I don’t usually go for political articles, but this one deserves mention for the wholesale idiocy about energy on display.
Don Monfort writes: Submitted on 2011/10/01 at 10:24 am
Sorry to stray off topic, but I was flabbergasted by something I just read:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576602524023932438.html
The most flabbergasting part; our energy policy is based on fantasy:
When it was Mr. Hamm’s turn to talk briefly with President Obama, “I told him of the revolution in the oil and gas industry and how we have the capacity to produce enough oil to enable America to replace OPEC. I wanted to make sure he knew about this.”
The president’s reaction? “He turned to me and said, ‘Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. [Energy] Secretary [Steven] Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery developed that will make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon.’” Mr. Hamm holds his head in his hands and says, “Even if you believed that, why would you want to stop oil and gas development? It was pretty disappointing.”
America is still going to use oil in 5 years, but I’d rather it be domestic than foreign, wouldn’t you? Alternate technology takes time to develop and there’s zero chance we’ll all be driving electric vehicles in 5 years.
Obama said this when he was running for office:
Obama pledges to end oil dependency
Friday, August 29, 2008 (KGO ABC7 Television)
“I will set a clear goal as president: in ten years we will finally end our dependence on oil in the Middle East,” said Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama.
…
“If he means what it sounds like it means, it’s impossible,” said Stanford University Professor James Sweeney.
I guess we know what he meant by that now.
When the presidential limo becomes an electric vehicle, I’ll take his pledge seriously.
The vehicle fuel consumption is about 8 miles per gallon which on metric system corresponds to around 30 litres/100 km – source specs
A GOP candidate could use this information to slaughter Obama in the coming election. It would also put a stake through the heart of the green agenda. Millions of jobs and access to cheap energy. This is what America needs, not dumb windmills. A simple strategy of showing Global Warming as the fraud it is and showing the American citizens how America could be energy independent. The creation of millions of jobs at a time of serious need. An advertising campaign showing AGW as a fraud and showing Obama as preventing America from creating jobs and the potential of being energy independent. Who ever picks this up and can create a decent campaign strategy would be hard to beat. The strategy will give people a visible hope, a very powerful message.
Galane says:
October 2, 2011 at 12:55 am
What’s the fastest way to increase American oil production? Put pumps on all the wells that have been drilled, oil found, then capped. There’s also plenty of wells where oil has been found then the hole plugged and abandoned.
Why the bleep do oil companies put huge amounts of money into drilling wells they have no plans to use immediately, or never use at all? Is this all busywork to keep union labor happy?
Couple of practical reasons. A few other “national energy security” reasons – but – realistically, those are just incidental and happenstance.
Oil drilling (natural gas drilling) is a very risky industry: Few wells drilled are actually productive. Wrong place at the right depth. Wrong place, wrong depth. Wrong depth but the right place. Wrong pressure below at the right place at the right depth. Salt water below at the right depth at the right place …. Too much sulfur. Too much hydrogen sulfide to sell. Etc.
Oil, but too little to be practical at today’s price.
Oil, but no pipeline from the well yet.
Oil, but the company has too little money to finish.
Oil is promising, but nothing found yet and there’s no money to keep drilling.
Anyway, the oil companies and independent producers have to balance what they can get “right now!” against what they “might get” in a few years from every discovery. In a few months. In a decade. Natural gas, for example, is overproduced in the Penn State area right now and so it is not as profitable as it used to be to keep exploring – except as a hedge against future uncertain times. Against this is the need to explore so the company CAN maintain that future production twenty years from, now. Getting a long-term lease to allow drilling now under somebody’s land may be less expensive (less risky) than gambling that all exploration will be banned by some future EPA – as happened across the Gulf Coast last summer. Everything shut down by fiat and decree.
Often, if they can prove oil (natural gas) is really present in producible amounts in a specific place, they DON’T want to begin producing in that area until adjacent plots and leases can be negotiated. (Why tell a competitor where you know there is oil and he doesn’t?) But, if you have evidence of oil, you may not get money to produce it until bank loans are set. Or until the price goes up. Or enviro reg’s change.
Anyway, “found oil” IS money in the bank for your company. Undiscovered oil is useless and worth nothing. Except a few hundred dry holes and many millions (billions offshore) of probably wasted dollars looking for it in places where it isn’t. (Or you are looking at the right place but at the wrong depth…..) So, if you can prove to a bank that you have found oil in one place, you can get a loan to drill again nearby. But you may not produce from either well until prices go up far enough to build a pipe from both to a regional pipeline. Or from a dozen wells or a hundred wells to that national pipeline.
