The folly of E15 anti-hydrocarbon policie
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EPA’s E-15 ethanol plan is bad for our pocketbooks, environment and energy policy
Guest post by Paul Driessen
The Obama Administration’s anti-hydrocarbon ideology and “renewable” energy mythology continues to subsidize crony capitalists and the politicians they help keep in office – on the backs of American taxpayers, ratepayers and motorists. The latest chapter in the sorry ethanol saga is a perfect example.
Bowing to pressure from ADM, Cargill, Growth Energy and other Big Ethanol lobbyists, Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow ethanol manufacturers to register as suppliers of E15 gasoline. E15 contains 15% ethanol, rather than currently mandated 10% blends.
The next lobbying effort will focus on getting E15 registered as a fuel in individual states and persuading oil companies to offer it at service stations. But according to the Associated Press and Washington Post, Team Obama already plans to provide taxpayer-financed grants, loans and loan guarantees to “help station owners install 10,000 blender pumps over the next five years” and promote the use of biofuels.
Pummeled by Obama policies that have helped send regular gasoline prices skyrocketing from $1.85 a gallon when he took office to $4.00 today – many motorists will welcome any perceived “bargain gas.” E15 will likely reduce their obvious pump pain by several cents a gallon, thus persuading people to fill up their cars, trucks and maybe even boats, lawnmowers and other equipment with the new blends.
That would be a huge mistake.
E15 gasoline will be cheaper because we already paid for it with decades of taxpayer subsidies that the Congressional Budget Office says cost taxpayers $1.78 every time a gallon of ethanol replaced a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol blends get fewer miles per tank than gasoline. More ethanol means even worse mileage. People may save at the pump, but cost per mile will increase, as will car maintenance and repair costs.
Ethanol collects water, which can cause engine stalls. It corrodes plastic, rubber and soft metal parts. Pre-2001 car engines, parts and systems may not be able to handle E15, which could also increase emissions and adversely affect engine, fuel pump and sensor durability. Older cars and motorcycles mistakenly (or for price or convenience) fueled with E15 could conk out on congested highways or in the middle of nowhere, boat engines could die miles from land or in the face of a thunderstorm, and snowmobiles could sputter to a stop in a frigid wilderness.
Homeowners and yard care professionals have voiced concerns that E15’s corrosive qualities could damage their gasoline-powered equipment. Because it burns hotter than gasoline, high ethanol gasoline engines could burn users or cause lawnmowers, chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and other outdoor power equipment to start inadvertently or catch fire, they worry.
As several trade associations have noted in a lawsuit, the Clean Air Act says EPA may grant a waiver for a new fuel additive or fuel blend only if it has demonstrated that the new fuel will not damage the emissions control devices of “any” engine in the existing inventory. E15 has not yet met this requirement. EPA should not have moved forward on E15 and should not have ignored studies that indicate serious potential problems with this high-ethanol fuel blend.
Largely because of corn-based ethanol, US corn prices shot up from an annual average of $1.96 per bushel in 2005 to $6.01 in 2011. This year we will make ethanol from 5 billion bushels of corn grown on an area the size of Iowa. E15 fuels will worsen the problem, especially if corn crops fall below expectations.
Ethanol mandates mean more revenues and profits for corn growers and ethanol makers. However, skyrocketing corn prices mean beef, pork, poultry, egg and fish producers pay more for corn-based feed; grocery manufacturers pay more for corn, meat, fish and corn syrup; and families see prices soar for almost everything on their dinner table.
Farmers like pork producer Jim A were hammered hard. Over a 20-year period, Jim became a part owner in a Texas operation and planned to buy out the other shareholders. But when corn and ethanol subsidies went into effect, the cost of feed corn shot from $2.80 per bushel in 2005 to “over $7.00” a bushel in 2008. “We went from treading water and making payments, to losing $100,000 a month,” he told me.
His farm was threatened with foreclosure and the ominous prospect of having to make up the difference in a short sale. After “never missing a single payment to anybody” in his life, he almost lost everything. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, a large pork producer leased the property, the bank refinanced his loans and Jim arranged a five-year lease. But thanks to ethanol he almost lost everything he’d ever worked for.
Even worse, the price of tortillas and tamales also skyrocketed, leaving countless poor Latin American families even more destitute. Soaring corn and wheat prices have also made it far harder for the USAID and World Food Organization to feed the world’s malnourished, destitute children.
