Let’s just look at a few drastic examples as to what has happened during the past year:

1.         Do we all remember when gasoline prices at the pumps throughout the country jumped to over $4.00 per gallon, based on oil prices of up to $147.00/barrel this past summer during June and July? The ‘experts’ forecasted that these prices would be with us for a while and might even go up to over $5.00/gallon or $200.00/barrel. This was immediately responded to by calls for more domestic oil drilling and building of nuclear power plants among other such proposals. Energy independence was a major campaign element propagated by both Presidential candidates and many others as well. Bumper stickers called for “Drill, Baby, Drill” and the only recognizable action taken during this time was the lifting of an Executive Order by President Bush to allow Offshore Drilling for oil. Well, five months have passed since then and what do we have? We have seen oil being sold for about $40.00/barrel and a gallon of gasoline has sunk to about $1.75. And guess what: There is no more talk about offshore oil drilling or building of power plants. The topic ‘High Energy Costs’ cannot even be found anywhere in newspapers and magazines let alone being discussed on television. It simply has gone away and is no longer a priority in peoples minds.

2.         The war in Iraq was a major element during this year’s election cycle and every candidate had a plan as to how to end the war in Iraq. Some even had specific timetables. Then-Senator Barack Obama committed to a complete troop withdrawal in sixteen months should he be elected President. He told everybody that the ‘surge’ had failed and that he had been against the war from the beginning, newspapers listed daily casualty figures, the Iraqi government was non-functional and on and on. And where are we now? The surge has obviously worked, as a country, Iraq is stabilizing and becomes more and more self-sustaining, American troops are being withdrawn out of cities and there is a total withdrawal agreement in place ending in 2011. Things have gone so well in Iraq, that while nobody wants to call it a victory for the United States military yet, the topic is no longer an issue of daily articles or debates on television. This all has happened in a matter of several months during this passing year, it’s almost as if the war was over.

3.         The other hot topic in times past was “Global Warming” and the Presidential candidates all lined up in favor of tackling the problems caused by this man-made and world-destroying ‘fact’. Now then, where has this high priority monster gone? Statisticians and record keepers are slowly coming out with facts stating that increases in global warming have not occurred in the past several years and the number of scientists no longer fanatically endorsing this phenomenon is growing by hundreds. In fact, some even recognize that the sun has become less active in terms of flares and that we might be in for a period of ‘global cooling’. We do not believe that it will be difficult to convince residents in Houston and New Orleans when they experience snowfalls in their towns in December that global warming is not really taken place at this time. This does, of course, not mean that this issue has gone away, absolutely not. The climate change enthusiasts are attending currently a major international conference in Poland where they debate and discuss proposals how to fight global warming and climate changes in the near future. These junkets are just too important for these climate doomsayers to postpone them. We wonder if these people feel deep inside a sense of irrationality when they discuss these topics while the outside temperatures are at or below freezing in Poland. But as a daily ‘doomsday prognostication’, global warming is pretty well gone away as a high priority for the worlds population. Unfortunately, the only people who still firmly believe that they have to take drastic action against global warming and climate change are politicians, better known as our elected officials. They are undeterred by realities and facts and they keep on pushing to pass more laws restricting lifestyle freedoms of their constituents.

            Now then, what has caused all this, the changes in priorities? It is called economics also known as a downturn in the well-being of people in general. Even though, there were signs of economic troubles on the horizon for many months, in fact, almost since last year in the housing market, it was not until mid September – a mere three months ago – that the problems suddenly surfaced when the credit markets dried up and the Federal government asked Congress for a 700 billion dollar emergency fund to free up the credit by providing funds for banks and similar institutions. This was followed by additional funding requests for insurance giant AIG and  also Citibank as well as the three major American auto makers in Detroit. Companies across the labor spectrum announced major cuts in employment driving the national unemployment rate steeply upward with no end in sight. Banks have failed in great numbers and in all, the economy is currently topic Number One! Nothing else matters right now and will not even get honorable mention in the media in the near future with the sole exception of the Obama Presidency, starting on January 20, 2009. Now then, is there a message in all this? We think there is and it is called the pocketbook of the American people. People have their priority and it is the well-being of their immediate family! We do not proclaim to know what lies in the future for this country but we would hope that individuals would learn at least one lesson and it is called “Putting money away for a rainy day”. In other words, get off the credit lifestyle and cut back some, get away from the instant gratification of purchasing whatever is desired and instead earn the money before you buy. It could be a great New Years resolution, we think.

Changing Priorities – Real or Political? is a post from: Common Sense University

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Congresswoman Maxine Waters threatening to socialize oil in a way that few can.  The power to usurp is a right of every congresswomen named Maxine, isn’t it?

