From: The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com
Senate Democrats on Tuesday abandoned all hopes of passing even a slimmed-down energy bill before they adjourn for the summer recess, saying that they did not have sufficient votes even for legislation tailored narrowly to respond to the Gulf oil spill.
Although the majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, sought to blame Republicans for sinking the energy measure, the reality is that Democrats are also divided over how to proceed on the issue and had long ago given up hope of a comprehensive bill to address climate change.
…
“Ask anyone outside of Washington, and they’ll tell you that this isn’t a Democrat or a Republican issue, it’s an American issue,” Mr. Kerry said. “It’s American troops whose lives are endangered because we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us. It’s American consumers who are tired not just of prices at the pump that soar each summer, but sick and tired of our oil dependency that makes Iran $100 million richer every day that Washington fails to respond.”
h/t to Tom Nelson
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“It’s American troops whose lives are endangered because we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us. It’s American consumers who are tired not just of prices at the pump that soar each summer, but sick and tired of our oil dependency that makes Iran $100 million richer every day that Washington fails to respond.”
Wouldn’t that be a good reason to carry on exploiting the abundant fossil fuel reserves available in the US and Canada?
Just wondering…..
Question: is there a link where we can read the bill they are debating?
AFAIK, Iran is selling most of its oil to China.
It’s interesting isn’t. They always said that the fighting in the middle east was not about oil and here is Kerry say the opposite. More lies ?
The deals America has with Saudi Arabia forbids America from exploiting their own massive proven reserves.
The “civilised” Western nations have to control access to and use up all the oil in the middle East to prevent large reserves falling into the hands of “unstable” regimes.
Also, if you added all that oil to the market place at once, they could not charge the prices the do for it. The price would drop so low it would become massively uneconomical and the oil billionaires would become oil millionaires.
Besides, according to the MAX PLANCK SOCIETY we have to stop ALL use of carbon based fuel entirely.
Perhaps those who support such a measure could now be considered to be “thick as a Planck”?
And elections looms in the U.S.!
One would hope that the financial mismanagement by the Labour Party, in the UK, leaves no room for manoeuvre for the current lot, who seem hell bent on proceeding to economic suicide! Waits for hospital operations lengthen by the day due to cuts so lets see if Met Office/CRU money is cut back as well!
@Martin Brumby
“Wouldn’t that be a good reason to carry on exploiting the abundant fossil fuel reserves available in the US and Canada?”
To me it appears that the US of A have taken a deliberate choice to use up oil reserves elsewhere in the hope that one day they will hold the remaining major deposits and therefore the global-political whip-hand. What a good job that oil reserves in certain parts of the world seem to be holding out longer or even regenerating.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/crispin8.html
however – conversely..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
But…the jury remains out
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V61-4J8D95X-1&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F15%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1420851124&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=50ceb2d6e74f3a383cf1f1bfc41236f1
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nt2m870w7568528k/
Can anyone find any ‘evidence based’ literature to prove/refute well regeneration ‘a la Crispin’ ?
I agree with Martin…
Common misperceptions regarding energy and availability:
Most americans don’t realize that the number one source for imported oil to the U.S. is Canada, and
Most americans have no idea that there are shale oil reserves in Wyoming/Colorado that are estimated to surpass the entire oil fields of Saudi Arabia.
We have been hoisted on our own petard, by our own politicians. We have all of the fossil fuel energy we need to last us well into the future (current estimates seem to be around the 400yr mark), at which point I’d like to believe there would no longer be a dependence on “oil”.
The problem with this article, and the bill, is that it is far from “dead”. We would have been better off had this made it to the floor for debate. What is bound to happen now is that AFTER the midterms, this bill will almost certainly be part of the “lame duck” agenda, and I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t get passed along with a host of other legislation that will cause us to wake up one morning in December wondering what the hell happened?
JimB
@Rob Schneider, didn’t you know that nowadays the bills are passed first, and written afterwards?
Don’t celebrate too quickly. This is a hydra, and cutting off one of its heads only leads to the creation of others. This thing will be back, pieces of it enacted as riders on other “must pass” legislation.
Err……………presumably the rest of the world to whom America exports this that and the other might reasonably ask about how their dependence on American products makes America richer????
Don’t mean to be rude, but America’s as hard as nails when it comes to making money from foreigners. So why they complain when others do in oil what they do in all kinds of things just beats me……….
The unique nature of the immigrants who populated America in the past 300 years, perhaps????