Simply put, corn ethanol is wasteful and immoral. And yet E15 advocates want to go even further.
“For 40 years we have been addicted to foreign oil,” says Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis. “Our nation needs E15 to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, keep gas prices down at the pump, and end the extreme fluctuations in gas prices caused by our reliance on fuel from unstable parts of the world.”
That’s nonsense. America is blessed with centuries of untapped petroleum resources that antediluvian Deep Ecologists, ideology-driven politicians and EPA officials, and subsidy-obsessed renewable energy lobbyists seem intent on keeping locked up, regardless of the negative consequences.
These oil and gas deposits cannot be developed overnight. However, 40 years is not overnight. Yet that’s how long America has kept Alaska’s ANWR coastal plain, most of our Outer Continental Shelf, and most of our western states’ public lands and resources off limits to leasing, exploration and drilling.
If we had started the process twenty, ten or even five years ago, we’d have enough oil flowing to slash imports and cut world crude and US pump prices significantly. If President Obama had approved the Keystone XL pipeline, within two years over 800,000 barrels of Canadian, Montana and North Dakota crude would be flowing daily to Texas refineries – with similar effects on imports and prices.
Developing these resources would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs – and billions of dollars in lease bonuses and rents, production royalties, and corporate and personal taxes.
America’s surging natural gas production has already driven that fuel’s price from $8 to barely $2.00 per thousand cubic feet (or million Btus). That alone will persuade auto makers to build nat-gas-powered cars and trucks (and consumers to buy them), without massive new subsidy programs as advocated by T. Boone Pickens and assorted politicians. Natural gas can even be converted into ethanol (and diesel).
It will happen, unless Congress interferes – or EPA tries to regulate horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) into oblivion, and send natural gas prices back into the stratosphere.
Right now, we are burning our own – and the world’s – food, to fuel cars and trucks. And to grow corn, convert it into 14 billion gallons of ethanol, and ship it by truck or train, we are consuming one-third of America’s entire corn crop – and using millions of pounds of insecticides, billions of pounds of fertilizer, vast amounts of energy (all petroleum-based), and trillions of gallons of water.
Just imagine how those numbers will soar, if E15 is adopted nationwide – or if Big Ethanol’s big dream becomes reality, and motorists begin to burn “cheap” corn-based E85 in flex-fuel vehicles.
Will President Obama, Democrats and extreme environmentalists ever end their hatred of hydrocarbons, and their obsession with biofuels – and start embracing reliable, affordable energy that actually works?
__________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.cfact.org) and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Related articles
- U.S. approves 20 firms to make ethanol for E15 (reuters.com)
- EPA moves closer to approval of 15 pct ethanol gas (kansascity.com)
- EPA gives E15 go-ahead despite objections, approves production applications (green.autoblog.com)
Showing yet again you simply have no clue about what you are talking. And you refuse to even acknowledge others who provide direct factual evidence to you.
I have a 2003 Tahoe. I run everything from staright gas tro E85 and have since new. I use E85 better than 50% of the time. I have had no service issues.
Even with 90,000 miles, I get approximately 20% lower gas mileage in the REAL WORLD with E85 compared to E10. In the REAL WORLD I pay 21% less fpor E*% tah for E10. In the REAL WORLD I get almost identical fuel cost per mile with E85 than with E10.
Actually if you are going to use plants to produce fuel I rather see vats of algae wher the exhaust from coal plants ~ CO2, NOx, SO2 and waste heat ~ is put to good use. http://www.oilgae.com/algae/cult/cos/cos.html
Corn is really an obnoxious plant. It is particularly hard on the soil, requiring plenty of fertilizer, water, and pesticides. On top of that it does not produce a decent “cover” to protect the soil from erosion. http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/peak_soil/
A. Scott says:
April 25, 2012 at 1:50 am
“Just one little bitty problem. CORN IS CORN!
If you stop using corn for ethanol and use it instead as advocated by the alarmists for food – YOU ARE STILL GROWING THE SAME CORN on the SAME land using the SAME fertilizer, water etc.”
No you are not using the same amount of fertilizer. While crop yields have indeed increased- those yields (bu/ac) remain a linear function of the amount of N added. For corn figure 1 to 1.5 pounds of nitrogen per bushel of corn. Increase yield are obtained with increase fertilizer.
