A Start on Solving Our Energy Crisis

[Adam's Apple]

Lest those who keep putting up the barriers want to continue to pay an outrageous price for oil to people who want us dead.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25964

 

[Toro]

I was listening to some conservative talk radio blowhard the other day talking about this exact topic. He said that opening up ANWR would eliminate our need to rely on oil imports.

The person, apart from being a moron, is completely wrong. The US government said so itself.

Opening an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil development would only slightly reduce America’s dependence on imports and would lower oil prices by less than 50 cents a barrel, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Energy Department.

The report, issued by the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, said that if Congress gave the go-ahead to pump oil from Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the crude could begin flowing by 2013 and reach a peak of 876,000 barrels a day by 2025.

But even at peak production, the EIA analysis said, the United States would still have to import two-thirds of its oil, as opposed to an expected 70 percent if the refuge’s oil remained off the market.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4542853/

At its very peak, ANWR would represent only half of the imports from Saudi Arabia alone.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/...ons/company_level_imports/current/import.html

This stuff drives me nuts.

I'm all for drilling in ANWR. Stopping production in a 10 billion barrel field because of the mating habits of a moose seems ridiculous to me. But the idea that America is going to be energy independent any time in the next few decades is nonsense, and these idiots on talk radio should stop saying this will be the case.

Having finished my rant, I generally agree with the article. We here in Florida, however, don't want offshore drilling. That is pretty unanimous across party lines.

 

[Foxfyre]

1) We should follow through on the original plan by requiring Iraq to at least help pay our expenses by routing some of their oil to us.

2) We should drill in ANWR. 10 billion barrels is not chicken feed and would produce about 1.4 million barrels a days for several years - Texas, our biggest oil producing state, produces something less than that per day.

3) Discovery of 500 billion barrels of shale oil in South Dakota should be exploited immediately. We have the horizontal drilling technology to go after it.

4) Americans everywhere should be rising up to condemn the radical environmentalists and others who make the cost of building new refineries prohibitive, and we should applaud any incentives the government might provide to the oil companies to increase and expand their refining capacities.

And then for the rest of it, all we have to do to improve the economy is to believe in it and participate in it. Most recessions end not because of any artificial stimulus but because the people perceived things to be better and went back to working and buying and investing per usual which is, after all, what makes an economy strong.

 

[Toro]

The Green River Shale is thought to have a trillion barrels oil equivalent. However, the technology to massively exploit shale is decades away.

 

[Warner]

1) We should follow through on the original plan by requiring Iraq to at least help pay our expenses by routing some of their oil to us.

2) We should drill in ANWR. 10 billion barrels is not chicken feed and would produce about 1.4 million barrels a days for several years - Texas, our biggest oil producing state, produces something less than that per day.

3) Discovery of 500 billion barrels of shale oil in South Dakota should be exploited immediately. We have the horizontal drilling technology to go after it.

4) Americans everywhere should be rising up to condemn the radical environmentalists and others who make the cost of building new refineries prohibitive, and we should applaud any incentives the government might provide to the oil companies to increase and expand their refining capacities.

And then for the rest of it, all we have to do to improve the economy is to believe in it and participate in it. Most recessions end not because of any artificial stimulus but because the people perceived things to be better and went back to working and buying and investing per usual which is, after all, what makes an economy strong.

Well, I have mixed opinions on this issue.

1) We should buy Arab oil as long as we can. Use up their oil as long as we can afford it, save our domestic oil for emergencies and the future. This means we should drill enough to plot out the available supply and also to position us to negotiate, but when it comes to production lets save our reserves as long as practicable.

2) While we do have the horizontal drilling tech to get and oil such as that in SD, it is expensive, especially if your talking about shale bound oil, and the quality of the oil is not what you get out of most Arab fields. It is thick heavy oil full of H2S, and thus expensive to extract and expensive to refine.

Finally, in order to improve the economy we have to do more than just "believe". We have to be productive and we have to stop piling up both international and future debt. If we don't get the debt situation under control we will never have a strong economy.

 

[Warner]

As for long term oil supplies, I believe there is at least as much undiscovered oil as all that has been found and predicted. I believe there is a huge amount of oil below 20-25 thousand feet from the first epic of life on Earth (before the ice-ball). We just have to find it and develop the tech to get it.

 

[Paulie]

We should do whatever we are physically and economically capable of doing to be as independent of ME oil as possible, while we pursue alternate, scientifically proven-to-be INFINITE sources of energy.

Solar, wind, nuclear, hydro. I like hemp as well. Its cultivation for energy, and many of the other uses it provides, would not intrude upon our food supply as ethanol currently is.

