Iran's Oil Bluff Shows Energy Security Is Found In Freedom From Oil, Not In Keystone XL

Switchboard, from NRDC:

The current threat from Iran to block oil movements through the Strait of Hormuz has some Republicans calling for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring tar sands oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.

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Comments

[Tom from Joisey]

12:40 PM on 12/31/2011

Instead of oil, we can harness the power of unicorns. Or maybe millions of butterflies flapping their wings in unison. Or solar. All about the same.

[ILoveFiction]

01:43 PM on 12/31/2011

Great Scott!! Time travel!

A perfect 19th century comment!

[Robert Lee Harrington]

02:23 PM on 12/31/2011

"Or solar. All about the same.":

TONOPAH SOLAR

PROJECT SUMMARY

Tonopah Solar Energy, LLC, (TSE) a wholly owned subsidiary of SolarReserve, LLC, proposes to construct, own, and operate the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. The project will be a solar generating facility located northwest of Tonopah, Nevada, in Nye County with a nominal net generating capacity of 100 megawatts (MW). When completed, Tonopah Solar Energy’s facility will supply approximately 480,000 megawatt hours annually of clean, renewable electricity – enough to power up to 75,000 homes during peak electricity periods utilizing its innovative energy storage capabilities.

The Cresent Dunes Solar Energy Project will utilize concentrat­ing solar power (CSP) technology, with a central receiver tower and the advanced molten salt system technology from United Technologies Corp. (UTC). If all permits are received by December 2010 as planned, the plant would be available for operation in 2013. The project will help meet the increasing demand for clean, renewable electrical energy in the US and help reduce reliance on fossil fuels and associated greenhouse gas emissions.

http://www.tonopahsolar.com/

http://www.solarreserve.com/project-CrescentDunes.html

http://www.solarreserve.com/technology.html

[OkieMon]

06:29 PM on 12/30/2011

push energy alternatives to fossil fuels as fast as possible....our lives and planet depend upon alternatives....

[sunsetter]

08:35 AM on 12/30/2011

The well intentioned author misses the point entirely and interjects politics into reality. The US has the largest oil, natural gas and coal reserves in the world - per our own government. Politics prevents us from energy independence.

Read it for yourselves. http://205.254.135.7/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/aer.pdf

[schistdigger]

12:06 PM on 12/31/2011

It's a wonder to me that people can't look between the lines & realize that there ARE long-range strategic thinkers. Back in the 60's estimates were made of worldwide oil supplies. projections made of future usage, and realization occurs that the last nation with oil will be the most secure.
All of these facts were widely published in newspapers at the time-. (remember those? made of paper... no ... really PAPER! ) Then suddenly domestic production kinda dries up. Hmmm .... I WONDER why?

[schistdigger]

12:08 PM on 12/31/2011

Just as an interesting aside ... Ya know who is the largest consumer of deisel? U.S. Navy

[mellaguy]

08:09 AM on 12/30/2011

Fred - impressive economics lesson; delete 8 CENTS/gallon!
You should have been around in the 70's when gas "rocketed" to $2,00/gal. AND 2 1/2 hour "gas lines'- but ODD/EVEN solved that! (right).
What happens WHEN, not IF, there is an earthquake in the midwest? "Oh, we're very sturdy and secure for THAT" ... DUH?

We must stop digging up dead dinosaures for our energy. (think of the total process to get IT in your tank)

Robert Lee has it correct - The Sun is Free and Clean.

BTW - WHEN we have an earthquake with a solar farm, all we have is a buncha broken black windows in a field!

Let's exchange the Black Helmets for Yellow Helmets.

[Dallas Dunlap]

08:09 AM on 12/30/2011

Until we transition away from oil, we need to leave Iran alone. Remember that this whole threat to close the Strait of Hormuz has come about because the US is about to impose sanctions that will deprive Iran of its right to sell its own oil.
Iran sees what similar sanctions did to the Saddam Hussein regime and the Iraqi people and they aren't going to let this go by peacefully. If we follow the neoliberal establishment into a general Mideast war, it's entirely possible that Saudi oil production could be destroyed and would take years to recover. Confrontation with Iran is simply stupid and is not in the US national interest.

