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Voice your dis-taste for the inaction. Drill NOW!

 

Just don't get it. This is not, I repeat, not a long term solution and besides that even if we do drill now that oil is going to be traded on the open market and thus while we are going to get a good bit of it, there are times we will not get it. Unless you propose not making that available to the world market only for ourselves and that would have negative consequences that I wouldn't like to see happen(struggle of resources and all that, which can get nasty). So yes, short term we might see some relief but in the long term we will have another "energy crisis" and then it might actually be the final one that we have. Now if you were to advocate a little bit of newer drilling, but at the same time promote doing alternative fuel research then that's something else, but this isn't going to last forever. Take this as a sign that we need something else and accept it and get it done. Oil will not be king forever, status quo I doubt will be able to be maintained even with newer drilling for another 30 yrs before we have something like this happen again.

 

Look at how far the auto industry has evolved since 1900. Look at the last 50 years. Look at the last 20. Technology has skyrocketed. If you got 100k out of a 70's engine you were thankful. I have over 200k on my '98 4.6L and it is at WOT 30 percent or more of the time!
If a replacement for gasoline will be researched with a goal of 20 to 30 years there won't be anymore available then it will happen. What was used before gasoline? Wood.
Fire up the drill rigs!

 

i agree...if we drill ...we wont see the next energy crisis...hell my kids (im 23) will probably see it when they are in there 50's....

 

right - we need to keep prices high enough to encourage research into alternatives, but we should not criple our economy by allowing the prices to go much above $100 per barrel - IMHO

 

You may be right, but even the oil companies agree that the current price of crude is inflated $30 - $50 per barrel from speculation in the commodities market. The best way to curb speculation is to threaten a significant supply increase in the market. If oil dropped $50 a barrel tomorrow, then the cost of exploration and drilling in ANWR or the OCS may not provide enough ROI for significant drilling.

It's the right to drill that will help stabilize costs, not the actual drilling. If you're really into alternative energy then you should be writing your congressman about dropping tariffs on imports of ethanol or biodiesel. Brazil could easily send us substantial amounts of cheap ethanol from sugarcane if the tariffs didn't make it cost prohibitive.

 

The biggest deposits that are known for oil have a plethorea of sour heavy crude, there are only a handful of refineries that can refine that crude out of the already handful of refineries in existance and the cost of renting the equipment to update those that can't is triple what it was a yr ago. That is the biggest problem. BP is already trying to drill for more oil over in Canada the majority of crude that is going to come from that deposit is heavy sour crude not light sweet crude. Right now there are alot of people that have seen 2 "energy crisis" happen, I doubt you can say for sure that if we drill more that it won't happen again(well you can say it, you just can't prove it).

That is absolutely true on how you can galvanize people into alternatives and not try to break people(and make for more efficient vehicles in the meantime). In all honesty, it isn't just "us" that is allowing it to get this high. You have speculators in all the other major market centers(japan, england etc) that are driving up the price of light sweet crude as well. If you want to stop the speculation, then you have to shut it down in all the market places that trade globally otherwise just stopping it here won't make a dent(they just trade in another market for futures on commodities not here).

Economics is not quite as easy to pin down as lot of people like to think(sometimes it is as easy as supply and demand sometimes it's not). We have to many variables that are going on in order to say if we do x then y will happen.

 

I have done things along those lines, but not exactly what you are proposing as that defeats in my mind what we should be doing.

 

Understood, but if you're looking for efficiencies and options other than biofuels, then the best thing you can hope for is higher crude prices. Up until very recently the biggest seller in the US has been bigger, faster, & more powerful. Look at the line up of cars we have compared to the things Europeans drive.

Consumer demand is the only thing that will force auto manufacturers to look into more economic vehicles. With GM's plan to close 4 SUV plants, it sounds like that will be the trend in the short term.

 

Unfortunately, if we do look into drilling extensively and that does come into fruition then we will have a slight twist, but same results that happen back in the 70s and pretty soon we will be back in this same boat down the line again and eventually digging for more won't work.

There are other things driving up crude prices then just supply having gone up(which plays into what what you said it is inflated at current prices and I believe that) and I think the biggest is that we are in troubled times and commodities are the big ticket for investors when times are tough and then we have had some supposed "supply issues" and that just hiked up prices even more. However, the futures within the past 3 days have closed lower then the previous day and we are down to about 122 and some change(which is a drastic drop from the beginning of the week), so I do think the big rally for crude prices is over unless we have touchdown with a hurricane in the gulf.