My point above however was focused on the hypocrisy of EPA pushing draconian nitrogen regulations at the same time it pushes ethanol. Maryland under EPA orders will need to spend somewhere in the $100m per year range to remove 10M pounds of nitrogen from the Chesapeake. Corn adds some 20million pounds per year. So EPA pushes corn which increases N allowing the Agency to claim nitrogen pollution and impose nitrogen TMDLs. These TMDLs beside being financially crippling allows EPA to decide not only how much nitrogen we are allowed to use but with the Chesapeake TMDLs- decide what industry sectors get the now reduced nitrogen allocation- what percent goes to agriculture, development etc.
Nitrogen is the new CO2. Control nitrogen and you can control every food, energy and development decision we make. I strongly urge you to read the 2011 EPA report “Reactive Nitrogen in the United States: An Analysis of Inputs, Flows, Consequences, and Management” to get an idea of where this is all going. (And watch how nitrogen “critical loads” will be the biggest hammer yet against coal)
EPA is proposing an across the board 25% reduction in nitrogen for the US and 45% for the Mississippi River Basin. Corn is the largest user of nitrogen fertilizer. EPA is pushing more corn. Go figure.
Additionally, if EPA was truly concerned about the environment they would pay some attention to the potential loss of land from CRP in response to the high corn price.
Yes I completely ignored your unsubstantiated claims. The EPA actually bases it’s figures on laboratory testing, something you do not have.
2012 Fuel Economy Guide (PDF) (EPA, pp. 31-35)
“These fuel economy estimates are based on laboratory testing. All vehicles are tested in the same manner to allow fair comparisons.”
“, FFVs operating on E85 usually experience a 25–30% drop in MPG due to ethanol’s lower energy content.”
Please, do not be fooled by Larry’s long winded rants that completely lack empirical evidence and scientific sources.
A. Scott says:
April 25, 2012 at 6:32 pm
….The USDA findings have been confirmed by additional studies conducted by the University of Nebraska and Argonne National Laboratory. These figures take into account the energy required to plant, grow and harvest the corn—as well as the energy required to manufacture and distribute the ethanol…..
________________________________
As I thought the numbers are probably rigged.
No one ever bothers to take into account the energy to mine the ore, smelt the ore, fabricate the parts, build all the equipment and ship all that equipment to the farmer. Do they also include all the energy needed to produce the fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides? Or do they only include the fuel used for a farmer to drive around his fields? Some how given the precision of the numbers I think it is only the amount of fuel.
Do you see how you can get a vast number of different answers depending on how you do the accounting? It is a lot like trying to figure out how much you actually pay in tax.
Gail Combs says:
April 25, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Corn is really an obnoxious plant. It is particularly hard on the soil, requiring plenty of fertilizer, water, and pesticides. On top of that it does not produce a decent “cover” to protect the soil from erosion.
=========
Long growing season as well. Try chisel plowing once you get the soil the way you like it.
Someone’s unsubstantiated comments is NOT “factual evidence”.
That is nice rhetoric, lets see what empirical testing actually shows,
Test results: E85 vs. gasoline (Consumer Reports)
“This chart shows how our 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe performed while running on E85 and gasoline in three fuel-economy tests and overall, in four acceleration tests, and in three emissions tests for gasoline vehicles.”
Fuel Economy
14 MPG – Gasoline (Overall)
10 MPG – E85 (Overall)
– 28.5% Decrease in fuel economy.
Lets see, “Larry (HotRod)” and “A. Scott” vs Consumer Reports, hmmm that is a tough call.
My comments? Those were from the Industrial Fire World article I quoted. Fighting Ethanol fires is different than other fuels,
NRT Quick Reference Guide: Fuel Grade Ethanol Spills (including E85) (PDF) (U.S. National Response Team)
“Differences between ethanol and gasoline: Ethanol is completely miscible (soluble) in water at any ratio, while gasoline has a low solubility in water. Fighting fires of fuel blends containing 10% or more ethanol by volume requires the use of an Alcohol Resistant-Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AR-AFFF).”
That’s a hard link to refute, Poptech.
Smokey says:
April 25, 2012 at 6:40 pm
A basic economics/civics lesson regarding ethanol:
1. Government is force
2. Good ideas do not have to be forced on others
3. Bad ideas should not be forced on others
4. Liberty is necessary for the difference between good ideas and bad ideas to be revealed
You could pay $100,000 for an Econ education and never learn the above.