Nationally, “found oil” (oil that is not pumped out yet) is a national resource worth preserving IF the war breaks out and and the oil tankers are sunk offshore/blockaded in the enemy’s port offshore. Once oil is found, it can be pumped relatively easily and piped to a refinery at no risk later. Money is needed. Time to build the pipe. Material. But the hard part (finding the oil) has been done.
If Obama believes for one minute that they can make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon he is barking mad.
As some noted during the ramp up of Climategate – it wouldn’t stop the warmist. If anything, after a brief pause and regrouping, it’s all in again. If anything, the screeching is louder this fall than anytime in the past.
And actually, Obama might achieve his goal of no imported energy using an old tried and true method. On the trajectory he’s going with his economic and energy and business actions, we’ll be like the Germans in the 1920s.. The exchange rate in Dec 1923 was 4.2 trillion marks to one US dollar. Germans used the mark for fuel. This link has a photo and explanation:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/crisis1923rev_print.shtml
this one as well. There won’t be enough zeros in you computers to buy a barrel of oil from Chavez, provided he lives through his cancer treatments.
Energy in German in the 1920s was plentiful but completely unaffordable. And it happens quickly. The Gernman CPI jumped from 100 in July 1922 to trillions by Dec 1923.
Obama has plenty of time to revert the US back to the Stone Age emissions levels.
Carsten Arnholm – I assume you were pointing out that with this one find, Statoil would have deferred global peak oil by … 6 days … if discoveries like that weren’t already factored into peak oil calculations.
I note that a number of commentators are treating the concept of peak oil with complete contempt, and talking as though their point of view was so totally obvious that there was no need to actually check the evidence. Well to my mind, Hubbert’s paper was brilliant for its time (I have read it), and he got it spot on. His logic must apply equally to any limited resource such as global oil, gas or coal. Of course, the dates may be quite different for each, and predictions of those dates are subject to error because they include unknowns like discovery rates and technology advances.
In spite of all new oil discoveries, including the Gulf of Mexico (say 2006, 15bn bbls?), Bakken (1951 but say 2007, 5-7bn?), Tupi (2007, 5bn?), Eagle Ford (1970s but say 2008, 5bn?), etc, there is little happening which has the potential to defer peak oil much past today. Every 5bn bbl find – and they aren’t happening very often now – defers global peak oil by no more than 2 months, and in reality by zero if it is already in the predicted discovery rate. The four finds I just mentioned have deferred global peak oil by no more than one year, and in reality by zero because the global discovery rate didn’t actually change much. Our favourite source of information here, Wikipedia, says : “The peak of world oilfield discoveries occurred in 1965[47] at around 55 billion barrels (8.7×109 m3)(Gb)/year.[48] According to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), the rate of discovery has been falling steadily since. Less than 10 Gb/yr of oil were discovered each year between 2002-2007.[49] According to a 2010 Reuters article, the annual rate of discovery of new fields has remained remarkably constant at 15-20 Gb/yr.[50]” and “World wide oil discoveries have been less than annual production since 1980“. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_consumption#Demand_for_oil
No matter how you cut it, global peak oil is real and is either here now or is not far away. The IEA says it was in 2006 (for conventional oil). Bear in mind that it would take a new discovery of 30bn bbls over and above the regular 15-20bn bbls pa discovery rate, to defer global peak oil by a single year. I’m happy to work through figures with anyone who thinks otherwise, and (unlike AGWers) I would be very happy indeed to be proved wrong.
Philip Bradley says:
October 1, 2011 at 11:16 pm
“It is a scandal that billions are being wasted on electric car nonsense, but no vehicle manufacturer anywhere has volume production of NG cars for developed world markets, although Honda is close.”
See
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdgasfahrzeug#Serienfahrzeuge
List of car models with CNG installed by the manufacturer. Find the list starting with “BMW: 316g Compact, 518g”.
All the cash cow volume models come as CNG variant if you want one.
savethesharks says: October 1, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Jessie says:
October 1, 2011 at 6:39 pm
Smokey says: October 1, 2011 at 6:15 pm
[snip – Anthony]
Smokey, you got snipped!
==========================
So what the hell is your point??? Who cares???
So Smokey pushed the envelope a little bit.
Best look at what he says the other 99.99999999 % of the time.
Most always unsnippable.
Have read what Smokey he/she saysand I was interested to know from him. If as you state he got snipped 01.00000001% of the 99.99999999 % then that is a fine observation by you.
I wanted to know what the heck was written that got snipped.
