"This Is One Emergency We Can't Drill Our Way Out Of"
Las Vegas -- That's the core message of the advertising blitz that T. Boone Pickens announced yesterday in New York. Here's the ad itself. The ad buy will be huge -- $58 million -- and by the time I got here last night, people had already seen it on TV. Some of the media coverage of the Pickens plan has simply emphasized his move into wind, while some coverage has focused on his vision of using wind power to back out natural gas currently used for power, and then using the gas to replace imported oil. Overall, though, the coverage has been intense and overwhelmingly positive.
Pickens says that while oil prices may decline from their current level, they won't go below $100 a barrel -- which makes the idea of driving vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas, currently priced at the equivalent of about $2 a gallon, very attractive if the supply can be generated without spiking the price of natural gas. But since half of the gas we currently burn to heat and cool our houses is wasted, and since U.S. gas reserves and production are both increasing, the gas supply picture looks a good deal brighter than that for oil. And it's cleaner.
Although most of the coverage has been extensive, there is one remarkable exception. Fox News ran only a brief eight-line story that completely buried the Pickens plan and instead featured his prediction about the future price of oil. This is interesting because, in an earlier Fox interview with Pickens, they carefully edited out all of his views on the reality that we can't make a meaningful difference in our situation by more domestic drilling. If you watch only Fox News, you'll never know what the ex-oilman is really saying: That oil isn't the answer.
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Windmills generating electricity are a good idea and can also support plug in hybrids. I am not sure it makes much sense to build them all in the Tornado belt of the central United States, like he says.
Fast Breeder Nuclear power is the cleanest most enviromentally friendly and cost effective energy available on the planet. It can be supplemented by wind, solar and geothermal..forget LNG.... it the same trap as the oil... Russia and Iran are world's big suppliers...its very explosive... great for terrorists by the way.
Takes a leader with knowledge, vision and huevos! Obama and the Sierra Club need to get this one right. Democrats must embrace nuclear and encourage new technologies like recycling fuels.... (turns bombs to light bulbs!)
Breeders reactors are science fiction. The only off the shelf reactor technology is the once through uranium cycle. 25 years of the worlds energy and the Uranium war start. Meanwhile we are left with 1 million years of intractable deadly waste.
Nukes are a boondoggle.
Wind and solar are the fastest cheapest way to replace Nukes, coal and oil in ten years for 1t$. That's less then the subsides for Oil alone.
just curious, just what do we do with the everlasting waste from these plants? put it off to another day I guess.
I agree we need to change drastically, toxic/nuclear waste and the carbon waste are both heinous. I wish I had solutions..
Gee, the fact that Pickens has invested in natural gas doesn't have anything to do with his pushing NG over oil, does it?
And guess what? NG has peaked too.
You future cars are going to be EVs powered by solar.
There are good reasons to use up whatever natural gas we find.
Methane is 20 times the greenhouse gas that co2 is.
Methane is the cleanest fossil fuel.
Burning Methane is far better then letting escape into the atmosphere.
The huge deposits of methane under the oceans has caused mass extinctions in the past. We should burn it up before that happens. Perhaps with CO2 sequestering.
If we convert nukes coal and oil to wind and solar in 10 years for 1T$, we can afford to keep using methane, and phase it out slowly over time. We will need liquid fuels for aircraft, methane can be converted.
See my profile for details and links.
Just to be clear, you're advocating opening more areas to drilling in order to ward off environmental disaster?
Also, if we're going to bite the bullet and spend the money to build up sustainable large scale electrical generation we're going to need to keep using the cheapest fuels available in the mean time to minimize the punch we take. Coal is much cheaper than natural gas for electrical generation, even though gas turbines are much more efficient. Natural Gas Turbines sat idle when natural gas prices ramped up a few years ago.
First of all, there is not yet an emergency. Proof: There are no gas lines. I remember gas lines. I remember stations with signs announcing empty tanks. that was an emergency. This isn't. If political interference with production of oil and other forms of energy continues, there will eventually be an true emergency.
The notion that we cannot help the situation by producing more oil, that is, by drilling is just plain stupid. Greater supplies mean lower prices. There is more proven oil in North America than anywhere on earth including the Middle East. The Canadian Tar Sands hold at least 1.7 Trillion bbls equivalent and the Green River oil shales hold at least another 1.5 Trillion bbls equivalent.
source: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~pisupati/ACSOutreach/Oil_Shale.html The technology now exists to recover these resources.
Yes, but the cost of recovery (energy required) is more than its output. Further, the theory of supply and demand doesn't appear to hold with oil (your lack of gas lines is proof of that); there is sufficient supply to meet demand--though that will not always be the case be it tomorrow or 100 years from now. The point being it's finite and futile, and the cost on this planet of these forms of energy will be the undoing of us all--it's a positive feedback loop.
Wayne Gretzky: "Good hockey players go to where the puck is, great hockey players go to where the puck is going to be".
no gas lines is your proof?
you know -- you can ration by price too
well -- i it's obvious you know nothing about oil
just drill
drill where?
iraq....
oil shale
yeah we can recover some tar sand and maybe even some oil shale
but the production rate will always be very low
Pickens is picking and choosing which facts to use. The wind to electricity is great. The replacement of natural gas electricity generation with renewable sources (wind turbines and photo cells) is great. Moving the natural gas to automobiles is a crock. It is only a partial carbon reduction, and leaves the transportation economy as a consumable hydrocarbon economy, along with needing modified vehicles. Any reduction of imported oil increases our security.
If we put the electricity into electric cars (i.e. Chevy Volt) we can save the natural gas and stop the import of oil. If we replace the oil and coal fired electrical generation we would further reduce CO2 emissions, and mercury emissions, and improve the prospects for global warming. Now that is a more satisfying social outcome.
I watched several clips from CNBC. Pickens is in favor of more drilling; his comments contradict what you wrote several days ago which certainly seemed to imply he was opposed to lifting the ban.
I also didn't like how the only plan he advocates help his wallet. He's investing in wind so we should. He owns lots of natural gas so we should use it.
I thnk we'd get alot more bang for our buck from solar thermal.
He also doesn't even mention how poor the return on energy compressed natural gas is for running cars versus power plants. Going from 60 percent eficiency to 20 percent isn't a move in the right direction.
Finally, anyone who tells me their plan is nonpartisan but reminds me he has been a lifelong Republican (or Democrat) is suspect. He's trying to frame the energy independence solution to one that benefits him and the Republican Party, not the American people.
Robert, you are partially correct. T. Boone Pickens is out for T. Boone Pickens. He wants what will benefit him, irregardless of its impact on the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
Pickens doesn't have a civic, honestly Patriotic, or altruistic bone in his body.
This is all about improving the worth of his own GAS holdings.
It is absolutely ALL ABOUT Picken's SELF-INTEREST.
Nothing more.
I read this week that Pickens has given over $7 MM to charity. He may be a tough SOB but i don't think he's a mean one.
What Pickens doesn't tell you in the ad is that he is personally looking for huge subsides for his windmill farms. Interesting missing fact, eh?
Details:http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/07/boone-pickens-subsidize-my-windmills.html
It wasn't only Fox News that did this.
Larry "Drill, Drill Drill" Kudlow on CNBC also didn't report on the whole "can't drill out way out of it" aspect of his plan at all either.
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