Stop Worrying About World Crude Supplies
Domestic natural gas supplies will replace our need for foreign oil. Independent studies continue to show that America's natural gas reserves are sufficient to meet all of our needs for well over 100 years.
We should protect America's interests by making a national commitment to replacing our need for foreign oil by using our enormous natural gas supplies for every possible use - power, transportation, chemicals, pharma, etc.
Over the past few days there have been contradictory reports regarding the global demand for crude oil and the ability (or willingness) of the world's oil producing countries to supply the stuff.
- The International Energy Agency predicted the world's capacity to produce crude oil will fall by 1.7 million barrels a day this year.
- That same day reports surfaced saying that China, the world's second-largest consumer of energy, had announced it had increased its imports of crude oil by 14 percent in April. China has already entered into supply deals with Brazil, Venezuela, Russia, Iran and is negotiating with Kuwait.
- Reuters reported "global oil refinery throughput will fall 3.1 million barrels per day in the April-June period from the same quarter last year" which has been reflected by dramatically higher prices at the pump. According to Consumer Reports, prices for regular gas jumped from $2.05 to $2.24 before the summer driving season has even begun - a nine percent increase in just two weeks.
- Then the IEA predicted world crude demand this year is expected to contract by 2.6 million barrels a day, or 3%, to 83.2 million barrels a day.
Through the week oil prices bounced between just over $60 per barrel to about $57 per barrel.
Why the relatively narrow trading range? Traders know that both the production and consumption numbers are artificial.
OPEC has had a $75 price target in mind for several months. OPEC nations are wholly dependent on petro-dollars to fund their national budgets and they must find the proper balance between price and production to generate enough money to keep their populations happy.
On the consumption side, China has the capacity and the inclination to engineer its oil requirements because so little of its economy is market-driven.
Through it all, America continues to import more than two-thirds of our oil needs which puts us at the mercy of the Middle East oil producers, China, and other countries which do not have the interests of the United States in their hearts. In April, we imported 375 million barrels of petroleum at a cost of just under $19 billion.
Last week Hugo Chavez sent troops to take over Venezuela's oil service companies because he felt that the state-controlled oil company (which he nationalized a couple of years ago) owed them too much money.
There is no reason for America's national interests - our economy, our environment, nor our security - to be based upon a global oil supply-and-usage regime which is based upon an international set of artificially-controlled factors.
This past week, a report in Russia, according to the London Times, "raised the prospect of war in the Arctic as nations struggle for control of the world's dwindling energy reserves." The report suggested that Russia "is willing to defend its interests by force if necessary."
Russia, just a few months ago, used its natural gas production and distribution system to force its will on Ukraine by shutting off gas supplies to much of Europe during the coldest months of the European winter.
It is not hard to imagine other countries, if they get into domestic trouble because they can't cover their internal social costs, to further manipulate supplies and distribution of crude to artificially affect prices.
The United States has it in its power and within its borders to effectively defend itself against the whims of foreign governments by taking serious steps to increase the utilization of domestic natural gas.
Natural gas is our most widely distributed natural resource - gas lines run up every street and down every alley in almost every city and town in the nation. As a transportation fuel, natural gas is ready-to-go. There are nearly 10 million natural gas vehicles (NGVs) operating throughout the world but fewer than 150,000 are here in the United States.
Our energy future is in our own hands. In natural gas we have an enormously abundant domestic resource; we have the technology to utilize it for power, transportation and every other known use; it is cheaper than imported oil; it is cleaner than either gasoline or diesel fuel; and, it is under our own control.
Spending time worrying over global oil maneuvers by foreign governments is a waste of time and money. We should have a national project to use domestic natural gas and reduce our imports of foreign oil.
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The only problem with the argument is that there is more known crude supply than there is known domestic natural gas. Bummer, Mr. Pickens, you just can't get it right.
Look it up, folks, the numbers are freely available on the internet.
What difference does that make? We are talking using domestic natural gas to displace imported crude.
Where natural gas can be economically and sustainably extracted, of course it's *part* of our energy strategy.
But as another non-renewable, it can only be a transitional solution, and one we should never place too much reliance upon, as we should never again place too much reliance on *any* non-renewable.
We've seen what putting ourselves at the mercy of any single energy provider does to us. Never again.
I'm not really sure what you think of as "transitional" but a 100 year plus supply of natural gas certainly does not seem short term to me, it will serve the needs of me, my children and their children.
First I put no faith in that number, if you're talking about economically feasible, ecologically responsible extraction. Otherwise I already indicated why over-reliance on any single supply would only be a demonstration that we are world-class slow learners.
Domestic Drilling for Natural Gas is at an all time high in this country, now in 34 States.
WHAT THEY ARE NOT TELLING YOU:
Drilling for Natural Gas is a horribly polluting process. Hydraulic Fracturing a technique perfected by Halliburton, permanently contaminates the water supply of every region it occurs in. The process is incredibly toxic, causing widespread air pollution, water contamination and disastrous health effects. The water contamination is permanent, fracking fluids and heavy metals from drilling bio-accumulate in aquifers and will remain there permanently. Once we ruin our water by drilling for Natural Gas, there is no going back.