Maxine Waters and Oil is a post from: Common Sense University

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            We have to concede that it sounds somewhat exaggerated but it is true. All you hear and read about these days is how bad oil is for mankind and the only answer is its elimination. Nobody seems concerned about Osama Bin Laden and his fellow terrorists or Al Qaida in general, that is apparently nothing more than a sad memory. But oil is now the element that could cause mankind to go extinct in this century and has therefore to be considered a much greater evil to all of us than a couple of terrorists.

            This entire focus on oil has become stronger with the sharp and relatively quick rise in oil prices at the gas pumps, the moment when we had to pay $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline, panic set in and the screams got louder and louder to do something about it and unfortunately, most people are looking for the U.S. government in Washington D.C. to take immediate action and bring the price down.

            For us here at Common Sense Politics, the biggest surprise is the fact that there appears to be agreement across the board now that oil is bad. We have known for a long time that environmentalists, first and foremost among them the Global Warming ‘Warner’s’ led by their messiah Al Gore, and their liberal allies in the Democrat party, the vast majority of media members and educators have all espoused their disdain for oil but that esteemed members of industry, the Republican party are also now speaking out in rather negative terms about this commodity is truly surprising. The calls for alternate and renewable energy sources have become louder and louder, nearly bordering on hysteria. These concerns are expressed in many ways, primarily through the use of buzzwords such as “We cannot drill our way out of this situation”, another one is “drilling more in America has no immediate impact on the price of oil at the pump” or “we are sending too much money overseas to buy oil and it ruins our economy” and of course, there is always the blame game “it’s President Bush’s fault”, we also have heard that only an immediate switch to other energy sources is the only answer to our dilemma.

            There is a great deal of individual action; for instance, Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is spending millions of his own money to tell us through television ads that we have to develop alternate energy sources and he wants to see the development of wind farms in America’s ‘wind tunnels’, wherever they are. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has for the time being another fantastic and very innovative solution for us here in America: He wants us all to inflate our tires and have regular tune-ups. As he stated, this is the equivalent of additional offshore drilling. This incredibly silly proposal by a Presidential candidate is scary in its stupidity and does not even deserve a rational response! And there are many more of these kinds of proposals, all however, with the underlying theme that we have to rid ourselves of our dependence from oil and drilling for more oil domestically is not the solution.

            To this, we say ‘Hello, have you lost all your senses?’ The short answer to our current dilemma is the fact that We in this country (and we say ‘we’ generously because the average citizen has very little say in the grand scheme of things in America) have been sound asleep for quite some time! Let us look at the facts as they exist:

• v When oil was sold on the world market for $20 to $30 a barrel not even ten years ago, there was no need to tap into additional oil reserves domestically, in fact, it was not feasible for the oil industry to do so and it was considered smart to buy oil from other countries;
• v The current usage of oil in America amounts to approximately 21 million barrels a day, an annual total of 7.7 billion barrels;
• v The currently identified and untapped oil reserves on the Outer Continental Shelves (OCS), in Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) and the oil shale deposits in the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are estimated to have nearly 830 billion barrels of oil; these reserve by itself (and not counting our current oil production in other places in the United States) would provide oil for approximately 108 years;
• v Contrary to statements from “oil enemies”, it will not take at least ten years before we would see the oil flowing out of these untapped reserves. The true time frame differs drastically from these negative statements. Oil from rigs on the Outer Continental Shelves can flow after three to four years, Oil from ANWR can flow after about four to five years and only massive production of oil from the shale deposits in the Rockies will take a few years longer;
• v Alternate energy sources such as wind, solar, nuclear power, hydro fuels and the like will not be ready to replace oil for many years if ever;
• v The price of oil as traded on the world market is currently down by about 25 % from its peak in June. And why is that? Could it have possibly something to do with the fact that the oil speculators realize that we are getting serious about additional drilling in America as reflected by the lifting of the Executive branch’s moratorium of OCS drilling by President Bush? We believe it could have been a contributing factor.

            Why do we as the citizenry of the United States accept when our ‘leaders’ tell us totally non-sensical stories that are factually inaccurate (to put it mildly) if not outright false when they lie to us for personally ideological or other agenda-driven reasons? We should not! Why are we continuing to believe what is being opinion-reported in the media and other groups when we could just demand to get the facts from experts and people in the know? We should not allow this to continue and let them know about it in no uncertain terms.

            If we can make one prediction for the near or even long term future it is that we will not likely see automobiles with solar panels or little windmills on their roofs. Nor will we wipe out oil as a major commodity in our lives no matter how much it is being demonized by its “enemies”. After all, Oil is the one commodity that has been a major contributor to advances in every aspect and corner of America for the past century and will remain as such! Another reality is that America as a country of slightly over 300 million inhabitants will not be able to go from a daily usage of 21 million barrels of oil to something else in the short or long term, it is just not going to happen!