[anishinabe65]

07:54 AM on 12/30/2011

Folks the biggest war to be fought will not be over oil demands...it will be fought over the need for clean water demands. Protect our aquifer and our great lakes the single largest supply of freshwater on this planet.

[tbmuscg70]

07:38 AM on 12/30/2011

I have always wondered how we would be living if oil and gas had never been discovered. I have no doubt that the great thinkers and tinkerers of the late 1800's would have come up with an alternative to fossil fuels. If not, I guess we would be riding horses or walking.

[analyse this]

12:27 PM on 12/30/2011

The first diesel engine ran on peanut oil. In an alternative reality there would be the vegetable wars with blood and treasure being wasted to protect farms in South America. Different resource, same story- sad to say.

[tbmuscg70]

01:34 PM on 12/30/2011

I toyed with the idea of buying a Lister engine and hooking it to a screw press to press soybeans for the oil. My tractors can be set up to run this oil without a lot of expense. I have plenty of land to grow all the soy beans I need, and I can sell the pressings as animal feed. A complete circle!

[tbmuscg70]

01:35 PM on 12/30/2011

Oh, and the Lister engine can run on soy bean oil as well.

[pinetar]

07:04 AM on 12/30/2011

The Gulf disaster?. the pipelines, the money to Brazil to drill! What more can we endure.!

[pinetar]

07:02 AM on 12/30/2011

Exactly what we need, more boofoo.! More politically caused disruption of our lives and more than ever our freedoms.! I see we MUST purchase these new light bulbs or else?. Not many are aware this LAW was put in place under Bush.! HE MADE NO ATTEMPT TO VETO IT..So?

[BlackbirdHighway]

04:05 AM on 12/30/2011

World production for conventional oil peaked five years ago and has been basically flat for six years now, despite high oil prices. The normal supply-demand equation is broken. We are now starting to experience the post-peak oil world. It is only through unconventional sources making up the slack that we haven't had serious shortages. Those other sources can not keep that up for long.

A huge new oil field was just found in the North Sea, about a billion barrels worth. Is that the answer? No, to keep up with world demand we would have to find 10 of those per year. Instead we are finding one of those every ten years.

We need to transition away from oil very quickly. We have much less time than most people think. Next summer oil is going up to over $4. People are going to be buying electric cars as fast as they can be produced. If you have a gas guzzler, sell it right now while you can still get some money for it.

[Satharians Poems]

01:32 AM on 12/30/2011

Wow this place has super users I am impressed...I don't have a life either it's ok...It's all about lining production companies pockets in Texas..And oil rich barons in the good ole US OF A..Why I am sure Cheney is recharging his second government paid for heart pack just to live long enough to profit from it and his prisons he owns...

[Kazzim Zongo]

10:51 PM on 12/29/2011

Geoengineering is a far more logical response to “global warming” than are efforts to curb CO2 emissions. First of all, geoengineering does not require that our assumption that it is man-made CO2 emissions that are causing the problem be correct. It would work regardless of what was “really” causing global temperatures to rise. Second, there are geoengineering approaches that could cool the earth at a cost of a few billion dollars per year, rather than tens of trillions of dollars per year. And, third, geoengineering does not require that the people of the world surrender their personal and economic freedom.

[Ozonator]

01:32 AM on 12/30/2011

Geoenginee­ring the world will turn the planet faster into an extremist Republican and Christian failed state like Jindalstan and neighboring Mississippi aka Babour-land.

[candy8teen]

04:24 AM on 12/30/2011

Look at this fool another Christian basher . We all know Christian and that F/n Bush is to blame for everything . You nothing but a bigot

[BlackbirdHighway]

03:34 AM on 12/30/2011

Nonsense

[Kazzim Zongo]

03:54 PM on 12/30/2011

Very open minded of you.