___________________
This reminded me of a lecture given by someone running for the Senate I heard back in the late 70’s. He said that most civics classes talked about the balance of powers in the US Constution as being 3 branches of government, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch and the Supreme Court. He said there was really a 4th branch. The rights of the people embodied in the Bill of Rights. (Unfortunately, he lost.)
_____________________
Pat Moffitt says:
April 25, 2012 at 7:05 pm
A. Scott says:
April 25, 2012 at 1:50 am
“Just one little bitty problem. CORN IS CORN!
If you stop using corn for ethanol and use it instead as advocated by the alarmists for food – YOU ARE STILL GROWING THE SAME CORN on the SAME land using the SAME fertilizer, water etc.”
….
No you are not using the same amount of fertilizer. While crop yields have indeed increased- those yields (bu/ac) remain a linear function of the amount of N added. For corn figure 1 to 1.5 pounds of nitrogen per bushel of corn. Increase yield are obtained with increase fertilizer.
My point above however was focused on the hypocrisy of EPA pushing draconian nitrogen regulations at the same time it pushes ethanol. Maryland under EPA orders will need to spend somewhere in the $100m per year range to remove 10M pounds of nitrogen from the Chesapeake.
______________________
I work in water treatment. Convential treatment does not remove nitrates from water. If this extra nitrogen enters the streams and reaches the treatment plants as nitrates (I don’t know if they would. Maybe somebody here does know.), most small cities and even large cities can ill afford to install the additional processes neccessary to remove them.
I don’t know if it would reach the plants as nitrates, but if it does then you can add that to the cost of ethanol production. And that’s not counting the cost of removing the increased herbicides and pesticides likely to enter the streams if higher amounts are allowed for the production of ethanol corn.
“He said there was really a 4th branch.”
OOPS!
“Branch” should read “balance”.
“crony capitalists” – ha ha. You probably believe in the concept of “redistribution of wealth”, too.
You have to applaud our cunning linguists for their fantastic work, and our loyal media for propagation.
@Gail Combs April 25 at 6:10 pm,
‘As I recall you do not like nuclear either not even thorium. If you do not want to use oil (I consider it a wast of a great chemical precursor) then you should at least look at the pros and cons of thorium.
E. M. Smith’s comment on Thorium.”
No, I do advocate using petroleum. I do not advocate using up America’s domestic petroleum reserves when cheap foreign oil is abundant. We will need our own oil at some future day when we are once again at war and foreign oil supplies are cut off.
I do not favor nuclear for electric power production for reasons I have stated many times on WUWT, chiefly it’s extremely high cost compared to almost any alternative except wind and solar, it’s inherently unsafe with catastrophic release of toxic radiation and radioactive particles (see e.g. Japan Fukushima, US Three Mile Island, and Russian Chernobyl — all within 50 years. The world’s reactors are not yet near end-of-life where more accidents are expected to occur), and spent fuel creates a toxic legacy lasting thousands of years.
Thorium power is a pie-in-the-sky future technology. Its advocates praise its positives and completely gloss over all the negatives. Anyone can prove me wrong by building a full-scale thorium power plant, then having it run for 10 years to collect data on availability, maintainabiliy, and costs. Good luck competing with a combined-cycle gas-fired turbine plant, for both initial cost and operating cost. Total cycle cost for a CCGT plant is very tough to beat, with a thermal efficiency approaching 60 percent and natural gas at $2 per million Btu.
As to E.M. Smith’s writings, I agree with his basic conclusion. There is more than adequate uranium in the ocean. There is also many tons of gold dissolved in the ocean. Nobody mines it because they would go broke doing that. E.M. and I agree that nothing ever leaves the Earth (unless in a rocket and escapes the gravity field). Everything, every single atom, is still here ready to be used over and over again. All that need be applied is energy and ingenuity. The molecules may change, but the atoms do not. This also ignores the very small loss of some large atoms into smaller ones via nuclear fission. On a tonnage basis, it is so small that it may be ignored.
Farmers in particular know this, as their crops pull CO2 out of the sky, and convert the carbon to plant mass. Then the farmers burn some of the plant mass after the harvest, or allow the plant mass to rot, converting the carbon back into CO2. Energy is input to accomplish this, primarily from sunshine. There is also energy input via fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals, plus fuel to operate various machinery.