            As a last thought, we like to remind you as we agree with columnist Betty Freauf who wrote nearly three years ago in one of her columns on the subject of oil shortages:

            “It says a lot of folks cannot understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Well, there is a simply answer. Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just did not know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical. Our OIL is located in Alaska, California, Coastal Floriad, Coastal Louisiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas but our dipsticks are located in Washington, D.C.”

America’s new devil – OIL is a post from: Common Sense University

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As always happens when oil company profits are high, Congress calls the CEO’s of the major oil companies ‘on the carpet’, inviting them to testify under oath before congressional committees to explain their profits and to defend themselves against charges of ‘price fixing’. These kinds of hearings are spectacles in that the representatives attempt to be smarter than the company executives while trying to ask questions they themselves do not even understand and this year, the oil company execs fired back and did not allow themselves to be insulted and cornered as the main culprits behind the high oil and gasoline prices.

And they have to be congratulated for keeping their cool when some questions really bordered on libel. For example, Democrat representative Debbie Wassermann Schultz from Florida asked the CEO of Exxon/Mobil:” I can’t say that there is evidence that you are manipulating the price, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not.” Without going into the carefully crafted response to this statement, we here at www.considercommonsense.com cannot understand the people who vote these types of individuals to represent them in Congress.

We firmly believe that it is time to end this unrealistic ‘reality show’ called Congress and we mean both, the House of Representatives and the Senate, all 535 persons! They are obsessed with finding culprits who they can blame for anything that is or appears wrong in America. They are not interested in the truth or in facts, they talk about solutions that are totally wacky and unrealistic. Let’s take one example of their so called ‘solutions: Windfall profits tax. This means that oil company profits can be taxed again when they, the profits, are allegedly too high. Our previous article showed that the profit of oil companies amounted to 15.7 cents per gallon in 2007. Even when increased to current prices, the prices would rise only to 22.4 cents per gallon. O.k., then take their profits and what does it do to the price of a gallon of gas at the pump currently in California? It brings it down from $4.35 to $4.126, big deal! It still is well over $4.00 per gallon.

Now then, Congress, what do you want to do now? Two presidential candidates, Clinton and McCain proposed to eliminate the federal taxes on a gallon of gas for the summer months and that proposal was dead on arrival. No way, can Congress agree to that. So, what did they do? They voted to authorize the Justice Department to sue OPEC to increase oil production! It is impossible for us common sense thinking individuals to comprehend the mindset of these people, led by the Democrat leadership in Congress. The price for a gallon of gas is over $4.00 and the solution as far as the Congressional leadership is concerned, is suing OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. And how soon will that bring us results? What if these countries say: We will stop selling oil to the USA as long as the lawsuit is going on? Will that bring the price of oil down? Do you realize what utter nonsense this is?

Back to reality: The real culprits are sitting in Congress, all 535 of them! They have been sent to Washington D.C. to represent us people and our interests and well-being, but in fact they are harming our interests and are in fact hurting us. Now you might say that this is not fair to some of them in Congress but we cannot differentiate at this time since those individuals are not speaking up loud enough and are simply voting ‘NO’ and think they did their job. We cannot agree with nor accept that, the least they could do is scream loud enough when nonsense is approved in Congress.

Now then, why are we calling Congress the real culprits? The answer is very simple, they are the ones that have voted against any additional exploration for oil in America. Be it in Alaska or the continental shelves in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans or the extraction of shale oil in those vast deposits of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Congress has been afraid to vote in a plurality in favor of any oil drilling because of the environmentalist movement in our country, nor have there been any new oil refineries built in America for over thirty years. After all, the oil as it comes out of the ground is not refined enough to put into our gas tanks. The only thing that has happened during the past three decades is the expansion of existing oil refineries but that has not been adequate to keep up with the demand. The population in America has grown by 80 million since 1978, an increase of about a third in people and does anybody seriously think that demand does not go up?

Let us demonstrate this with another example: Let us assume that for whatever dumb reason Congress decides that there will be no additional bakeries build in America. This means, the existing ones have to continue to make bread for the general population. While the exiting bakeries can be worked around the clock, there comes a time when bread production is maximized, yet the demand keeps going up and more and more people want to eat bread. Sorry, says Congress, eat something else (can you make the correlation to alternate energy sources?) but we will not allow to increase (refine) more bread production (gasoline). Does this make any sense? Of course not! It is utter nonsense but Congress is the place that got us into this mess, they are the real culprits in this particular crisis and this truth is unfortunately not fully known to the general public. They are the ones that ‘bottle-neck’ this country by forcing us, the electorate, to change our freedoms and lifestyles to what they think it should be. A liberal media has been and is continuing to play along with Congress and shade the facts.