[David Weeks]

10:29 PM on 12/29/2011

For over 40 years environmentalists have controlled the political agenda. They twist, they distort, they lie. If they are Obama, they fly tens of thousands of miles on a private 747. But the rest of us must conserve. We cannot get the energy we need from Canada? You guys really had to spin this one hard. To bad your stupididy is harming all of us.

[Ozonator]

01:30 AM on 12/30/2011

We were Ronald Reagan's puppet master and insisted the US military pays $1000/gal for Hummer gasoline in Afghanistan? You are wasting the blah blah if you don't send your resume' to Evil Inhofe or Looter Limbaugh.

[artleads]

09:07 PM on 12/29/2011

Why does anyone think of Canada as a friend and therefore safe source of oil? Has no one observed Canada's growing predation of their environment, with the illness and death of their Native peoples? Canada is no longer on the trajectory of being a quiet, compliant, more civil neighbor. Canada has gotten to be a boisterous brat with homicidal tendencies. It wants to be a dominant oil power, and is gleefully fostering the melting of the Arctic so it can drill for oil there. Canada wants dominance, and if we're not careful it will be pushing us around. Dependence on their oil is NOT the way to go.

[Twelvefootdavis]

11:15 AM on 12/30/2011

You speak like someone who has been up here lots! Let me know your next trip to Fort McMurray. I will meet you at the airport. You need a guide around here as 2 miles from my house begins a 3,500 mile stretch of wilderness...no towns, cell phones, roads, etc. is this the destruction of the environment you speak of? Is this what you have OBSERVED?

Also, explain how producing 0.001% of global CO2 emissions will melt the Arctic? The oilsands could stop all work tomorrow and would have ZERO impact on CO2 levels. The only drilling in the Arctic is by the US companies in Alaska.

[artleads]

02:00 PM on 12/30/2011

Take off your rose-colored glasses. A Chicago-sized (at least) of your boreal forest has disappeared. No effect on global warming? I don't think so. And scientific assessment of Keystone XL is its ability to elevate the parts per million (PPM) of CO2 to 600 PPM. No effect on global warming? You must be dreaming.

[analyse this]

12:36 PM on 12/30/2011

We must include Canada in a new axis of evil, fabricate plots and blame it on them, then invade them on the pretext that their drive to melt the Arctic ice is an existential threat to the world. I have a template we can follow if you're interested.

[artleads]

01:52 PM on 12/30/2011

Canada can redeem itself. As with most crises, it can use the present to be the exemplar that is in line with its heritage, or it can go off to a dark place as it is now doing. But you're right about one thing: its drive to melt the Arctic IS an existential threat to the world.

[chad798]

08:43 PM on 12/29/2011

5 dollar a gallon gas coming this summer if Obama refuses this permit.So with 2 million miles of pipeline in the ground.I say approve it.

[Robert Lee Harrington]

06:04 AM on 12/30/2011

2012 News Predictions: The Stories Of Tomorrow!

4. The Keystone XL Pipeline Is Toast

"Give it up for protesters in 2011....

U.S. President Barack Obama was doubtless looking to cool things off a bit when he posponed a decision until 2013...

.... On November 30, crafty Republicans in the Senate introduced legislation that would force Obama to make a call on the pipeline within 60 days....

This pipeline has already burst. Public opinion, galvanized by the likes of Daryl Hannah and Julia Louis Dreyfus and the usual scenes of police over-responding to protesters has made this pipeline a political deathwish. No one will touch it. And if Obama is pushed to make a decision on it before 2013, expect the whole project to be deemed 'not in the national interest'.

Methinks, they protested too much.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/12/29/2012-news-predictions-stories-newstradamus_n_1168106.html

[Dallas Dunlap]

08:00 AM on 12/30/2011

chad798: If the XL pipeline is approved it won't gave any effect on gasoline prices this summer. There is plenty of gasoline. As of Dec. 16 (per the EIA) the US was EXPORTING 523,000 barrels of gasoline per day.
The pipeline is a multiyear project. The price of gas will be determined by speculators and the decisions of the refining companies as to how much gasoloiine to supply to the American market.