A “report” from the ethanol lobby. The differences between Pimentel & Patzek vs. Kim & Dale are discussed in this paper,
Seeking to Understand the Reasons for Different Energy Return on Investment (EROI) Estimates for Biofuels
(Sustainability, Volume 3, Issue 12, pp. 2413-2432, December 2011)
– Charles A.S. Hall, Bruce E. Dale, David Pimentel
As you can see Pimentel and Patzek are more thorough with allocation costs.
This is a nice smear, something we would expect from AGW Alarmists. Is the desperation showing? Both scientists are highly credentialed,
David Pimentel, B.S. University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1948); Ph.D. Cornell University (1951); Hon. D.Sc. (Honorary Doctorate of Science), University of Massachusetts at Amherst (2008); United States Army Air Force (1943-1945); Chief, Tropical Research Laboratory, U.S. Public Health Service, San Juan, Puerto Rico (1951-1954); Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Chicago (1954-1955); Project Leader, Technical Development Laboratory, U.S. Public Health Service (1954-1955); Assistant Professor of Ecology, Cornell University (1955-1960); Associate Professor of Ecology, Cornell University (1960-1963); O.E.E.C. Fellow, Oxford University, UK (1961); NSF Computer Scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1961); Professor and Head, Department of Entomology and Limnology, Cornell University (1963-1969); Professor of Ecology, Cornell University (1969-1976); Professor, Core Faculty, Center for Environmental Quality Management, Cornell University (1973-1974); Professor of Ecology and Agricultural Sciences, Cornell University (1976-2005); Member, Secretary of Energy’s Energy Research Advisory Board, U.S. Department of Energy (1979-1983); Member, Ecological Society of America; Member, Entomological Society of America; Member, Society for the Study of Evolution; Member, Entomological Society of Canada; Member, American Society of Naturalists; Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Member, American Institute of Biological Sciences; Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Agricultural Sciences, Cornell University (2005-Present)
Tadeusz W. Patzek, M.S. Chemical Engineering, Silesian Technical University, Poland (1974); Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, Silesian Technical University, Poland (1980); Research Associate, Chemical Engineering Research Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland (1974-1980); Fulbright Fellow, Chemical Engineering Department, University of Minnesota (1978-1979); Research Associate, Chemical Engineering Department, University of Minnesota (1981-1983); Research Engineer, Enhanced Recovery Research Department, Shell Development (1983-1989); Senior Reservoir Engineer, Shell Western E&P, Inc. (1989-1990); Assistant Professor, Department of Materials Science and Mineral Engineering, U.C. Berkeley (1990-1995); Associate Professor, Department of Materials Science and Mineral Engineering, U.C. Berkeley (1995-2002); Professor of Geoengineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, U.C. Berkeley (2002-2008); Invited Professor, Earth Sciences Department, TU Delft, The Netherlands (2004), Member, American Geophysical Union; Member, American Physical Society; Member, American Chemical Society; Professor and Chairman, Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin (2008-Present)
Patzek at best has energy industry experience from over 30 years ago. All that means is he is less likely to be influenced by things that are not supported by empirical evidence as most environmentalists are.
All the ethanol proponents here should demand the mandate is abolished so they can show us how much “better” mileage they get, how much “cheaper” their fuel blends are and put straight gasoline to shame!
Why are they so afraid to do this if their arguments are so superior?
@_Jim on April 25, at 10:16 am
Referring to my statement: “A small but viable domestic industry is required, and this we have.”, you then wrote
“And there you have it ladies and gentlemen:
Self-imposed limitations.
This is what guides our legislators and executive branch politicians think, as guided by lobbyists, industry ‘professionals’/trade groups and certain think-tanks … this is the philosophy which guides the Obama administration and most all congress on both side of the aisle; the informed intelligentsia setting the course and agenda in regards to domestic oil exploration and supply.”
Yes, a self-imposed limitation on domestic drilling. Again, for a very good set or reasons. Briefly, they are these:
1. Oil is not distributed equally amongst all nations. For example, Japan has virtually none and must purchase oil from others. Middle East countries are well-known oil exporters, along with Indonesia, Canada, North Sea participants, and a few others.
2. As Daniel Yergin wrote so elegantly in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book: The Prize, The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, oil is the single most important commodity in the world. His book details the history of oil, and notes how vitally important oil is to any nation that finds itself at war. The US was the oil provider for the Allies in World War II since the Middle East oil fields were not yet producing in great quantity.