It must have been ……….precise…………. good….. antagonistic……straight to the pointt……………….analytical………….not part of an agenda………off the mark……………….plain crap …. as per criteria of Anthony and his great mods. So yes, I cared to question this.
Smokey provided the link to what got snipped. That was fine. And answered my question to him/her.
Thanks muchly. And much appreciated, as I was interested in having a response to my question … having read Smokey’ comments previously in many discussions and appreciating his/her input.
Jessie,
Thanks for that Dusty Springfield video. She got my teenage hormones rushing back in the ’60’s! [and yes, I’m a red blooded, hot blooded American man].
And I’m very appreciative of savethesharks support. I always pay attention to savetheshark’s prescient, intelligent comments. But Anthony is The Man, and what he says goes.
There is no one like Anthony on the skeptics’ side. He walks the talk, doing experiments, holding the alarmists’ feet to the fire. I support Anthony because I truly believe we’re making a difference. The CAGW lie has to be exposed, and WUWT is in the vanguard. It’s a long, hard process, but we have the truth on our side.The opposition is tough, and backed by big money. We only have the truth. But in the end, the truth is all that matters.
The very same people do not want you to cut a tree to make green energy, though why they support ethanol is beyond me since it takes up farmland…
Smokey says:
October 1, 2011 at 7:05 pm
Jessie,
My last post was over the top. I was just upset by this.
When you add these stories to the mix it really get scary Smokey. For those who think the questionable actions of the US government are due to the “Peter Principle” I think this series of articles put a very different light on the subject esp. given Smokey’s article. The greed for control of every aspect of our lives is a better explanation.
A “reason” is needed to grab more control and these articles illustrate how a “Reason” is manufactured. CAGW follows the same pattern. Problem-Reaction-Solution based on the Hegelian Dialectic method.
Out of one side of her mouth: Napolitano: terror threat may be highest since 9/11
US government’s actual actions:
Ms. Napolitano attempts to justify to lawmakers a 30 percent budget reduction for U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Administration Will Cut Border Patrol Deployed on U.S-Mexico Border
Napolitano Cancels Virtual Border Fence Project..1/14/2011
Local Officials: Border Crime On The Rise
Three of the four border states are losing their National Guard troops – Are Legalized Civilian Militia Groups the Answer to Arizona’s Border Security Problems?
While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen — and telling the Mexican government where they are (They watch and report to the border patrol BTW They do not engage the border crossers themselves.)
Radical Islam makes inroads among Latin America’s Native peoples
The “Patriot Act” itself talks of the Canadian border but says not one word about the Mexican Border. http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
I forgot to credit my source when I posted earlier. Here is the original information. I changed a few numbers based upon wikipedia data that I found. I also copy and pasted from the article.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080927100559AAq4lTM
So what your implying is, it is cheaper to take oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia and haul it across the ocean than it is to pump it out of our own backyard? Really? … Without the regulatory expenditures in the way (as you said to put aside) this seems to me to be quite impossible to pump and ship oil from the Middle East cheaper than pumping in my own backyard.
Didn’t you tell us that you do this for a living .. you said “remember, I do this for a living” .. pfffffftttttt… yah, whatever…
I look forward to the day when I can power a vehicle without having to burn something. But the hard facts of economic reality mean we must burn liquid hydrocarbons fuels. And in the US, 52% of our electricity comes from burning coal. It will take a long time, and a lot of money we do not have to convert from coal to something that pollutes less.
I would find the big push for electric vehicles to be more honest if government was doing all it could to develop walk-away-safe nuclear power, and especially thorium-based power.
The “green” Alternate energy is available but only if the morons would get out of the way and let us develop and implement the technology. This will never occur because if you have a stranglehold on energy you have a stranglehold on industry. This is all a part of the plan.
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” using the “Free Market” that is the World Trade Organization, NAFTA and other “Free Trade” agreements. Holdren put it very bluntly. “The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.” …interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren…
A workable solution to energy independence is called Thorium and China, not being hampered by “Political Correctness,” ….is leading the way with thorium…
The intriguing part is the sealed micro nuclear plants. Toshiba’s Micro Nuclear Reactor “…The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs….”
Hyperion has come up with Underground nuclear power plants no bigger than a hot tub… Measuring about 1.5 meters across and is part way through the approval process.
We already know that nuclear subs have been around for a long time, so nuclear powered ships and possibly rail should not be that much of a technological leap.
The only reason long haul trucking was able to compete with rail in the USA was because of unions and monopoly making it cost ineffective and customer unfriendly. (Dispatchers spend a lot of time screaming at unresponsive Rail employees while trying to find out where their shipments are.)