I also say we build "Mr. Fusion" devices for our cars, as seen in Back to The Future. I mean, shit, if you're out of plutonium you can add random trash, and whatever's left in disposed of cans of beer.

 

[Warner]

We should do whatever we are physically and economically capable of doing to be as independent of ME oil as possible, while we pursue alternate, scientifically proven-to-be INFINITE sources of energy.

Solar, wind, nuclear, hydro.

I disagree. We should develop the capacity to be (at least temporarily) self-sufficient in order to prevent being held hostage by ME countries via oil. However, as long as they will sell to us at any reasonable price (for right now, lets say under $150 a bbl) we should buy and use ME oil and save what we have for the future. Domestic oil supplies should be developed but not over-utilized except to force the ME to keep prices reasonable.

Solar power is a nice idea. However when you look at it practically if we were to tap this source to anywhere near what we need, given even double the efficiency of the current best technology, the environmental consequences would be catastrophic. You cannot suck up all the sunlight falling on a large desert without it having major effects on the climate.

Wind power, like solar, has environmental consequences. Pulling energy out of the climate system effects the climate system. In small doses it has negligible effects, but at the scale required to satisfy any significant part of our energy demands the consequences would be likewise significant. The same holds true for tidal power generation.

Ion based technology (i.e. hydrogen) currently utilizes platinum as a catalyst, and if all the cars in the USA were to run on this technology within less than 5 years all the known platinum on Earth would be spent.

Hydro-electric power likewise has sever environmental consequences, and also slows the Earths rotation (though admittedly we could probably tolerate this effect for a very long time).

Fission power ends up being a break even technology when fully analyzed. The net power output, after you consider all the energy spent to build the plant and to mine and transport the uranium, and then to decommission the plant at the end of its life, ends up creating little reduction in the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels power the vehicles and other mining and transport equipment. And you create a nuclear waste problem that must be dealt with to boot.

Fusion power would be great, but thus far it is still science fiction.

 

[Foxfyre]

I'm pretty sure that solar panels or harnessing wind power do not have any significant effect on the climate; however I am highly skeptical that, short of triggering a nuclear winter, humans have any ability to affect long term climate trends at all. I do know that enough hydro, solar, or wind power to meet the needs of America alone would wipe out so much land area for other uses that it would unacceptable to everybody.

Nuclear is the most efficient and safest way to go, but American phobia seems to override common sense there.

So that leaves us with oil, gas, and coal as the fuel of freedom, democracy, security, and the American way. So long as we are dependent on others for that fuel, we are never independent nor secure. I support doing whatever we have to do to make ourselves energy independent so that we don't have to worry every time the Middle East hiccups or some new dictator comes to power. We have the technology to exploit our own resources in environmentally friendly ways and also the ability to develop even better technology, and we should demand that this be done.

Humans have been the most efficient of all high life forms on Earth to adapt to a changing environment. I have every confidence that by the time we have exhausted our existing coal, oil, and gas reserves we will have developed new and better energy sources for all our needs.

 

[Adam's Apple]

Just for information, here's an article about alternative energy sources which makes you aware of some sources that we hear very little about--if ever. Interesting that cars can run on alcohol (as stated in the article, cars and alcohol do mix in the fuel tank) and that a French company has developed a car that can run on compressed air.

www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2005/january05/alternateenergy.cfm

 

[Warner]

I'm pretty sure that solar panels or harnessing wind power do not have any significant effect on the climate;

On the small scale which is currently utilized you are correct. On the scale necessary to significantly effect our oil dependency you are incorrect.

however I am highly skeptical that, short of triggering a nuclear winter, humans have any ability to affect long term climate trends at all.

Again you are incorrect. It is a question of degree but there is no question that human activities do impact the climate. I would agree that the amount of effect is being overstated, but to say there is no effect is just flat wrong. The real question is what is the real impact of human activity on long term weather patterns.

I do know that enough hydro, solar, or wind power to meet the needs of America alone would wipe out so much land area for other uses that it would unacceptable to everybody.

And again, such mass scale use of these power sources would have a significant impact on local weather patterns.

Nuclear is the most efficient and safest way to go, but American phobia seems to override common sense there.

I suggest you do some analysis of how much energy is used to mine and refine the uranium for fission based plants. By the time this is factored in, nuclear power does not look all that attractive. Then when you factor in the waste issues, its really not attractive at all.

So that leaves us with oil, gas, and coal as the fuel of freedom, democracy, security, and the American way. So long as we are dependent on others for that fuel, we are never independent nor secure. I support doing whatever we have to do to make ourselves energy independent so that we don't have to worry every time the Middle East hiccups or some new dictator comes to power. We have the technology to exploit our own resources in environmentally friendly ways and also the ability to develop even better technology, and we should demand that this be done.