3. The US has a vast number of enemies, both active and passive at this time. There will be future wars, and they could easily escalate into many years. We could easily find our oil imports cut off.
4. Only an idiot or a madman would wage a war with inadequate oil supplies. Yes, nuclear powered ships are great, but oil propels most ships, not nuclear power. Oil propels each aircraft. Oil propels every ground vehicle. Back on the home front, oil is essential to a war effort for manufacturing and transport of goods. As I wrote earlier, Japan and Germany learned this the hard way in the early 1940s. There was an excellent reason the Allies’ strategy was to cut off the oil supplies to both Germany and to Japan at the earliest opportunity.
5. The US presently has adequate domestic production and an oil industry that can, if need arises, ramp up to replace any loss from an oil embargo. The oil is in the ground, we know where it is, and we know how to get it.
6. We have ample oil available for purchase from those with an excess, and every barrel we purchase preserves a precious barrel in our soil for that day when we will most assuredly need it desperately.
So, yes, your conclusion is correct, this is a self-imposed limitation and it arises from some very smart people who think things through, who take a long view, who are sober and serious. One might ask the question, why has the US oil production rate hovered around 6 million barrels per day, year in and year out, even as our technology for finding and producing oil has greatly improved? The idea is to make the other fellow sell off his oil, and preserve ours for a critical time. Other countries do this also, unless they are desperate for foreign exchange — see e.g. United Kingdom, selling their oil since they have little else to sell these days.
Note that China has very little domestic oil reserves, and this puts a great disadvantage on them for any future conflicts. Their first move, as was Japan’s, will be to occupy the Indonesian oil fields. They might also occupy Australia’s oil fields. India will not be a belligerent due to a lack of oil. They are an importing nation.
Smokey says:
April 25, 2012 at 6:40 pm:
“A basic economics/civics lesson regarding ethanol:
1. Government is force
2. Good ideas do not have to be forced on others
3. Bad ideas should not be forced on others
4. Liberty is necessary for the difference between good ideas and bad ideas to be revealed
You could pay $100,000 for an Econ education and never learn the above.”
Smokey,
Of the 182 comments (so far) on this article, yours are a fine distillate from the weak mash of other arguments… and the most succinct and applicable herein.
These truths should be self evident. Unfortunately, to oh-so-many, they are not.
MtK
Gunga Din says:
April 25, 2012 at 7:52 pm
I don’t know if it would reach the plants as nitrates, but if it does then you can add that to the cost of ethanol production. And that’s not counting the cost of removing the increased herbicides and pesticides likely to enter the streams if higher amounts are allowed for the production of ethanol corn.
Yes they are a cost – a big one given EPA regulations. Like much else with the Agency the nitrate assumptions are built on a mountain of sketchy science. Consider the water treatment costs (and forestalled development) for the 10mg/l drinking water standard supposedly to prevent blue baby syndrome. More than 15% of the US drinking water exceeds the standard—- how many cases of methemoglobinemia in the US from drinking water over the last decade? I can’t find any. California is now focusing on the “nitrate crisis” in its agricultural regions with potentially massive agriculture policy and cost implications. And yet I can’t find a single case from drinking water in California. Seems California forgot the study done in 1972 that found no reported cases in the State and followed 256 children in low and high nitrate areas and found while the effect of nitrate was detectable-“it was not impressive.” http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.62.9.1174
Blue Baby syndrome may be more related to bacterial contamination and in the very few cases of Blue Baby found in the US nitrate may simply be a proxy for bacterial contamination.
@ur momisugly more soylent greet, April 25 at 1:19 pm
Re your question, “Roger, how many years of domestic oil supply do you reckon we have? If we have more than a century’s worth, how much do we need to set aside as a strategic resource?
Also, without the capacity to produce and refine domestic oil, we are still vulnerable to having our oil supply shut off. As you know, it takes years to get an oil field developed and pipelines built to carry the oil to the refineries.”
Taking this one at a time: How many years of US production? Per the EIA in 2009, the US has approximately 20 billion barrels of proved reserves. Our daily consumption is about 18 million barrels per day, so roughly 1000 days, a little more than 3 years. Don’t be fooled by this calculation, because we have been “running out” of oil ever since I can remember. That is at least 50 years in my memory. Curiously, running out has never happened. Worldwide, the proved reserves will last approximately 40 to 45 years at current consumption rates. That, too, has been the case since at least 1960. We never run out of oil, as I explained in my speech to Tulane Law School (see link above), because we keep finding more and more as technology improves. Peak Oil adherents fail to allow for technical progress. Several of my friends are petroleum engineers, and they know for a fact that we will never run out of oil.