♫ Dreamer
Nothing but a Dreamer
Can you put your hands in your head
Oh No… ♫
I just called Obama to ask him about that battery thing. He was on the golf course, so I told him to call me later. He said he could talk, he was just standing around with his club in his hand, because a foursome of #@ur momisugly%&^*****ing Republican Congressmen ahead of him were deliberately playing at a snails pace, and refusing to let him play through.
Anyway, he said he remembered the conversation with the oil man, but that he didn’t get to finish telling him about the great new fossil fuel replacement technology, because the POTUS had to excuse himself to go to the toilet. Our President told me that the battery is just part of it. That gets the vehicle started and up to speed, then the windmill on top takes over and generates electricity to run the motors and recharge the battery. I said, “Uh, huh?”. He excitedly continued to explain that it could be used on all sorts of transport: buses, trucks, trains, it’s great for airplanes. The windmills double as propellers. And it will create millions of jobs in construction alone, as bridges, overpasses, train tunnels, etc. will have to be reconstructed. I said thank you to our President, and to myself I said, “It’s worse than we thought.”
Capping a well and sitting on it is simply not possible. It is a persistent myth.
Oil and gas leases are written for 1 to 10 years. ALL leases, whether federal, state, or private are limited term and revert to the owner after the primary term, unless they are “held by production”, meaning one can hold the lease beyond the primary term if production is established.. Once production ceases, they expire and can be re-leased to a different company.
Even during the primary term, on a federal lease, you’ll end up paying shut in royalty if you have a viable well and don’t produce it—that is you pay the government for oil you should have produced but didn’t.
Sure, there are short term clauses for maintenance, transportation issues etc., but any claims of oil companies shutting in wells to run up prices is a fine indicator of general ignorance of how the business actually functions.
Galane says:
October 2, 2011 at 4:20 am
“…but the truth seems to be that the majority of good wells have been capped to save them for a rainy day…”
Not much different than having water in a dam. When to let it out and cash in? Will be automatically adjusted in a free marked.
Mike Jonas-
As seductive as all those peak oil curves seem they have a fatal flaw—they ignore price.
Oil prices have been fairly flat in constant dollars through the development of those curves. Higher prices have made reserves and production possible which formerly were not. These increased reserves are in new and old fields, from conventional and unconventional sources. The effect is that all those curves are being warped beyond recognition. Texas, which should be the oldest, most peaked out place on the planet, has reversed the decline is increasing both oil and gas production.
If you really want to see just how faulty the science of Hubbert and his disciples is, google up “peak gas”, then look at what is being found and produced today.
J Martin says:
October 2, 2011 at 2:28 am
300 MPG for real cars is perpetual motion. Not physically possible, except by adding energy that you didn’t count, such as hydrodynamic. Recovering energy from braking helps only a little. Racing cars might recover a bit more energy than average, but you don’t brake that violently. And even so, I don’t think you will find many Formula 1 cars at 30 MPG, let alone 300. More like 3.
Jessie says:
October 2, 2011 at 4:04 am
savethesharks says: October 1, 2011 at 9:21 pm
============================
My apologies, Jessie. I completely misinterpreted, and should not have jumped to conclusions.
All the best,
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
We need to get this dreamer out of office!
This is ridiculous. Obama is open to domestic oil production, but it hardly makes him a bad person or an irresponsible leader because he wants to reduce our dependency on oil and produce less GHGs. Quite the contrary, actually.
Reducing oil use, by definition, reduces the demand for Middle Eastern oil, so it’s hypocritical to argue AGAINST green investment while simultaneously arguing FOR reduced demand for ME oil. It’s always so interesting to hear a righty pick and choose the numbers that support their case.
A high school student who’s sat through just a few hours of introductory economics can tell you that pollution – which relatively simple science has shown, with very high levels of confidence, leads to climate change – is an externality, and that products and processes that are energy/pollution intensive should be taxed or regulated to reflect their true social costs. Any serious economist will agree with this.
And in response to some of these “corrupt Democrats” comments, please, please don’t get me started. That’s an argument the right will ALWAYS lose.
Ant and Grasshopper
Fell in a deep and dark hole.
Modify my lease.
==========
Dear Mr. Chairman Zero Emission,
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Check out North Carolina on this October 2 at 5000 feet. That rime ice is gonna make for some good fall color in the beech trees, for sure. Ya’ll come, ya hear?
http://www.highcountrywebcams.com/webcameras_beechparkway.htm
http://www.highcountrywebcams.com/webcameras_BeechOZRUN.htm
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA