a cheap and abundant oil supply with an expensive alternative? Would we have cut spending on the military to pay for it? Or roads?
We should take 2 months of releasing oil from the SPR, just to see if we can stick the speculators with big losses and scare out the people looking for quick bucks.
The market is not really driving $100 oil, it’s all people buying into a bubble.
Amazing how the only difference between the VDH’s of the world and the most rapid Big Govt Lefty is only what they would have the Govt do for them or do to their enemies for them.
The Constitution allows the government to provide for the common defense. In WWII, the government spent whatever it took to get atomic weapons developed. If we were dealing strictly with an economic problem, I would want the government to stay out. But the Middle East has been a tinderbox for decades. Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, and George W have all had trouble because of the importance of the Middle East -- and that importance comes from our dependence on foreign oil.
I think a case can be made that energy independence is less of an economic matter, and more of a matter of common defense.
Your Mileage May Vary.
Precisely right. Prices like this will bring oil (or equivalents) out of every hole, real or figurative.
The biggest obstacles to the market taking care of this problem quickly (it will fix it eventually, no matter the obstacles) are all regulatory, political and legal.
The quest to get rich is powerful. The closer we get to eliminating ME oil, the faster their pumps will run in order to lower the prices to make replacement expensive - they’ve got nothing else of value.
“Maybe a Silicon Valley genius inventor or entrepreneur will step forward with a breakthrough new energy source.”
Or maybe we’ll just go nuclear and solve 80 percent of our problem. Just a thought.
We have twice as much in hydrocarbon resources in the form of coal and oil shales as Arab OPEC has in the form of crude oil. There are plenty of other sources, many of which have break-even costs at or below the present world price for crude oil.
If the President published a transition plan that allowed for the development of these resources and the capital markets knew they would have a secure investment in funding the conversion plants, it would be self-funding with private money. The plan might mean that anyone wanting to import a barrel of oil would have to bid for an license and the number of barrels would be gradually reduced to zero. It might take 15 years to do this, but the only thing that stops us is the will to do it.
see: Office of the Secy of Defense Clean Fuels Initiative report:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/energy_expo/2005/pdfs/t_s4c.pdf
Anything to oil, Discovery Magazine:
I’m going to change your list a bit:
— Change the law so private companies can drill ANWAR, or any other place where they think they can profitably provide oil.
— streamline regulations and provide insurance backing so private electric utilities can build nuclear plants, or whatever kinds of alternative energy sources can be profitable.
— Remove whatever regulatory impediments exist to electric cars, but otherwise let the private market figure out how to build things better, and give them the opportunity to make money on their hard work and research.
— Remove whatever regulatory restrictions may be in place preventing hydrogen’s adoption. But do NOT spend government money picking Hydrogen over some other possible but unknown solution. Let the market entrepeneurs who are smart figure out what is marketable, profitable and let them fund and reap the rewards.
— If we have to do ANYTHING to interfere, figure out a “tax” which appropriately captures the true cost of using different amounts of energy, so that people are fairly charged for their impact to society of their choices. No special tax incentives for “preferred” choices, government shouldn’t choose winners and losers.
Frankly, you’d be crazy NOT to replace your inefficient oil heater with gas or electric at this point, you don’t need a tax incentive. If you want to spend a little tax money EDUCATING people, go right ahead.
I don’t think government needs to “solve” the problem. They need to support solutions, and get out of the way.
If there is the political will, the means are FULLY available to us to stop handing over all the fruits of our labor over to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, etc.
To your list I would add shale oil as a transitional substitute. The other alternative is to use radical environmentalists as solient green to power our cars and heat our homes!
Legislation and development are two different things my friend.
Recession will remove development money from the developers. ANWR is barely on the development horizon as it is and won’t be at all in a few more years when the pipeline is shut down.
“It’s really not all that intellectually challenging, as your list points out. “
I’m not sure how to take that!
Precisely.
This is not merely an economic matter. This is a national security concern, and a serious one that must be addressed, probably through government/industry cooperation.
Remember how relatively quiet the campaign of 2000 was, before the whole thing landed in the courts, followed by partisan vitriol, the horrors of 9/11, etc.? Looking back, the summer of 2000 seems like a different world.
I remember participating then in a forum on the greatest challenges facing our nation, and I contended then that solving our energy problems should be at the top of the list. Our enemies have the ability to threaten, and perhaps ruin, our economy, our way of life, our national security.
I have contended since 1974 that a so-called energy Manhattan Project was needed, and I haven’t changed my mind.
Leaving something this critical to the marketplace is why we’ve wasted the past 30 years and now face crisis again.
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