Thoughts:
1. Put in some bullet trains between US cities to start cutting down on short-haul domestic flights.
2. Stop buying gas guzzlers and make do with a Yaris, a Mini, an Escort or the like.
3. Make some nicer friends who’ll sell you some oil.
4. Stop going to war for oil: you don’t make friends that way.
5. If you do go to war for oil, stop talking about doing it for democracy. It makes you out to be liars.
6. Remember you’re only one nation on this earth. And there’s nothing special or different about you. You just occupy a big chunk of land between the Atlantic and Pacific.
7. Think about the enormous amount of sunlight in your SW deserts: perfect for solar power, wouldn’t you say????
8. Build your houses better: then you’ll need less energy to heat them.
9. Embrace community public transport to reduce journeys of less than 3 miles. Ditto with bicycles. It’s called community pride, not socialism……
10. Stop blowing billions a year on drugs. Then you could afford more petrol.
11. Get as many as possible of you to generate micro-biomass generators to minimise your need for external energy.
That’ll do for starters.
Better than bombing the shit out of countries, isn’t it??
More respectful of human life, isn’t it????
“It’s American troops whose lives are endangered because we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us. “
Thank you for your whole-heartedly faked concern about American troops, Senator Kerry, but I never felt endangered or hated by Canada — which is our biggest supplier of foreign oil.
Martin Brumby says:
August 4, 2010 at 12:36 am
And where exactly are those reserves if it’s not a secret??
It is truly amazing how people will readily believe in even the silliest myths if it suits their preconceived world views. Case in point:
Again, where are the “proven reserves”? Shales do not count because shale oil is not really oil, and you can only think it is if you are utterly ignorant of geology and thermodynamics.
And when someone brings up the abiogenic “theory” of oil origin, you know the lunacy fest is on…
Another one:
The bigger problem is that the Americans that have no idea there are oil shales in Wyoming and Colorado while a majority of the total are only a subset of the Americans who don’t understand the second law of thermodynamics….
When someone finds a way to get 20 million barrels a day with an EROEI of at least 10 out of those oil shales, while being able to scale it up to at least 3 or 4 million within 5 to 10 years from now, then you can claim that there are X number of years of proven reserves and there is no problem.
Unfortunately the chances of this happening are as slim as the chances of the majority of Americans ever understanding the Second law…
This part should be separate from the blockquote:
The bigger problem is that the Americans that have no idea there are oil shales in Wyoming and Colorado while a majority of the total are only a subset of the Americans who don’t understand the second law of thermodynamics….
When someone finds a way to get 20 million barrels a day with an EROEI of at least 10 out of those oil shales, while being able to scale it up to at least 3 or 4 million within 5 to 10 years from now, then you can claim that there are X number of years of proven reserves and there is no problem.
Unfortunately the chances of this happening are as slim as the chances of the majority of Americans ever understanding the Second law…
Oddly enough, the US is NOT dependent on foreign oil from countries that hate the US. The US is, however, dependent on oil from the US and Canada. It is truly unfortunate that kerry and 0bama and the rest of their little club are doing their best to block oil from Canada, labeling it “dirty oil”… and preventing drilling and exploration in promising American locations.
The net result would be to force the US to become dependent on oil from countries that hate the US.
It doesn’t matter a lot to Canada, we’ll just sell our “dirty oil” to someone else. We’ve noted China, for example, ready to line up tankers at western ports to fill up.
Oh, and about “blaming” Republicans: in the future, that will be changed to “crediting” Republicans for helping to prevent suicide.
“we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us”
No, they don’t hate the US otherwise they wouldn’t drive American cars (more popular in some Muslim countries than in Europe), drink Cokie, wear Levis or go to the movies or send their kids to international American schools.
The so called hate is stirred up by religion, racism, leftists and the military industrial complex which is invested in by many governments and individuals worldwide including terrorists and their financiers.
If they want energy independence, why are they punishing coal the most?
GM says:
August 4, 2010 at 3:46 am “………”
GM, uhmm entropy isn’t really a hard concept. For a listing of our reserves go to the USGS. I’m not sure about the 400 years, but here is something that has been shown over the length of time we’ve used oil. We continue to find more reserves every year. We increase our abilities to extract the oil constantly. We constantly learn more efficient techniques in our oil use. This nation, this globe isn’t running out of oil anytime soon and if we’re prudent with the use of oil, we’ll have plenty of it several generations to come. I’ve plenty more to say, but I’m late for work. It amazes me how people will totally ignore past experience in regards to our history with oil to try to make a point that we don’t have any. GM you don’t know how much oil we have left, no one does. We know we’ve plenty for a while and we know we’ll find more.
Stopping America’s dependence on foreign oil – by John Stewart
(excuse language)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-16-2010/an-energy-independent-future
mikelorrey says:
August 4, 2010 at 4:02 am
If they want energy independence, why are they punishing coal the most?