The question of how much to set aside as a strategic resource was answered just above, all of it except the amount we produce to maintain a viable oil industry capable of quickly ramping up should the need arise.
Your statement about lack of production and refining capacity is puzzling. We have immense reserves of oil, and it will not require many years to bring the oil into production. That is a convenient myth. It has some basis in fact, for extreme locations such as the Arctic, and very deep water wells. Land-based wells are routinely producing within a very few months. No need to believe me, ask any competent oil industry executive.
With the existing crude oil pipeline system in place, there is very little need for additional pipeline capacity in the US. Even the much-discussed Keystone pipeline is simply a political football. Notice that the gas stations continue to have plenty of gasoline. Without the Keystone pipeline. The Bakken oil field is one small exception; it could use a bigger pipeline to bring oil to the refineries.
As to inadequate refining capacity, that is a pure myth. The fact is that the US has over-capacity and has had for some years. Refineries on the East Coast are being shut down. One does not shut down capacity if there is already a shortage.
Ah yes, “very smart” bureaucrats are always better at making decisions than markets. The former Soviet Union proved this policy very well.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/29/canada-yanks-some-climate-change-programs-from-
budget/#comment-939257
Excerpt:
In North America, our greatest folly has been corn ethanol. Now, almost 40% of the huge US crop is used for corn ethanol – about 130 million tonnes per year of corn goes into our gas tanks, forced into gasoline by government mandates. This folly has driven up the cost of food worldwide, at great cost to the world’s poor.
Grid-connected wind power, solar power and corn ethanol all require huge life-of-project subsidies to survive, and would go bankrupt the minute these subsidies cease. Many of the subsidies are in the form of mandates – forcing power companies and gasoline suppliers to include these costly and counterproductive enviro-schemes in their products, at great expense to consumers.
The radical environmentalists have been remarkably effective at forcing really foolish, costly and counterproductive schemes upon Western society. The backlash, when it comes, won’t be pretty.
When you hear the term “green energy”, it’s not about greening the environment – it’s all about the money.
An interesting piece on the EPA’s enforcement philosophy in regard to oil and gas producers and apparently everybody else as well
“In a Senate speech, Senator Inhofe will draw attention to a little known video from 2010, which shows a top EPA official, Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, using the vivid metaphor of crucifixion to explain EPA’s enforcement tactics for oil and gas producers. In this video Administrator Armendariz says:
“But as I said, oil and gas is an enforcement priority, it’s one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production. And I gave, I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said. It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up. And, that won’t happen unless you have somebody out there making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an industry, you find people violating the law, you go aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very quickly. That’s what these companies respond to is both their public image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry to clean up very quickly. So, that’s our general philosophy.””
@Poptech April 25, 2012 at 9:00 pm
“Ah yes, “very smart” bureaucrats are always better at making decisions than markets. The former Soviet Union proved this policy very well.”
Poptech, the snark is misplaced on this issue. Oil is not an ordinary commodity. Many countries do as we do: hoard domestic reserves and purchase on the market. This is a very long game, a very serious game, with absolutely deadly consequences. Anybody who wants to leave oil to “free market” is either deliberately blind or hopelessly naive. Does anybody seriously believe that wars are a thing of the past? Has anyone been watching the daily developments in Iran re nuclear explosives, and Israel? Does no one consider Iran’s threat to the US’ existence? The world is continuing to simmer with barely controlled rage and hate, and very little is required for that to burst out into war. We would be absolutely stupid to drill and produce our domestic oil reserves. Better to buy what we can while we can.
As I noted earlier, every President since and including Truman has seen the wisdom of this. Even Obama, for all his faults, has ensured that we maintain our domestic production at about the same level as the previous couple of decades, and no more.
Roger Sowell,
That analysis would make sense but for one thing: this Administration will not even allow drilling to determine new reserves, and where they are located.
@Smokey,
Here is a recent article re actual data on US well drilling. The numbers are not far off, year-on-year. We are still drilling, as note the increase in dry holes. This is from API, American Petroleum Institute.
http://www.ogj.com/articles/2012/04/api-1q-total-drilling-down-exploratory-well-completions-up.html