Biofuels for the most part I like and think that they can help, I do believe ethanol needs some tweaks, what I was getting at is that I don't think we should be importing it from Brazil and that defeats the purpose of independant in my mind.

 

Shale coal to oil. They do it in Montana already and we have enough in the US to keep us supplied for long after we are gone.

Ethanol isn't really going anywhere. We already have ethanol plants going under here in Iowa.

They had the tech for Hydrogen cars back in the 60's, but the regulations to do anything in this country is outrageous!

Just my 2 cents

 

All we need is for the government to get out of the way and allow our free market economy to function properly! Biofuel is not a long term solution. They could convert every available acre of farmland in the world to biofuel and it wouldn't provide even 10% of our energy needs (and we'd all starve in the process). It costs more to convert corn to ethanol then oil to gas anyway - the only reason it is being done today is due to our government providing subsidies for its production - without those subsidies the biofuels disappear tomorrow. A good rule of thumb is if the government is pushing it - it's going to cost us more money. Otherwise, private enterprises would be developing it and the government wouldn't need to.

That being said, there is plenty of oil (and oil equivalents) around. Canada in particular is spending literally tens of billions of dollars to increase the output of their oil sands. I have seen these operations and they are enormous. Canada wants to become the main supplier of oil to the US and can do so within the next 20 years or less. I have seen estimates that the oil sands can easily provide 50-60% of our energy needs for the next 100 years or so. Petrobras just recently announced the largest single find ever outside of the Middle East. This one field more than doubled their oil reserves.

This is not the same as the crisis back in the 70's. Back then there was a shortage - no shortage today - it's our weak dollar and other forces causing the escalating prices.

I remember reading a story years ago about the impending horse dung crisis on the streets of New York back in the late 1800's. Everyone was wringing their hands over how they would deal with the huge problem of horse dung removal as the population increased and everyone became a "2-horse" family! This country will be more than able to overcome this and every other technological issue if our government just gets out of the way!

 

If we've got to choose between ethanol imports from Brazil, or crude from Iran, guess who gets my vote.

 

Like I said before, what is in the oil sands of Canada is heavy sour crude, there is a difference in that stuff then there is in light sweet crude that is trading at 122.30 a barrel on the market today. We have few refineries as it is, even fewer that can handy the heavy stuff.

I didn't think people ate switchgrass? That is what they are using for Biofuel production here is switchgrass, something that can grow on land that regular row crops(that would be like corn, wheat etc.) can't. That is a fallacy that alot of people commit with regard to biofuel is that they overgeneralize and say that all biofuel is made that way. Here is something else for you, those places that actually use corn production for ethanol production use about 20 percent of the plant and the other 80 percent goes back into mainstream production for either human or animal consumption. However, I will say this that even though I am a believer in alternative fuels, I do not believe that we should just have one fuel source, but rather multiple fuel sources, that way when there is a run on one, you hopefully have the others to pick up the slack.

I will agree with you that by itself it isn't a long term solution, however, it is the best intermediate step that we have. I am hoping for LS9 to work, but it is going to have some perception issues.

I wasn't trying to say that it was like the crisis of the 70s, I was trying to allude more to what had happened after that crisis. We got lax and comfortable and back to a guzzling ways and then we find ourselves back worried about oil(for whatever reason we are back worrying about oil). That won't change as long as we using something that is finite(how finite no one knows and that is what brings about the problem).

Bottomline is if we can have a multiple inputs for energy, that would help ease the stress on oil and thus lower the price. It would also help if there ever was a run on one energy source that other inputs could pick up the slack. Trading one source for another just puts us back in the same boat, just different source. Ultimately, when technology gets to a point, I don't think we will actually have liquid fuel of any type in our vehicles and as someone pointed out technology changes very quickly(which would be another reason to keep a search for an alternative fuel now up and going even if we do drill for more oil in the interim).

That's true, but that still isn't ideal. While Brazil might be a hair more stable, it's still not stable like doing it all in-house and because it's a trade good, it will fall under being speculated at the Chicago Board(which all commodities are traded on) and you'll have the same thing. A boat has an oil leak, oops hike it up 10 dollars a barrel. Stormy weather ahead, another hike.

 

I am HIGHLY disappointed that anyone would post such a political thread in the SD forum.

Mizzitch, YOU KNOW BETTER. Or at least you should.

Take it to the Club.