—–
Punishing coal? Fossil fuels receive about 10 x amount of subsidies
compared to renewables worldwide. And those are the easilly traceable
subsidies. In addition, diffuse production supports.
For oil industries in USA, see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html?emc=eta1
This bill has nothing to do with climate. It is one of the pet words inserted to decieve people. I googled a bit and can’t find a place to read the bill. It seems legislation is now very secret.
Obama said he would post bills passed by congress for several days before signing them. That will not happen. He wasn’t truthful.
Do not trust a politician.
They say what you want to hear to be elected then use “Good for the Country” when elected.
Rob Schneider at 1:12AM.
It’s Senate bill S.3663. thomas is provided to you by you – meaning we pay for the service.
The easiest way to find anything Congress has kicking around it to start at http://www.senate.gov then click on the sidebar link “Active Legislation” then look under heading of “Curently Active”. You’ll see S.3663. But if you know the title of the bill (this one is the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act and is cited by articles sometimes along with the bill number), you can go directly to the public repository url at http://thomas.loc.gov. Put in the name of the bill. If you put that into a search you should get a bill summary and status page where you can select various things include the CBO cost if available. Select text of the bill and you should get this url
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.3663:
which is where you’ll be if you selected it off the active legislation link (provided you know the bill number). You can click on the pdf version, and, if lucky, you’ll have the bill without having to use Thomas to page through it. Oh, and it’s “only” 401 pages double spaced. A word of caution, wading through amendments and what comes out of a House-Senate committee can be a daunting task akin to “Must pass so we can know what it looks like after it’s really put in readable form”.
Oh, and Thomas is provided to you by you – meaning we pay for the service. What I found interesting is how the politicians name bills to make them sound really great. I’ve been waiting for the “Perpetual Prosperity Children’s Welfare Famine Free Pestilence Prevention Cheap Gasoline and Universal Love” bill. Must be why they feel they don’t need to read past the title.
Not surprisingly, this article edited out the two primary reasons the bill died; Harry Reid wrote this bill himself (it was NOT the Kerry-Liebermann bill, which Reid never allowed to come to the floor) and he inserted two provisions guaranteed to make it fail in the Senate. And he *knew* this, and this was why they were inserted – Reid calculated that it would be better to have something he could make a negative campaign issue with in the fall rather than allow his opponents to join him in doing anything.
These are the two provisions – the first was increasing the liability cap for offshore drillers: it’s not that the idea was so bad, but it needed to be tied to the net worth of a company to be workable, rather than unlimited. The way Reid’s version was written it would have made liability insurance economically impossible to get for all but the 5 or so largest oil companies in the world (Exxon, Chevron, etc) and thus it would have driven several hundred smaller companies which operate in the Gulf area out of business.
Mary Landrieu and every other Democratic Senator in the region opposed this just as bitterly as any Republican, since this provision should have been labeled “Destroy 100,000 regional jobs and destroy all locally owned businesses in order to give Exxon, Chevron, and others a near monopoly lock on the segment.” But now Harry can campaign with the claim that nasty Republicans just want to let BP off the hook. (liability limits are waived in the case of gross negligence, so BP doesn’t get out of anything even under current law)
The second provision was a last minute addition by Harry, one that had never been part of any bill before last week – he inserted a provision which would have forced anyone developing shale gas in the US (the most promising energy segment in the country today) to have publicly listed anything included in the frack fluid. 2 problems here; all fracking companies have propietary blends and they have problems releasing their formulas, based on years of experience and tests, to their competitors.
But more importantly, the real goal of this provision was to give local activists the ammunition they needed to sue any drillers in local courts, since scary sounding chemicals are always a great way to excite the locals. (You mean they’re pumping Di-Hydrogen Oxide under My Land????) So, the practical effect of this provision would have been to shut down the one segment of American energy production which is booming and which truly is helping to achieve all of the goals that Reid and the Dem’s say they support.
And lest you have any doubt that this was intended to kill the bill, consider one final nail Reid himself put in this bill’s coffin – he wrote the bill himself, throwing out Boxer’s committee work, throwing out all of Kerry’s work, allowing no other Senators any input at all – and then he ruled that his bill had to be considered on a take it or leave it basis, no debate allowed, no amendments allowed. The reason you don’t see that happen much is because that kind of heavy-handedness pretty much guarantees a 99-1 vote against in the Senate no matter *what* the issue is – Senators don’t much like having their toes stepped on that way no matter which party they’re in.
So that’s why the bill died – Harry Reid quite intentionally murdered it.