For more info go to http://www.waterunderattack.com
Don't believe Picken's hype. His whole plan is a fence for Natural Gas, one of the biggest polluters in the USA.
Also, the use of Natural Gas contributes to climate change just as severely as the use of gasoline. Methane is 24x more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. Enough Methane escapes or is vented in the process of drilling and consumption to even out the balance. CNG is not an alternative fuel, it's just more fossil fuel that the big energy companies want to sell you. Don't believe the hype.
What Americans need to understand is there is grand-daddy's natural gas, and this NEW shale-gas, which is extracted by method called hydraulic fracturing, which requires immense amounts of water / toxic chemicals. Rural communites have been impacted by this new method of drilling -- there have been recent incidences including exploding water wells, exploding homes, rig fires, cattle poisonings and episodes of methane in drinking water supplies --in numerous states. We cannot allow this sugar- coating any longer , and the Huffington Post should start looking into this "alternative" that is not safe and in no way makes us "safer" domestically. How will exporting natural gas to Canada and Norway do that? That's where some of these gas companies are from, and the gas companies that ARE from the US aren't letting local folks control their destinies. They are asserting corporate power to take the gas, lay down pipelines using eminent domain, and make a profit at the expense of the people who live there. There are NO assurances Americans will get that gas-- it's a CORPORATE product, meant for the world market. We need better, safer, and regional alternatives.Please look into this, since this method of extraction is threatening some of our best regions' water supplies. Hydraulic fracturing needs to be regulated, but Dick Cheney/Halliburton made sure this method of underground injection was REMOVED from the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005. Haven't we had enough of Big Oil and Gas running this country?
The best way to use sun for energy is to grow forests.
From forests, which USA has right now we could harvest annually enough energy to cover needs for energy (2010 year).
Trees are the champion in the world between all plants and grow faster than any others plants. They collect sun energy during hundreds of years. Wood from the trees can be the cheapest source of energy for power plants and will give all it energy for electricity and heat production.
All emissions from these power plants can be without any harm sequestrated back to the land by water and will be together with ash the best nutrition to grow trees.
Instead of harvesting every year corn, grass etc for ethanol production we will harvest wood for electricity production from forest in area at least 100 times less than in case of harvesting grass, corn, etc for liquid fuel. It will be the closest to customer source of energy and cheaper than coal. Coal right now the cheapest source of electrical energy.
All organic waste we can granulate, mix and put under ground as nutrient for new trees.
It direction could completely change our Waste Management system
It takes one ton of coal to generate an average of 2500 kWh of electricity.
It takes less than 1.6 ton of wood to generate the same amount of energy.
Were you confused as to the subject of Boone's article and perhaps were responding to an entirely different topic?
Sorry,TxAggie, I omit next.
Not first time Mr. Picken writing about our energy future.
“Picken Plan”
“America is addicted to foreign oil.
It's an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people.
The addiction has worsened for decades and now it's reached a point of crisis.
In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil.
Today it's nearly 70% and growing.
At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that's four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.”
Mr. Picken are writing about peak oil production (2005), huge price for oil - $700 billion.
Solutions: wind power for electricity, Natural Gas Vehicles for transportation.
Natural Gas Vehicles for transportation need huge investment to change our cars, where real efficiency in most cases will be less than 1%.
We need destroy all power plants and their distribution lines, which right now produce electricity-using energy of natural gas.
If windmills produce electricity we are loosing around 50% of wind energy on resistance of batteries, when we charge them. When we use batteries around 50% of their energy will be loosing when power from batteries will go to customers. Efficiency of this process around 25% in best case.
The same we could tell about solar cells, which as wind power using sun energy for electricity production.
T. Boone Pickens PickensPlan.com
“Domestic natural gas supplies will replace our need for foreign oil. Independent studies continue to show that America's natural gas reserves are sufficient to meet all of our needs for well over 100 years.”
“There are nearly 10 million natural gas vehicles (NGVs) operating throughout the world but fewer than 150,000 are here in the United States.”
I agreed with author that we no need oil, but we need remember that our peak oil production was in 1970. We need to think above 100 years ahead.
Instead of going to loose NG in vain in vehicles it will be better to make strategy on electrical transportation. It also will be good additional to coal, NG use wood for electricity production, in small power plants, where we could use not only electricity (less than 20% energy of fuel), but also and heat.
Weren't you on tv just a few months ago with a ton of ads promoting wind and solar?? What happened?? Are you just in better position to make a boatload of money from natural gas than from wind and solar?? It's tough to trust somebody selling you an idea on the premise of it's implications to our nations security, when the person selling the idea stands to make a ton of money from it. Besides, I don't think our oil rich owners will like that very much.
Can't speak for Boone, but the truth is we have tremendous natural gas reserves in the USA and should be using them. I don't understand why the Obama adminsitration has thus far ignored the subject.
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