Freeing ourselves from the gas crisis?

dream dream dream

Even the State of Alaska does not believe there is 100 years worth of oil in the North Slope/ANWAR field. Second even if they could drill tomorrow it would take two years to construct the infrastructure required to transport it to the existing pipe line operated by Alyeska.
 
Did anyone read the links? We have the technological capability of producing fuel from wood and other biomass if people want it.
 
Sources, please? Or are you just giving your opinion based on observation...
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There's no debate about the estimates of what ANWR holds. Just google it. Here are the standard parameters, for instance, from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists:

The AAPG believes that the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and the similar coastal plain area of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), should be opened to exploration and development. A study recently released by the United States Geological Survey (March, 1998) cites potential economically recoverable oil resources beneath the ANWR Coastal Zone 1002 Area of 5.7 to 16 billion barrels of crude oil, with a mean expected resource of 10.3 billion BO. Mean peak production rates of 1.0 to 1.35 million BOPD are expected. The 1002 Area represents only 8% of ANWR’s 19 million acres. Less than 1 percent of the land within the 1002 area would be affected by petroleum exploration and development activities. Parts of the coastal plain of the NPRA, held back by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from the 1999 lease sale at the instruction of the Secretary of the Interior, contain an estimated minimum of 1.5 billion barrels.
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The same numbers are found everywhere, including on anwr.org, the pro-devolpment site.

Those are the facts.

Sorry.
 
Best immediate course is to:
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NO. Simply no.
End the embargo on Cuba.
End the sugar quota.
Build a 90 mile pipeline to Florida and start pumping in sugar ethanol. Brazil is the ONLY, I repeat ONLY, economy not running on oil right now. They did it on sugar ethanol and Cuba has the ability to provide us with the same service. It can be piped in instead of through tankers, which is much cheaper. American companies will own huge chunks of the refineries anyways, so profits will be coming back to the US not Saudis. All that has to happen is end the embargo on Cuba and eliminate sugar quota. The rest will take care of itself in 5 years or less.
Well actually, all you have to do is convince one of the two parties they can win the election without Florida, or Florida without the Cuban American vote.
The fact that this will work is well known and accepted by every economist and businessman who has looked at it for more than a few minutes. No one will touch it b/c of the Cuban voting block. It would be political suicide even for a Senator from another state. Ending the embargo now, while the Castros are somewhat weaker would also probably cause huge reforms in the Cuban economy, and before long Cuba might even be a state (in a Texas, we still kind of do our own thing kind of way). Almost happened once.
(As a note for those who don't know, harvesting sugar cane is back breaking work Americans refuse to do, so there is almost no sugar production in the US while Cuba has in the past provided almost the entire worlds sugar supply and could very easily increase production again).

ANWR is a terrible idea. Why don't we just sell all our national parks and use the proceeds to offer a gas rebate. What a joke. The oil from ANWR could be spread out over a much longer time and relieve oil prices, and actually with peak production estimated at 1.4 BO it would have to be.

Someone mentioned French nuclear, nice long term. Once we get car batteries that are a little better that will be great. Wind power is working out very well. There is supposedly enough wind power in places like Kansas that the whole country could easily run on it. Requires nationalized electric grid = tons of capital and instead of having regional black outs you will have national ones. There is a lot of stuff in the works, but besides ethanol, and some added windpower it is all going to take much too long(10+ years) to get here. Maybe longer to get to your gas tank.
 
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Brazil is the ONLY, I repeat ONLY, economy not running on oil right now
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That is not the case.

The most important component of Brazil's energy independence program is domestic oil production, not ethanol.

Brazil does not run either of its public or private motor vehicle fleet exclusively on ethanol. They never have. Most vehicles in Brazil run on E25: a 25% Ethanol, 75% gasolines mix.

The Brazilians are currently pulling out all the stops to drill for oil. They have discovered several huge oil fields that are currently supplying their domestic market and providing oil for export.
 
There is no easy fix. There are some temporary measures we can take that will put the problem off for a decade or two at best, but sooner or later we are going to have to face the reality that petro-chemical based energy production is finite and nearing total depletion.

In the mean time reverse the moratorium on nuclear plant start-ups. Educate the public that nuclear, contrary to popular opinion, is the safest means of energy conversion presently available.

Fund hydrogen fusion projects such as the DIII-D Tokomak project currently being operated by General Atomics in San Diego.

Fund affordable alternatives to the 1200 megawatt fission plants presently operating at only about 30% efficiency (and costing upwards of 10 billion dollars to build) such as the Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor which can operate at upwards of 48% efficiency.

Use the above conversion capacity to make hydrogen out of sea water and switch to a hydrogen based motor vehicle fuel economy.

While all of the above is in development, bio mass fuels of any and every sort should be funded as well as the refinement of oil shale and oil sand which, with the high cost of a barrel of oil, is finally economically viable.

It will be a long, hard, and expensive struggle, but we have risen to the challenge before and we can do it again. All it requires is the national resolve to do so.
 
My point is Chernobyl sucked.
I am glad I didnt live there.