We here at Common Sense Politics think that it will probably take $5 to $6 or even higher prices for a gallon of gas before the general public wakes up and sends stronger messages to Congress. The best one of course would be not re-electing the current representatives and voting for candidates who understand the simple facts of supply and demand and will do things to correct things the way they are right now.

Congressional Culprits Revealed is a post from: Common Sense University

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Oil prices have been discussed for as long as we can remember, but never with the scrutiny that we see today. Not only do we read or hear about it every day, but it is thrust into a negative light in most every case. Common Sense Politics has written several other articles referring to the dynamics of oil that are worth one’s time, but this one will focus on the dynamics of oil pricing between 2000 and 2007.

As oil has eclipsed $120 per barrel, gasoline has eclipsed $4 per gallon, and we are bombarded with the “record profits” of today’s large oil corporations; the conclusion is drawn for us in that media wants us to believe that we are being taken advantage of by these American oil corporations. Investigative hearings in Congress further this conclusion. Unfortunately, very few watch these hearings or read about them so public knowledge of their answers (summary) is hardly known.

The data for this article is from the Department of Energy data sheets. This article will attempt to explain the percentage each component represents of the cost of a barrel of oil between 2000 and 2007. The trends and conclusions one draws from this are quite different from what the media wants us to believe. The data is factual, non-partisan and speaks for itself when analyzed as we have done.

A Barrel of Oil

Yearly One-Gallon Average Gasoline Cost and Component Percentage Breakdown

Although initial response to this chart is “of course 2007 prices have doubled since 2000″ (nearly tripled when compared to 5/14/2008 prices), a closer look reveals the breakdown of the percentage of the component costs. See a similar chart below that doesn’t show the cost of gasoline.

Yearly One-Gallon Average Gasoline Cost and Component Percentage Breakdown Chart

While the first chart showed that gasoline costs have risen by over 104% between the end of 2000 and the end of 2007, the percentage cost of each processing step has gone down while the cost of the crude oil has dramatically increased. For those of us that deal with numerical values better than charts, here is a summary that would interest you.

Gasoline Percentage Cost and Component Percentage Change

It is easy to surmise and very logical that the cost to process oil should remain reasonably stable, but as the cost of the gas rises, each represented percentage should go down, and this is seen through both methods above. However, although the cost of the crude oil has risen steeply over this time period (an OPEC thing that is outside the scope of this article, but will surely be discussed in future articles), the percentages kept by the host countries has increased as well. Monies from crude oil kept by host countries have risen 51% since 2000 and, after a brief drop in 2001, have rose 78.2% since the end of 2001. As an extreme, let us examine the difference between the end of 2001 and the end of 2007. This shows the dollar contribution toward each processing step, taxes and amount kept by the host country.

Yearly Average One-Gallon Gasoline Cost and Component Cost Breakdown

Crude Oil Price Trend lines Pockets of Host Countries

Although the percentages were very revealing, the actual cost of each component might be more telling, as it factors in the rising cost of gasoline. Looking at this you will see that, forgetting cost of money differences over the years, the actual cost of refining, distribution & marketing have approximately doubled over seven years, taxes have remained pretty stable, actually slightly lower at the end of 2007 than the end of 2000. The rise in the cost of getting gasoline to the pumps can be explained by seven years of inflation, additional refining requirements, extra cost of transportation, and inflated advertising costs. However, the government short-changed itself by not indexing gasoline taxes to the actual price but rather the quantity. The big surprise is the increase in value to the country that the oil was removed from. For a given gallon of processed gasoline the host country received 68 cents at the end of 2000, while this grew to $1.62 at the end of 2007. Applying current prices of $4 per gallon to this 57.9% kept by the producing nations would mean that over $2.30 of every gallon is kept by the country that the oil was removed from. Wow!

What does this tell us? It says that refining, distribution and marketing costs have risen slightly, but have lowered dramatically as a percentage of a gallon of gas. Taxes have remained absolutely stable, but have also dramatically lowered as a percentage of the cost of gasoline. Both of these are understandable, and explained in preceding paragraphs. The kicker and reason that the price of gasoline is where it is today is that the founding countries demand a much higher percentage of these inflated gasoline prices.

One could then deduce that the large corporations that process, distribute and market this oil are not guilty of the deceit that our media wants us to consider and believe. Although their profits may be large, the data shows that their actual costs have only marginally increased over time. A large reason for their record-setting profits is that the increased cost of gas has increased their revenue, and applying the same rate of return to this larger number would make for an absolute record profit.

Page 44 of Exxon Mobil’s Annual Report shows that they processed 11,260 million barrels of oil. Exxon Mobil’s Annual reports data is summarized below.