Again, I partially agree. However I do believe we should save what we have for the future as long as possible. We should use our reserves as a backup and to protect ourselves from being held hostage to ME oil in the short term.

I think you (like most Americans) do not really grasp the how much more plentiful the oil in the ME is than our own domestic supplies. Here in the USA, it costs about a half million $ or more to drill a typical oil well (about $100K to drill it, about $300k to frac it, and about $100K to bring it online), and if it produces 100 bbls of heavy crude a day it is generally considered a good well. In Saudi Arabia if they were to drill a similar well and it were to produce only 5000 bbls a day (of light-sweet-crude) they would cement it back and consider it a failure. The light-sweet-crude is also easy to refine and produces more fuels per bbl than the heavy crude, which is hard to refine, that we typically get from US wells.

Humans have been the most efficient of all high life forms on Earth to adapt to a changing environment. I have every confidence that by the time we have exhausted our existing coal, oil, and gas reserves we will have developed new and better energy sources for all our needs.

I agree. But this assumes we actually spend the resources to do so NOW, while we can afford to do so. There are really only two technologies I can see that can really solve our long term needs. These are fusion power, which as of yet seems to have escaped us, and Geo-Thermal power, which will require some kind of solid state like heat-to-energy technology which we would need to develop. Turbines just don't generally hold up well enough.

We should be spending the kind of $ we are currently spending on the War in Iraq on the War to replace fossil fuel based power.

 

[onedomino]

Discovery of 500 billion barrels of shale oil in South Dakota should be exploited immediately. We have the horizontal drilling technology to go after it.

Would have been nice wouldn't it? Problem is, such is not correct. Yes, there is lots of oil in the Bakken Trend (BTW, it is mostly in North Dakota, not South), but at the request of the State of North Dakota the United States Geological Survey just last week estimated that there is only 4.3 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the Bakken using current state-of-the-art drilling techniques. Most of the oil is two miles deep in a thin layer spread over thousands square miles. Unfortunately the 400 billion+ barrels will stay in the ground for a long time into the future because we do not have the technology to get it out. 4.3 billion barrels is important but will not change petroleum availablity, much less the price. Had the full 400 billion barrels been economically recoverable, we would be popping champaign corks right now because the entire proved reserve of Saudi Arabia plus Russia is 260 billion barrels.

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.

A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.

Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.

 

[Foxfyre]

Would have been nice wouldn't it? Problem is, such is not correct. Yes, there is lots of oil in the Bakken Trend (BTW, it is mostly in North Dakota, not South), but at the request of the State of North Dakota the United States Geological Survey just last week estimated that there is only 4.3 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the Bakken using current state-of-the-art drilling techniques. Most of the oil is two miles deep in a thin layer spread over thousands square miles. Unfortunately the 400 billion+ barrels will stay in the ground for a long time into the future because we do not have the technology to get it out. 4.3 billion barrels is important but will not change petroleum availablity, much less the price. Had the full 400 billion barrels been economically recoverable, we would be popping champaign corks right now because the entire proved reserve of Saudi Arabia plus Russia is 260 billion barrels.

You are probably right and the USGS piece you linked is definitely persuasive. I have been hearing several different folks reporting on stuff like the following:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61488

which admittedly is not known to be a mainstream media outlet. It will be interesting to see if this develops any legs however. I certainly have no particular expertise in this area.

 

[Zoomie1980]

I was listening to some conservative talk radio blowhard the other day talking about this exact topic. He said that opening up ANWR would eliminate our need to rely on oil imports.

The person, apart from being a moron, is completely wrong. The US government said so itself.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4542853/

At its very peak, ANWR would represent only half of the imports from Saudi Arabia alone.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/...ons/company_level_imports/current/import.html

This stuff drives me nuts.

I'm all for drilling in ANWR. Stopping production in a 10 billion barrel field because of the mating habits of a moose seems ridiculous to me. But the idea that America is going to be energy independent any time in the next few decades is nonsense, and these idiots on talk radio should stop saying this will be the case.

Having finished my rant, I generally agree with the article. We here in Florida, however, don't want offshore drilling. That is pretty unanimous across party lines.

The crude in AMWR is NOT suitable for American refinement. Like all other alaskan oil, it is mostly HEAVY crude not LIGHT-SWEET. Japan is the major consumer of Alaskan oil, not the US. The oil we really need is off shore in California and further out in the Gulf of Mexico. AMWR would be an EXPORT resource.

 

[Foxfyre]

The crude in AMWR is NOT suitable for American refinement. Like all other alaskan oil, it is mostly HEAVY crude not LIGHT-SWEET. Japan is the major consumer of Alaskan oil, not the US. The oil we really need is off shore in California and further out in the Gulf of Mexico. AMWR would be an EXPORT resource.

