Abundance of Oil
"This morning (Thursday, Sept. 1), he [Pres. George Bush] went on ABC News and asked us all to “conserve” energy use. This is a Jimmy Carter approach. We don’t need to conserve, we need to produce, produce lots more oil so our economy can grow and we can be free of Saudi crude.
Our failure to produce more and be more free, our energy problem, is almost entirely political. Which means it can be fixed politically – mostly by getting the EPA out of the way.
An obvious requirement for energy independence would be to increase our refining capacity – that is, build more oil refineries. There hasn’t been a single new refinery built in the US in 30 years. One reason is that it has to comply with a half million federal environmental regulations – every year.
There’s a brainless buffoon in the Senate from Florida named Bill Nelson who actually called today for a repeat of Richard Nixon’s disastrous freeze on gas prices – and swore he would prevent any attempt to drill for oil off Florida’s coast.
The way to get around such folk and tap into the immense oil reserves off the coasts of California, Georgia, and Florida is for the President to press Congress to eliminate the federal prohibition to extract oil and gas from 80% of the nation’s coast, and to give the states most of the federal royalty money for continental shelf production.
The prospect of billions of dollars in oil royalties for their states will sweep away the concerns of many a Congressman and Senator.
Then my personal fantasy: for Mr. Bush in his next major media interview to announce: “We’re going to drill ANWR. We’re going to get as much oil out of Alaska as we can because our economy is more important than caribou. Deal with it.”
Beyond all of this has to be the public realization that we are not “running out of oil,” that it is not true that America has “only three percent of the world’s oil” while consuming a quarter of its production. There has got to be a widespread recognition that America has far, far more oil than Saudi Arabia, and combined with western Canada far, far more oil than all of the Middle East.
The Green River Formation in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado contains 1.2 trillion (with a t) barrels of oil in deposits known as oil shale. The extraction and refining costs from oil shale are rapidly becoming commercially viable. A scientist friend of mine, for example, has developed a process he estimates could produce, from one particular deposit, five million barrels a day, plus one million barrels of distilled water and 100 % of the world’s production of aluminum for 50 years – with a 22% ROI at an oil price of $45 a barrel.
The Athabaska and Peace River Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada contain well over a trillion barrels – and again, extraction costs are dropping. There are scores of billions of barrels more in the western US.
But try to get a drop of any of it out of the ground and into your gas tank and the environmentalists go berserk. They’ll deluge Congress with demands for blocking legislation, the EPA for blocking regulations, and the courts with every imaginable lawsuit to prevent it.
They’ll also do their best to hamstring and slow down reconstruction along the obliterated Gulf Coast.
So – while you can’t blame anyone for a natural disaster like Katrina, if you feel like screaming in rage next time you fill up your car’s gas tank and need some folks to blame: choose the enviros. Get them out of the way and not only will that tankful cost so much less, but it will be gas that America produced itself."
---To The Point, Dr. Jack Wheeler
Dr. Wheeler also says: "If you are considering sending a contribution or volunteering for Katrina disaster relief, I recommend Southern Baptist Disaster Relief . Their toll-free number is 1-888-571-5895."
Our failure to produce more and be more free, our energy problem, is almost entirely political. Which means it can be fixed politically – mostly by getting the EPA out of the way.
An obvious requirement for energy independence would be to increase our refining capacity – that is, build more oil refineries. There hasn’t been a single new refinery built in the US in 30 years. One reason is that it has to comply with a half million federal environmental regulations – every year.
There’s a brainless buffoon in the Senate from Florida named Bill Nelson who actually called today for a repeat of Richard Nixon’s disastrous freeze on gas prices – and swore he would prevent any attempt to drill for oil off Florida’s coast.
The way to get around such folk and tap into the immense oil reserves off the coasts of California, Georgia, and Florida is for the President to press Congress to eliminate the federal prohibition to extract oil and gas from 80% of the nation’s coast, and to give the states most of the federal royalty money for continental shelf production.
The prospect of billions of dollars in oil royalties for their states will sweep away the concerns of many a Congressman and Senator.
Then my personal fantasy: for Mr. Bush in his next major media interview to announce: “We’re going to drill ANWR. We’re going to get as much oil out of Alaska as we can because our economy is more important than caribou. Deal with it.”
Beyond all of this has to be the public realization that we are not “running out of oil,” that it is not true that America has “only three percent of the world’s oil” while consuming a quarter of its production. There has got to be a widespread recognition that America has far, far more oil than Saudi Arabia, and combined with western Canada far, far more oil than all of the Middle East.
The Green River Formation in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado contains 1.2 trillion (with a t) barrels of oil in deposits known as oil shale. The extraction and refining costs from oil shale are rapidly becoming commercially viable. A scientist friend of mine, for example, has developed a process he estimates could produce, from one particular deposit, five million barrels a day, plus one million barrels of distilled water and 100 % of the world’s production of aluminum for 50 years – with a 22% ROI at an oil price of $45 a barrel.
The Athabaska and Peace River Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada contain well over a trillion barrels – and again, extraction costs are dropping. There are scores of billions of barrels more in the western US.
But try to get a drop of any of it out of the ground and into your gas tank and the environmentalists go berserk. They’ll deluge Congress with demands for blocking legislation, the EPA for blocking regulations, and the courts with every imaginable lawsuit to prevent it.
They’ll also do their best to hamstring and slow down reconstruction along the obliterated Gulf Coast.
So – while you can’t blame anyone for a natural disaster like Katrina, if you feel like screaming in rage next time you fill up your car’s gas tank and need some folks to blame: choose the enviros. Get them out of the way and not only will that tankful cost so much less, but it will be gas that America produced itself."
---To The Point, Dr. Jack Wheeler
Dr. Wheeler also says: "If you are considering sending a contribution or volunteering for Katrina disaster relief, I recommend Southern Baptist Disaster Relief . Their toll-free number is 1-888-571-5895."
posted by HeavyHanded at
8:50 PM
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