Exxon Mobil’s Yearly Financial Summaries

Making Sense of Big Oil profit nonsense

The above chart tells us that in a year-to-year comparison Exxon Mobil’s income/revenue has grown 3 years and shrunk 4 years, while this ratio grew from 7.6% to 10% over this seven year stretch. Might this inconsistent growth be the reason for our expensive gas prices? We look further.

Corporations are publically held and need to submit their financial results quarterly. They also project what their earnings will be for upcoming quarters. It is quite involved, but the simple version is that forecasted and past performance contributes to the company’s value. This penalizes companies that don’t grow their earnings. Well, to me it looks as if there have been more bad years than good years, but the overall income/revenue ratio has grown nearly 30% over 7 years. This equalizes to just over 4% annual growth every one of the 7 years. Not a windfall, but good enough for the investors, apparently.

Let us ignore the above facts and imagine that the increased profit had contributed to our high gasoline prices. With some assumptions we can estimate how much of a difference the added income would have made when compared to the 7.6% income/revenue ration from 2000. Cutting the 2007 10% income/revenue ratio to 7.6%, 2000′s equivalent is a 24% drop, and assuming that revenue remained the same, the net income would reduce 24%, dropping about $10 billion. Let us now apply these $10 billion to the 11.260 billion barrels of oil that Exxon Mobil produced – page 44 in linked report. Quick searches on the Internet reveal that a barrel of oil is 42 gallons and of that 23 gallons turn into refined gas, the other 19 gallons turn into other oil-based income producing products. So let us multiply 23 gallons by the number of barrels that Exxon Mobil produced to get approximately ^a259 billion gallons of gas. Applying all the added savings only to this part of each barrel would lower the cost of a gallon of gasoline by $10 billion / 259 billion gallons, or ^b3.9 cents/gallon.

ExxonMobil’s Revenue, Income and Gasoline Prices

A Dramatically Conservative Oil Pricing Example

We can even get more dramatic and apply all profit by Exxon Mobil toward the gallons of gas that they provided. Sure, this isn’t a proper comparison since Exxon Mobil profits from many other ventures other than gas, but the exaggeration will help make a point. Applying every dollar of profit would make Exxon Mobil very altruistic, but also enrage all the shareholders and likely be a reason that gasoline prices would increase. This would increase demand for other oil companies, and increase in demand is one component that increases prices. Anyway, back to Exxon Mobil’s altruism. Let us divide $40.61 billion by 259 billion gallons of gasoline, resulting in 15.7 cents per gallon. That is right, if Exxon Mobil were to apply every bit of money they made in 2007 to lowering the cost of the gas they produced, prices would lessen by fewer than ^c16 cents per gallon, hardly the difference the media wants us to think.

Oops. I forgot this until now, but oil companies don’t have anything to do with establishing the price of a barrel of oil, as OPEC sets production quotas and supply/demand establishes prices. This exercise was interesting nonetheless.

Now if the host countries were to lower their take from 57.9% to 44.3%, what it was at the end of 2003, everything else being equal, this would lower prices by nearly ^d50 cents per gallon at current gas prices, while still providing over $1.10 per gallon to the producing countries in 2007 costs. These end-of-year 2007 numbers are very conservative in today’s terms, as current gas prices are over 30% more now than then.

Although it may be tough to make it through my lengthy analysis, it should be enlightening for those that do spend the time to follow my reasoning. I am not a college professor or someone that has intricate knowledge of the oil industry, but someone that applied common sense to data and forming my own conclusion.

As a very quick ‘what determines the price of oil’ recap:

Gasoline prices are determined by oil prices, which are affected by OPEC and Supply and Demand. The amount that oil companies influence these prices is nearly negligible. The media wants us to believe that large oil companies are the reason for the inflated prices we see at the gasoline pumps. I hope my analysis and this document shed light on this common misconception. The bulk of the money spent on a barrel of oil goes to the host countries, and is increasing as prices rise, opposite from what one understands from reading and listening to the main-stream meida, and THE REAL REASON for our high gasoline prices.

Sources for items discussed above are referenced in hot-links throughout this article.

Additional Information and computations:

What is made from a barrel of oil.

^a – 11.26 billion barrels * 23 gallons of gas / barrel = 259 billion gallons of gas
^b – $10 billion / 259 billion gallons of gas = $0.039 per gallon
^c – $40.61 billion / 259 billion gallons of gas = $0.157 per gallon of gas
^d – (57.9% – 44.3%)/44.3% = 30.7% * $1.62 = 49.7 cents per gallon of gasoline

The Great Oil Debate is a post from: Common Sense University

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Common Sense anchored rationale tells us that by definition: “If something has to be protected, then it must be threatened!” And who have the environmentalists in this country and for that matter, around the world, protected? Animals of all types, the lands and oceans, water and air and so on. And whom did they have to protect them from? The Human race! These folks, the Environmentalists are convinced that there is only one culprit on planet Earth, the Human being! We have to concede, that there has been abuse of the environment by people in many ways, be it industrial abuses, dirtying the waterways, excessive indiscriminate cutting of forests etc. but we believe that environmental awareness campaigns over the past decades have produced positive results throughout the population in that we recycle products from paper to plastics, glass and more.

So, why then do the environmentalists support extremes on their own? And we mean very specifically the extreme measures that result in punishment to us humans? Since they claim to be the protectors of the environment, why would they intentionally harm us, are we not part of the environment? What the environmentalists apparently believe is that we are the number one enemy on this planet and therefore have to be fought and even brought down. To develop and sustain this strong attitude, one has to be beyond dislike towards something, this is hate! At least, it is in our opinions. When we at Consider Common Sense, as residents in ever growing Southern California are being told that we have to conserve water in our daily lives that is one thing, but when the efforts by private industry and local governments to produce more water by means of desalination plants are being fought tooth and nail by environmentalists because some little fishes might get killed in small numbers, we call that extreme to the point of being hate based. As residents here, we have no power to stop the increase in population; Southern California is a very desirable place to live for a variety of reasons. We also have no impact on the weather in general; we depend on the snow pack in the Sierras in Northern California, water from the Colorado River and the amount of rain we are getting every year for our water supply. We have the infrastructure to supply water to every home and place but if there is no water, it becomes meaningless.

Do the environmentalists care? Not one iota! And when a solution is found such as the planned desalination plant in Carlsbad, California, they will do anything to stop, delay or even deny such a project! And nobody should even try to suggest that it is the concern for protection of some fishes that might perish as a result of such a plant. This is very clearly more than being a protector of animals etc., this is pure hatred for an enemy! When you do not care what happens to people in general and only advise conservation by ignoring other factors, when you will do anything in your power and fight to alleviate a serious problem to an elementary quality of life issue, such as a solution in the increase of potable water to the growing population in a region, you are no longer protectors of whatever, you are extremists motivated by unknown reasons and filled with Hate towards the Human Race.

A similar point could be made about the supply of oil in this country. It is a well-known fact, that there has not been an oil refinery built in the past thirty years in America while demand has shot up drastically based on population growth and industrial output. Drilling for more oil has also effectively been stopped by governments and environmentalist groups, the same holds true for nuclear power plants. And now that we pay $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline and experience severe increases in food prices and other goods, we complain? Have we not seen this coming? Is this truly a surprise? Hello, where have you been or the question should be asked: Why are you so ignorant of basic facts and common sense? We can only blame ourselves for the conditions we find ourselves in and we should have the collective will to do something about it by going after those people that have been working for decades to bring us to this point, the environmentalists, and the haters of mankind! Why are their motives and actions so sacrosanct that nobody can even question them? What will it take for the general population of America to wake up to these facts? Is it $5.00 for a gallon of gas or do we have to wait until it goes up to $10.00 per gallon?

Common sense should tell us not to wait that long but to take affirmative action now, tell our lawmakers in Washington D.C. and throughout the country to get real and change laws to allow alleviating measures for our crises that we face today and that will get worse in the years to come if nothing is being done about it.

Environmentalists’ Hypocrisy is a post from: Common Sense University

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The following is the second part of William Tucker’s speech:

Nuclear or Terrestrial EnergyThere is one other form of alternative energy often mistakenly grouped with solar: geothermal energy. Geothermal is produced when the natural heat of the earth comes in contact with groundwater. This can produce geysers and “fumaroles”—steam leaks that are now being harnessed to produce electricity.Where does this heat come from? Temperatures at the earth’s core reach 7,000 degrees Centigrade, hotter than the surface of the sun. Some of this heat comes from gravitational pressures and the leftover heat from the collisions of astral particles that led to the formation of the earth. But at least half of it (we don’t know the precise percentage) comes from the radioactive breakdown of thorium and uranium within the earth’s mantle. This is “terrestrial energy,” and a nuclear reactor is simply the same process carried out in a controlled environment. In order to harness terrestrial energy in the form of uranium isotopes, we mine it, bring it to the surface, concentrate it, and initiate a chain reaction that releases stored energy in the form of heat—the very same process as that used to harness solar energy from coal.

When Albert Einstein signed the letter to President Roosevelt informing him of the discovery of nuclear energy, he turned to some fellow scientists and said: “For the first time mankind will be using energy not derived from the sun.” This possibility emerged in 1905, when Einstein posited that energy and matter are different forms of the same thing and that energy could be converted to matter and matter to energy (as reflected in the famous equation E = mc2). The co-efficient, c2, is the speed of light squared, which is a very, very large number. What it signifies is that a very, very small amount of matter can be converted into a very, very large amount of energy. This is good news in terms of our energy needs and the environment. It means that the amount of fuel required to produce an equivalent amount of energy is now approximately two million times smaller.

Consider: At an average 1,000 megawatt coal plant, a train with 110 railroad cars, each loaded with 20 tons of coal, arrives every five days. Each carload will provide 20 minutes of electricity. When burned, one ton of coal will throw three tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We now burn 1 billion tons of coal a year—up from 500 million tons in 1976. This coal produces 40 percent of our greenhouse gases and 20 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

By contrast, consider a 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor. Every two years a fleet of flatbed trucks pulls up to the reactor to deliver a load of fuel rods. These rods are only mildly radio-active and can be handled with gloves. They will be loaded into the reactor, where they will remain for six years (only one-third of the rods are replaced at each refueling). The replaced rods will be removed and transferred to a storage pool inside the containment structure, where they can remain indefinitely (three feet of water blocks the radiation). There is no exhaust, no carbon emissions, no sulfur sludge to be carted away hourly and heaped into vast dumps. There is no release into the environment. The fuel rods come out looking exactly as they did going in, except that they are now more highly radioactive. There is no air pollution, no water pollution, and no ground pollution.

Objections to Nuclear Energy

What are the potential problems with nuclear power?

First, some fear that a nuclear reactor might explode. But this is impossible. Natural uranium is made of two isotopes—U-235 and U-238 (the latter having three more neutrons). Both are radioactive—meaning they are constantly breaking down into slightly smaller atoms—but only U-235 is fissile, meaning it will split almost in half with a much larger release of energy. Because U-235 is more highly radioactive, it has almost all broken down already, so that it now makes up only seven-tenths of a percent of the world’s natural uranium. In order to set off a chain reaction, natural uranium must be “enriched” so that U-235 makes up a larger percentage. Reactor grade uranium—which will simmer enough to produce a little heat—is three percent U-235. In order to get to bomb grade uranium—the kind that will explode—uranium must be enriched to 90 percent U-235. Given this fact, there is simply no way that a reactor can explode.

On the other hand, a reactor can “melt down.” This is what happened at Three Mile Island. A valve stuck open and a series of mistakes led the operators to think the core was overflowing when it was actually short of cooling water. They further drained the core and about a third of the core melted from the excess heat. But did this result in a nuclear catastrophe? Hardly. The public was disconcerted because no one was sure what was happening. But in the end the melted fuel stayed within the reactor vessel. Critics had predicted a “China syndrome” where the molten core would melt through the steel vessel, then through the concrete containment structure, then down into the earth where it would hit groundwater, causing a steam explosion that would spray radioactive material across a huge area. In fact, the only radioactive debris was a puff of steam that emitted the same radiation as a single chest x-ray. Three Mile Island was an industrial accident. It bankrupted the utility, but no one was injured.

This of course was not the case in Chernobyl, where the Soviet designers didn’t even bother building a concrete containment structure around the reactor vessel. Then in 1986, two teams of operators became involved in a tussle over use of the reactor and ended up overheating the core, which set fire to the carbon moderator that facilitates the chain reaction. (American reactors don’t use carbon moderators.) The result was a four-day fire that spewed radioactive debris around the world. More fallout fell on Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, from Chernobyl than from Three Mile Island. With proper construction such a thing could never happen.

Another objection to nuclear power is the supposed waste it produces. But this is a mischaracterization. A spent fuel rod is 95 percent U-238. This is the same material we can find in a shovel full of dirt from our back yards. Of the remaining five percent, most is useful, but small amounts should probably be placed in a repository such as Yucca Mountain. The useful parts—uranium-235 and plutonium (a manmade element produced from U-238)—can be recycled as fuel. In fact, we are currently recycling plutonium from Russian nuclear missiles. Of the 20 percent of our power that comes from nuclear sources, half is produced from recycled Russian bombs. Many of the remaining isotopes are useful in industry or radiological medicine—now used in 40 percent of all medical procedures. It is only cesium-137 and strontium-90, which have half-lives of 28 and 30 years, respectively, that need to be stored in protective areas.

Unfortunately, federal regulations require all radioactive byproducts of nuclear power plants to be disposed of in a nuclear waste repository. As a result, more than 98 percent of what will go into Yucca Mountain is either natural uranium or useful material. Why are we wasting so much effort on such a needless task? Because in 1977, President Carter decided to outlaw nuclear recycling. The fear then was that other countries would steal our plutonium to make nuclear bombs. (India had just purloined plutonium from a Canadian-built reactor to make its bomb.) This has turned out to be a false alarm. Countries that have built bombs have either drawn plutonium from their own reactors or—as Iran is trying to do now—enriched their own uranium. Canada, Britain, France and Russia are all recycling their nuclear fuel. France has produced 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power for the last 25 years. It stores all its high-level “nuclear waste” in a single room at Le Havre.

