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Topic: Drilling for more oil in the U.S.
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| Astera | Posted – 7/3/2008 12:52:17 AM | show profile Oil and the Suburbs Here in California, gas prices are at least tangentially contributing to housing and foreclosure woes. Back in the housing boom years, when gas was relatively cheap, anyone who wanted to buy a house could just "drive until they qualified." Developers built these shiny, fancy new houses in hot, polluted, mostly undesirable areas with no nearby job bases. See, for example, Corona, where one- or two-year old 5-bedroom McMansions are now selling for about $300,000, down from perhaps $750,000 or more. For first-time homeowners, these shiny homes were (semi) affordable, especially when homes in the close-in suburbs were selling for $1 million plus, so hey, these people were happy to drive 70 miles each way to their jobs, just so long as they got to live the American dream of "owning" a home! Now that subprime mortgages have collapsed and people are struggling to hang on to their homes, that long commute at current gas prices suddenly becomes an issue. And of course, this being Southern California, there are relatively few public transportation options, especially from the exurbs to the job centers. The point is, our dependence on oil touches almost every aspect of our lives. Increasing our dependence is not the answer. In addition to driving a lot less, I'm also trying not to buy as many petroleum-based goods. For instance, I use Pyrex containers to store my leftovers, not buy-and-toss plastic containers. Also, if I forget my reusable grocery bags, I ask for paper instead, which can at least decompose and renew more quickly than petroleum-based plastic bags. One of the main reasons why cars don't get better gas mileage is because Detroit automakers have, in essence, been heavily subsidized by the government. Why else are they only now beginning to retool their products and consider hybrids? Clearly, our reliance on oil has caused more problems than it has solved. Offshore drilling is ugly and will only make a little difference in our total oil supply. Instead, we need to break the habit. ------ www.adventuresofastera.blogspot.com |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/3/2008 1:06:17 AM | show profile Good points Astera. And don't forget all the plastic crap we buy from China. Lots of oil goes into the plastic itself, then the oil that goes into shipping from China to us. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/3/2008 6:06:19 AM | show profile >> If there are no fueling stations no one is going to get the car. If there are no cars no one is going to invest in a fueling station. << But they are investing. And I agree it's still a long way off. That's why I am wondering if this is where people hould invest money for the long term. Honda is giving those hydrogen vehicles a test run in California and Shell is indeed investing in those hydrogen filling stations in California. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/3/2008 6:15:44 AM | show profile @Astera: Plastic is not a bad thing. It's just way too cheap and we use a lot of disposable plastics. Plastics made cars lighter and more fuel efficient, and reduced the need for metal (mined and smelted) parts. The biggest problem I think is we don't recycle plastic as much as we should. But I'm not sure it's "greener" to use Pyrex instead of Tupperware. Also, one thing that really bothers me is packaging. Even glass packaging (like little jars and stuff) where you use wall that water to wash them even if you keep the glasses. Single-serving and small packaging is evil: you pay more for less and you produce lots of extra garbage. I think one really good thing to do is to avoid single-serving products (like 12-pack potato chips) and buy as much "raw commodity" in your groceries, like rice instead of Rice-a-Roni. You can even put rice in a reuseable bag. Plus, I think a really good indicator of a healthier diet is if your groceries produce less garbage in the form of packaging. Less packaging = more raw ingredients, food that spoils (which si better for you than food that has a shelf life). More packaging = preservatives, processed sugars, MSG, fats and oils. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/3/2008 12:03:15 PM | show profile Chucho, I think the only ones who are really excited about Hydrogen are big oil. First of all, hydrogen currently almost always produced via natural gas. And second, there would be a need for hydrogen refueling stations. As with oil, they could control all of this. Harder for them to control electricity. I think in the very long-term though there is promise. Especially if hydrogen can be produced locally through distributed power generation. That is, I've gone solar panels/windmill in my backyard or neighborhood, the energy from these can be used to produce hydrogen locally for vehicles, and excess energy goes back into the grid. We're a long way from that though and I think it's possible that plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles would be here for a much longer time. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/3/2008 12:38:22 PM | show profile Yes, but electricity is made predominantly from coal. So these same major infrastructure changes would have to be implemented (albeit not so "upfront" as hydrogen fuel stations) a truly "green" form of electric or hybrid vehicle. It's going to be a log time, too, before electricity is green. Meanwhile, the best fully electric vehicle still only gets you about 200 miles before you have to rush to find a plug-in and wait hours for a recharge. It definitely feels like hydrogen is going to eventually take over hybrid and electric, probably, as you say, from using natural gas (which burns cleaner than oil). 50 mpg is nothing by the way. I read the Geo Metro (which drives like a shopping cart) got the mid-40s. Even an old diesel gets over 40. BY now we should all be driving vehicle getting over 50, but I guess America has lost its can-do attitude and has spent the past 30 years mimicking the waste and excess of the 1950s. It seems like whenever anyone brings up this issue in a public sphere, there's alwasy some naysaying conservative cynnically ranting about big government and regulations and how everything we're talking about is part of some anti-populist ideological agenda by out-of-touch people. (For some reason, these people think overweight Americans living in ugly suburban houses watching FOX News all day long and shopping at Home Depot and Wal Mart are somehow "in touch" with reality while those who live in the city and have fancy college degrees and travel and speak Spanish -- etc. -- are living in the lala land of elitist excess. Frankly, I'm kind of tired of our ingenuity being stymied by these people who spend more time talking about "eco-nazis" than about how to solve some problem that very clearly exist in the world when it comes to energy consumption and environmental destruction. Whose idea was it to make the idea of conservation (which is a conservative principle, by the way) a political ideology that should be opposed? But I digress. I guess we just have to put up with the ranting peanut gallery and try to prevent these people from running (and ruining, because they have no respect for it) our government through education and political participation. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/4/2008 12:39:02 AM | show profile Can Do! I think we still have the "can-do" attitude, especially if our backs are up against the wall. But I think they really do need to be up against the wall. We're starting to show just a little of that... Take Utah, starting a four-day work week for government employees. And Republican (yes a Republican) Senator Warner asking the DOE to look into reducing speed limits to 55 mph to save gas. These really can make a difference, especially the speed limit reduction. Granted the overall effect is relatively small for any single action but every little bit helps. I saw that Chevy is going to start selling its Beat to the U.S. (a very small car they were planning on selling overseas). Oh, so you CAN make small cars? (Of course not as profitably, but then again they might also want to stay in business...) We KNOW they can make more fuel efficient cars. Just a matter of consumers demanding them. Back to hydrogen... by the time we could really get hydrogen going (sooner actually) we're going to have the same problems with natural gas that we have with oil now. My understanding though is that more energy is lost in the hydrogen fuel cell process than with electricity. The all electric car has that problem of needingtime to recharge, and this would probably be a hard one to overcome. But there's the plug-in version that doesn't gives more flexiblity. In a nutshell, all of our energy (cars, heating, electricty) needs to go renewable. By definition it will be the only sustainable way forward in coming generations. (Renewable being broad here, including geothermal, solar, wind, wood, plant-based, etc.). But it won't happen in your lifetime or mine. Maybe ... maybe in my kids lifetime... |
| chucho | Posted – 7/4/2008 7:19:33 AM | show profile I'd probably remove wood and plant-based from the list. Plants store carbon. Using plants for energy releases carbon. And why isn't nuclear on the list? I know it has problem with storing the waste, but it's being used and it's not going away and it releases steam rather than carbon. If had to choose between crop replacement (converting land for energy use rather than food production) and releasing more carbon in to the atmosphere, or nuclear, with the problem of waste storage and long-term containment (hey, isn't that what Indian reservations are for?) I'm not which one is better or worse than the other. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/8/2008 10:22:07 AM | show profile Here's an article pointing out that oil is traded in a global market, so the incremental global difference in price for a very small amount of additional oil from the US would be pretty much insignificant. Of course, it's Big Oil who stands to gain, as their world is shrinking (as more and more oil is under control of government-controlled national oil companies). People should not be fooled, all this additional drilling would be good for the oil companies but do virtually nothing for the rest of us and damage our environment. **** ANALYSIS-US oil firms seek drilling access, but exports soar While the U.S. oil industry wants access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries. ...The surge in exports appears to contradict the pleas from the U.S. oil industry and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. "We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country," President Bush told reporters this week. "We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home." ...But environmentalists and other opponents to expanding drilling areas could seize on the record exports to argue Congress should not open more acres if U.S. refineries are churning crude oil into petroleum products that are sent out of the American market. "It doesn't look good to say: 'We need more oil.' But then export the refined products that you're getting. It doesn't seem to be consistent," said Jim Presswood, energy lobbyist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. ... http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0325640920080703 |
| beachbum | Posted – 7/8/2008 5:09:35 PM | show profile the only permanent solution is to find an alternative energy source. then we can laugh at the Arabs. they can keep their precious oil when that happens. |
| beachbum | Posted – 7/8/2008 5:13:51 PM | show profile also, in a way i'm glad that oil costs are going up. that way maybe the government can put more effort into improving public transportation and we can find more creative and exercise-friendly ways to get around. people in europe, where gas is a lot higher, are not as fat as americans are. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/9/2008 5:35:19 AM | show profile Beachbum: I agree with a bunch of what you say, but a couple of replies: 1.) Most Arabs don't have oil, in fact a great many of them are pretty poor, which is a primary reason for the instability and a symptom of the corruption and in the MENA region, and 2.) The Arabs that do have oil will not have a problem selling it as long as they have it. With China set to become the world's largest economy and military, the oil-producing Arabs will simply align themselves to the East which will eat up whatever America stops buying. But who are we kidding? Some people talk like America is going to become energy independent in our lifetime. I seriously doubt that, considering that one in five Americans love their oily president and his oil foreign policy -- and you'll pry the steering wheel off the cold dead hand that isn't clutching the gun. America consumed 20 million barrels a day China consumes 9 million barrels a day The numbers get smaller after than. Even India is consuming less than half of China's rate and even relatively tiny Japan, which consumes over 5 million barrels a day. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/9/2008 10:53:45 AM | show profile we have all the tools we need already Honestly, we really don't need dramatically different new technologies or energy sources that we don't already know about. We just need to implement the things we already know how to do. - We can set car/light truck fuel economy standards to 50mpg. There are cars that can already get this, and fuel economy standards much higher everywhere else in the world. - We can dramatically shift from coal fired power plants (and later switch from natural gas) to cleaner energy sources. In the very long term this will have to be all renewable (wind, geothermal, solar, etc.), but in the middle term I think we are going to have to resign ourselves to more nuclear too. - We can use our biomass waste as another energy/fuel source. - We absolutely must must must conserve energy and stop treating these incredibly energy-dense fossil fuels so casually. These are precious and powerful resources and we should use them in that manner. We may be a little colder in the winter, a little hotter in the summer, and exercise more. - Along that lines, we are going to have to get used to using our bodies more (more walking, biking, farming, manual labor). Not a bad thing for sure here in the US. - We are going to have to consume less junk, buy less stuff, and focus on what we really need to survive (food, water, shelter.) That said, energy independence is going to be a generational change, not something we can do in ten or twenty years. |