I am happy to use nuclear energy, but would prefer the plant to be in your backyard, not mine.
 
The level childlike naiveté regarding oil and or energy in the modern world is just frightening.

At present if we were forced to do without oil civilization would be on the express route back to the stone age. The average life expectancy would revert back to something like 35 to 40 years. But long before we got there we would be plunged into a world war that would make anything the world has ever seen before look like a clam bake. And given that we have the greatest and most advance arsenal and delivery systems on the planet it wouldn’t bode too well for the rest of the world. In very short order disease and famine would be rampant and the population of the earth would likely drop by something like 2/3s. There’s no way to guess where the cascading effect of this would finally stop.

When I see statements like “We’re only in it for the oil” or “It’s all about the free flow of cheap oil.” I am just speechless at the profound ignorance betrayed by such remarks. Of course that’s what it’s all about. In other words it about survival, and any creature will fight with everything at its disposal and with all its might to survive. The same is true for nations and most especially America. There does seem to be a creature that has emerged in the last 50 years that will willingly just lay down and die and that would be the modern liberal though I suspect that that is more a function of ignorance that willing sacrifice.
 
Chernobyl sucked.
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And it happened because of several factors that are not present in US reactors:

1. No backups
2. No containment building. US reactors are housed in no less than 12 inches of lead inside a capsule of 2 feet of aluminum inside a dome of 3 feet of steel reinforced concrete. Chernobyl had neither the capsule nor the dome.
3. Russian reactors used 20% U-235 or Pu 239. That's submarine fuel and even low grade bomb fuel. US reactors use 5%.

Chernobyl couldn't happen here. The often reported 3 Mile Island problem that occurred over on our side was nothing more than a water leak which affected a grand total of...no one.
 
Actually the supply is closer to 60 years or maybe a tad longer for known domestic reserves. Longer if there are more out there. That doesn't include the oil we could make form oil shale.
 
In addition they are finding that old wells are filling back in.

Also the way that oil is drilled today employs a method called whipstocking where they put down one hole and then spoke off of that hole producing what looks like a wagon wheel and now they are able to split off of each of those spokes.

So the truth is that producable oil reserves is actually unknown. When you see figures like 10 or 60 years that is based on very limited known factors. And the democrats and folks like Greenpeace are doing everything they can to make sure it stays unknown because the bottom line is that energy is power and control.
 
So the truth is that producable oil reserves is actually unknown. When you see figures like 10 or 60 years that is based on very limited known factors. And the democrats and folks like Greenpeace are doing everything they can to make sure it stays unknown because the bottom line is that energy is power and control.
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Uh-huh. And the "democrats" and "Greenpeace" are hiding the facts even from the petroleum geologists. Wow, now that *is* power.
 
Ya know I’m 50 something years old and I have lived in Houston pretty much my whole life. My family and everyone I know is employed in the oil industry in one way or another and has been my whole life.

I got news for you, what you think you may know about the oil industry from reading the news or articles on the internet or watching TV is a joke.

As far as the “petroleum geologists” go it’s a lot like the “scientist” who “all” agree about global warming. Depends on which one you talk to and who they work for and what kind of agendas they are trying to get through Washington.
 
As far as the “petroleum geologists” go it’s a lot like the “scientist” who “all” agree about global warming. Depends on which one you talk to and who they work for and what kind of agendas they are trying to get through Washington.
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Oh, for god's sake. Another conspiracy theory? That every geologist, government, government agency, pro-development group, are all conspiring to keep the "truth" about global oil reserves from...well, from who? From each other? From the oil companies? From the people?

It's a fabulous and nutty idea, though: that the world is actually awash with oil but it's really the best-kept secret in the history of the world. (And that it's actually no secret, since everyone in Houston knows. But nobody will say!)

Good stuff.
 
I don’t think I said anything about conspiracies. I was simply pointing out that you are throwing out the “petroleum geologists” like that says it all. No need to look any further. Well there are lots of “petroleum geologists” out there and what any one of them is going to tell you regarding oil reserves depends on a big long list of factors and who signs their paycheck isn’t real far down on the list.

I wouldn’t think that would be such a difficult concept to grasp.

If you want to even begin to have some kind of realistic understanding of what’s what you would probably do best to spend your time perusing the trade journals that target the oil industry. Here’s one you could start with.

http://www.ogj.com/index.cfm

follow this stuff for a few years and stop getting your information from the Greenpeace website or the Moveon.org website. After watching for a while you might start to get some kind of grasp of how things really work.
 
I don’t think I said anything about conspiracies.
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Well, except for:

And the democrats and folks like Greenpeace are doing everything they can to make sure it stays unknown because the bottom line is that energy is power and control.
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Lol.

Well, you need to inform yourself, both from the petroleum geologists' association, from the pro-development folks, from every government on the planet, you name it. The numbers are the numbers.

There is not some magic -- and secret! let's not forget secret and unreported! -- ocean of oil on the planet waiting to bail us out.
 
Glad you agree.

Anyway, we won't be drilling our way out of this one. The numbers are inexorable, and grim. We better get working, and fast, on what we're going to use next.
 
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