Not entirely true. While most refineries in the USA can't handle heavy crude, there are a few that do. Here's one:
http://whiting.bp.com/go/doc/1550/165362/

 

[Annie]

I was listening to some conservative talk radio blowhard the other day talking about this exact topic. He said that opening up ANWR would eliminate our need to rely on oil imports.

The person, apart from being a moron, is completely wrong. The US government said so itself.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4542853/

At its very peak, ANWR would represent only half of the imports from Saudi Arabia alone.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/...ons/company_level_imports/current/import.html

This stuff drives me nuts.

I'm all for drilling in ANWR. Stopping production in a 10 billion barrel field because of the mating habits of a moose seems ridiculous to me. But the idea that America is going to be energy independent any time in the next few decades is nonsense, and these idiots on talk radio should stop saying this will be the case.

Having finished my rant, I generally agree with the article. We here in Florida, however, don't want offshore drilling. That is pretty unanimous across party lines.

Right, Between ANWAR and other sites, WE meaning the US can pick up a few years to push exploration of alternatives. I think it should be a major concern, regardless of what Floridians think.

 

[KungFusion]

I've got an idea: how bout we all bite the fukkin bullet and actually, for the first time in our national history, PAY for the energy we consume??? (it's called personal responsibility yall)

keep the oil-pigs the hell OUT of Alaska.

 

[Zoomie1980]

I'm pretty sure that solar panels or harnessing wind power do not have any significant effect on the climate; however I am highly skeptical that, short of triggering a nuclear winter, humans have any ability to affect long term climate trends at all. I do know that enough hydro, solar, or wind power to meet the needs of America alone would wipe out so much land area for other uses that it would unacceptable to everybody.

Nuclear is the most efficient and safest way to go, but American phobia seems to override common sense there.

So that leaves us with oil, gas, and coal as the fuel of freedom, democracy, security, and the American way. So long as we are dependent on others for that fuel, we are never independent nor secure. I support doing whatever we have to do to make ourselves energy independent so that we don't have to worry every time the Middle East hiccups or some new dictator comes to power. We have the technology to exploit our own resources in environmentally friendly ways and also the ability to develop even better technology, and we should demand that this be done.

Humans have been the most efficient of all high life forms on Earth to adapt to a changing environment. I have every confidence that by the time we have exhausted our existing coal, oil, and gas reserves we will have developed new and better energy sources for all our needs.

Actually wind and food farming are quite congenial. We have a new 160MW wind farm going in right in the middle of corn and soybean fields. The wind farm took less than 2 acres of corn out of production. The corn grows almost up to the base of the turbine tower.

Solar panel farms, however, cannot co-exist with agriculture and would have to be restricted to mostly barren western land.

It going to take various combinations of technologies to get us off fossile fuel. We will never be totally free of that though as some energy will always have to come from those sources and natural gas is still fairly plentiful.

 

[Foxfyre]

Actually wind and food farming are quite congenial. We have a new 160MW wind farm going in right in the middle of corn and soybean fields. The wind farm took less than 2 acres of corn out of production. The corn grows almost up to the base of the turbine tower.

Solar panel farms, however, cannot co-exist with agriculture and would have to be restricted to mostly barren western land.

It going to take various combinations of technologies to get us off fossile fuel. We will never be totally free of that though as some energy will always have to come from those sources and natural gas is still fairly plentiful.

Oh I know wind turbines and agriculture are compatible. In our area, many rural homes/farms/ranches have at least one wind charger as a backup against power failure. What I am saying is that enough such machines to make a significant difference would take a huge amount of real estate no matter what you planted around them. The monsters that are being used in a few European areas do put out an impressive amount of energy; however the cost to put one up and maintain it is also quite sobering.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Oh I know wind turbines and agriculture are compatible. In our area, many rural homes/farms/ranches have at least one wind charger as a backup against power failure. What I am saying is that enough such machines to make a significant difference would take a huge amount of real estate no matter what you planted around them. The monsters that are being used in a few European areas do put out an impressive amount of energy; however the cost to put one up and maintain it is also quite sobering.

Iowa expects by 2015 to genrate over 3GW from wind alone. The wind farms will span many thousands of acres and there will be areas where the turbines will stretch from horizon to horizon. But even at that, still less than .5% of the total rural acreage. However less than a few hundred acres of production will be lost to it. Next door in Nebraska they have plans for upwards 10GW by 2020 from wind alone.

A large coal plant will generate about 1.2GW and power a city of 250,000.

I have read that we could power 25% of the country from wind farms covering less than 10% of great plains states....mostly out of sight of most people.