Freeing ourselves from the gas crisis?

Hello, I live in a small town in Wyoming, amidst gas and oil fields, which workers drive sometimes 50-60 miles on crappy roads to get to, to work in. Ironic, isn't it? Something like the saying "water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink"...Many folks also live in outlying areas, away from town, and drive 40+ miles to work in town. Winters are, well, cold, and the cost of heating fuel and heating gas is becoming exorbitant. Wages are not high. If solutions to the gas prices are not coming in, towns like mine will be crippled. OK, I will find an alternative heating system, eventually. Maybe I will buy a motorcycle or find someone to carpool in a subcompact. Maybe my vegetable garden will really produce this year and I can put stuff up for winter. You know the price of food will dramatically go up. I can live on venison and elk and cabbage and beans and oatmeal if need be. But many folks don't have much to live on, and are a paycheck away from bankruptcy.
We have an energy crisis. Drill here drill now, and get something going temporarily. This is a good but hard lesson for us to learn. Hope we learn it.
 
The same numbers are found everywhere, including on anwr.org, the pro-devolpment site.
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Sounds like a good start to me for a drilling site. Never said we should only rely on ANWR, just use it as one of many places to get our own oil.

Those are the facts.
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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.
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No, those are findings and estimates. They don't know how much actual oil is down there any more than the next guy. "Facts" were presented to us from the first time the world's oil supply is about to dry up to today. Kinda funny how it's widely known that the supply of oil is even more plentiful today as ever...

Sorry.
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Don't be sorry for providing a source to your claim. I just wanted to know what you base your opinions on, that's all.

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.
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It's not implied that Alaska is our only source of oil. There are plenty of off-shore drilling we could be doing here, folks.

Let me put it this way: We either start drilling offshore beyond 12 miles from our coastline, or China will. Whom do you want out there tapping into the resource?

We need to quit making lame excuses on why NOT to drill. We need to QUIT belly aching about saving the pigmy goats and DRILL. The solutions are there. The problem is solved. Now, we need to act on the formula.

If we didn't elect the tree hugging stiffs in Washington 30 years ago we wouldn't be in this mess today. The EPA has regulated the crap out of building refineries. Oil companies remain a monopoly. NAFTA impedes with trading freely with Brazil to have competing gas prices. Ultimately everybody is to blame because we as Americans elected and KEEP electing these bozos in office.

You know the solution....are you willing to quit making excuses?
 
I am happy to use nuclear energy, but would prefer the plant to be in your backyard, not mine.
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This is an altogether too familiar refrain from the selfish consumers we have become - give me the benefits without any of the costs.

PS - I have two nuclear plants in my "backyard" and would not object to a third.
 
Chernobyl couldn't happen here.
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Tough sell to the American people.

This is an altogether too familiar refrain from the selfish consumers we have become - give me the benefits without any of the costs.

PS - I have two nuclear plants in my "backyard" and would not object to a third.
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Then we have a deal. You get the reactor and radioactive slag, I get the electricity.
 
The deal is I get the electricity and you chop wood.
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Yea, but me chopping and burning wood hurts the environment and causes global warming, which is what your nuclear plant was supposed to prevent, until it melts down, and makes global warming look like an ice age.
 
Drilling in ANWR doesn't solve as much as some of y'all think. Oil is fungible -- The oil we pump out of ANWR doesn't go to our oil supply, it goes (directly or indirectly) into the world supply.

What we need is a comprehensive energy policy that includes conservation, alternative energy sources, and oil exploration and development, in that order of priority. Jimmy Carter tried to get us on that path, and Ronald Reagan dismantled everything Carter did as fast as he could.

Chrysler/Mercedes sells a little 2-seater car called the "Smart ForTwo". The ones they sell in the USA get 41 MPG on the highway, and need premium gasoline. I had a 1996 Buick LeSabre (that's a big one) that got 30 mpg of regular unleaded on the highway. Back in the 80's, you could get a diesel VW Rabbit that got 50 mpg. Now here's the sad part: the ForTwo sold in Canada gets 70 mpg (diesel). The EPA won't let them import the diesel into the USA because it doesn't meet the Sept 2006 diesel emissions standards. Ya think just maybe they could relax the standards for vehicles getting 50 or more mpg? But instead the EPA keeps putting up barriers to discourage diesel development, and subsidies for corn-based ethanol which uses almost as much oil to produce as an equivalent amount of gasoline and it drives up food prices. Between that and the way the Fed is debasing the dollar, I think the .gov might actually be /trying/ to wreck the economy, I just can't figure out what the motive would be.
 
Yea, but me chopping and burning wood hurts the environment and causes global warming
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A lot of people around the world can't afford the luxury of your environmental sensitivity - they have the stark choice between pollution or death.

