Aug

2

Continuing our Dependence on Oil

≡ Category: Environment, Politics, What?? | ≅ Leave a Comment

Earlier, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., told FOX News: “Many of us speaking on the floor today, including the Republican leadership, believe the president of the United States should call this congress back into session immediately under Article II of the Constitution, and demand that this Congress deal with the issue of energy independence.”

Energy independence? Really? I vote that we start working to declare our energy independence as well – independence from our need for fossil fuels, independence from the oil companies whose only view of the future is one that keeps us a slave to oil drilling. There are alternative energy sources that are renewable. The biggest argument against them is that they ‘cost too much money to produce’ – but they only cost too much money to produce because they are not yet the standard. Oil is only cheaper -today- because everything is geared toward producing and using oil, and the proposals before Congress would do nothing but keep us stuck in a future where we rely on oil. This isn’t the time to be thinking in terms of dependence on FOREIGN OIL – we need to be thinking in terms of independence from any limited resource energy source.

The whole farce yesterday hinged on one cry – Dems are blocking lower gas prices.

“I just saw one of the Democrats interviewed on television. The question was, if oil was $10 a gallon and you knew exactly where to get it in Alaska or on the coast, would you drill there, and there was no answer,” House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, of Missouri, said before a last-minute gathering before reporters late Friday.

What Blunt left out was the fact that IF you knew exactly where to get it, and the Congress voted to allow you to get it TODAY, you would not see a single barrel of it for 10-12 years, and it would not affect the price at the gas pumps until 2030. And I’m not getting my figures from some flaky left-wing hippie-pinko conspiracy site. Those are from a report released by the Energy Information Administration in the Annual Energy Outlook Analysis for 2007. The report included a projected timeline of the effects that lifting offshore drilling restrictions in the Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf regions would have on US oil production. The results:

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

The fact is that we missed the boat on this one 40+ years ago after the oil crisis of the 1970s. That’s when we should have turned the lion’s share of our resources to finding and developing ways of using alternative energy sources instead of making fun of those who advocated for the same. Looking for ways to prop up our dependency on oil by digging more holes in the ground is a short-sighted solution. It’s rather like an addict declaring freedom from his pusher by planting his own poppies. In a few years, he’ll have cheaper heroin, but he’ll still be a slave to his addiction.




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