We Americans have had the luxury of meeting our energy needs for decades with cheap, out-of-sight-out-of-mind solutions. The current bump in oil prices should be a wakeup call that that era is ending. We are all in the same boat and there is no room left for the attitude that solutions are someone else's problem.
 
I have always had a nuclear power plant in "my backyard". I grew up in a town about 20 miles from one, and live less than a half-hour's drive from another one right now. Ive fished in the the lakes at both power plants, and ate the fish from it. Nuclear power doesnt scare me at all. Its clean, and efficient, and safe when proper saftey precautions are used.

I wish we'd build a couple more all around the country, and cut down on our oil and coal consumption.
 
Well let me officially go on record as saying I think nuclear power is a great solution, as long as all you guys that think it is completely safe are willing to keep the plants in your home areas, along with the radioactive byproducts, and just sell me the electricity.
 
We're getting screwed.
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I am having trouble believing there really are people who have so little knowledge of our economic system they can make such silly statements.

Exxon is currently selling for $87.81 per share. There are presently 5.3 billion shares of stock currently held by stockholders (mostly common, ordinary people like you and me whose 401k is invested in such stocks). Profits last quarter were just over 10 billion dollars. Each stockholder earned about $2 on his investment. If you look at the percentages that is not a terribly good return. There are literally dozens of stocks that return a much higher percentage of investment. In fact Exxon seems to be in the lower range of return on investment.

Don't blame the oil companies for the high cost of gasoline. Their profits are no bigger than most companies, and smaller than many.

On the other hand, OPEC spends about $.75 per barrel to get crude oil out of the ground. Then they sell that same barrel for $127 (as of yesterday). Why can they get such a huge markup? Simple. Demand and supply. We don't develop our own oil resources so we are forced to go to OPEC and they can charge whatever the traffic will bear.

That is called Capitalism. If you don't like it you can always try Socialism. Just look at what it did for China and the Soviet Union!
 
11.7 billion a quarter? That's a small profit? That's coming straight out of your pocket!

Tuesday, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, Europe's largest oil companies, delivered record profits for the first quarter of 2008. Anglo-Dutch firm Shell netted $7.78 billion in the first three months of this year, up 12% over the same period in 2007. Profits at rival BP, meanwhile, swelled by almost half to $6.59 billion. Shares in each firm climbed almost 5% on the news.
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Between the three companies that's 26 billion dollars in clear profit per quarter. Out of ordinary peoples pockets. If you can't complain about those profits you have no business complaining about the price of gas.

Is your point that when a western company makes obscene profit all is well and good but if the arab countries make that same profit we should blow them off the planet and take their oil? They're just practicing capitalism as well.
 
Quote:
I am happy to use nuclear energy, but would prefer the plant to be in your backyard, not mine.
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This is an altogether too familiar refrain from the selfish consumers we have become - give me the benefits without any of the costs.

PS - I have two nuclear plants in my "backyard" and would not object to a third.
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These are the same people looking for an Obamassiah to rescue them without any cost to themselves.


Quote:
The deal is I get the electricity and you chop wood.
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Yea, but me chopping and burning wood hurts the environment and causes global warming, which is what your nuclear plant was supposed to prevent, until it melts down, and makes global warming look like an ice age.
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Neo-Luddite poppycock. Sit in the dark and freeze then. Your nuclear objections have been answered and discussed endlessly, use the search feature. Answering the same trite fallacies over and over is tiresome.
 
Demand and supply. We don't develop our own oil resources so we are forced to go to OPEC and they can charge whatever the traffic will bear.
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We need to attack this problem from both the supply side and the demand side. (and the demand side reacts faster) Strengthening the dollar would also help tremendously.
 
The problem is that there is no single solution and all the smaller things we could be doing aren't "sexy" enough.

There are lots of things we could be doing that when added up, make a big difference but individually don't seem woth the time, effort or sacrifice.
 
Everything I’m reading puts best guestamates of ANWR’s potential at roughly equal to Middle East imports for about 25 years, and that’s just ANWR. That doesn’t even begin to address other reserves. Ya know even as we speak small independent operators are buying up spent fields and reopening them. Over time oil will fill back into played out wells and while it may not be profitable for people like EXXON to open them back up it is profitable for smaller operators to do it because they don’t have the overhead.

Kind of reminds me of a story I heard once.

Two guys sitting on the porch along with the old hound dog. The dog was kind of moaning so the one guy ask “What’s wrong with him?” His friend says “He’s laying on a nail”. Other guy says “Why don’t he move?” Friend says “It don’t hurt bad enough”

Any way, all that’s holding us back is the government

I would have dug up 20 or 30 other sources for this but I have to go to work.


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_22_17/ai_75435167

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs045-02/

http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/testimony/2006/CopulosTestimony060330.pdf

http://www.energyandcapital.com/aqx_p/5471?gclid=COGO49--2JMCFRItxwodHChWTQ

http://www.sibelle.info/oped15.htm
 
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