ConclusionThe U.S. currently gets 50 percent of its electricity from coal and 20 percent from nuclear reactors. Reversing these percentages should become a goal of both global warming advocates and anyone who wants to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil (the latter since a clean, expanded electrical grid could anchor a fleet of hydrogen or electric cars). Contrary to what some critics charge, this would not require massive subsidies or direct intervention by the government. Indeed, the nuclear industry has gone through an astounding revival over the past decade. The entire fleet of 103 reactors is up and running 90 percent of the time. Reactors are making money hand-over-fist—so much so that the attorney general of Connecticut recently proposed a windfall profits tax on them! The industry is poised for new construction, with proposals for four new reactors submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and almost 30 waiting in the wings.The rest of the world is rapidly moving toward nuclear power. France, Russia and Japan are not only going ahead with their own nuclear programs, but selling their technology in the developing world. America, which once dominated this technology, is being left behind. The main culprit is public fear. Nuclear technology is regarded as an illegitimate child of the atomic bomb, a Faustian bargain, a blasphemous tinkering with nature. It is none of these. It is simply a natural outgrowth of our evolving understanding of the universe. The sun has been our prime source of energy throughout human history, but energy is also generated in the earth itself. It is time to avail ourselves of this clean, safe terrestrial energy.

“The Case for Terrestrial (a.k.a. Nuclear) Energy” (2 of 2) is a post from: Common Sense University

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The following is the first part of William Tucker’s speech: 

WILLIAM TUCKER is a veteran journalist. Educated at Amherst College, his work has appeared in Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, the American Spectator, the Weekly Standard, National Review, Reason, the New Republic, Reader’s Digest, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. His articles have won the John Hancock Award, the Gerald Loeb Award, the Amos Tuck Award, and he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. His books include Progress and Privilege: America in the Age of Environmentalism; Vigilante: The Backlash Against Crime in America; and The Excluded American: Homelessness and Housing Policies, which won the Mencken Award. His forthcoming book is entitled Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Rescue the Planet.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on January 29, 2008, during a conference on “Free Markets and Politics Today,” co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.

There have been a host of debates this year between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president. Many of these candidates believe that among our top priorities is to address global warming by reducing carbon emissions. All or most seem to agree that decreasing America’s energy dependence is another. Yet few if any of the candidates have mentioned that nuclear energy—or, as I prefer, terrestrial energy—could serve both these ends.

Right now there are 103 operating nuclear reactors in America, but most are owned by utilities (which also own coal plants). The few spin-offs that concentrate mainly on nuclear—Entergy, of Jackson, Mississippi, and Exelon, of Chicago—are relatively small players. As for a nuclear infrastructure, it hardly exists. There is only one steel company in the world today that can cast the reactor vessels (the 42-foot, egg-shaped containers at the core of a reactor): Japan Steel Works. As countries around the world begin to build new reactors, the company is now back-ordered for four years. Unless some enterprising American steel company takes an interest, any new reactor built in America will be cast in Japan.

This is an extraordinary fate for what was once regarded as an American technology. France, China, Russia, Finland, and Japan all perceive the enormous opportunity that nuclear energy promises for reducing carbon emissions and relieving the world’s energy problems as reflected in recent soaring oil prices. Yet in America, we remain trapped in a Three Mile Island mentality, without even a public discussion of the issue. As folk singer Ani Di-Franco puts it, the structure of the atom is so perfect that it is “blasphemy / To use it to make bombs / Or electricity.”

It is time to step back and question whether this prejudice makes sense.

Fossil Fuels

All living things exist by drawing energy from their environment and discarding part of it as “waste,” so there is nothing inherently shameful about energy consumption. Almost all our energy derives ultimately from the sun. Plants store solar energy by transforming it into large carbon-chain molecules (the process we call photosynthesis). The entire animal kingdom draws its energy from this process by “eating” this stored solar energy. About 750,000 years ago, early humans discovered that they could also draw solar energy from a chain reaction we call “fire.” When heated, the stored energy in carbon chains is released. This heat energy can break down other carbon chains, which causes combustion. Fire has been the principle source of energy throughout most of human history. When historian William Manchester wrote a book about the Middle Ages called A World Lit Only By Fire, he was describing the world of only 700 years ago.

All this began to change about 400 years ago when human beings discovered an older source of stored solar energy—coal. Our most common fossil fuel, coal is the compressed remains of vegetable matter that covered the earth 300-400 million years ago. Coal is superabundant and we will probably never run out of it. It was the fuel of the Industrial Revolution, and it is still the world’s largest source of energy. It is also the most environmentally destructive substance ever utilized. The EPA estimates that it kills 30,000 Americans each year through lung diseases (and in China it is doing far worse). It is also the world’s principal source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Oil, another fossil fuel, is rarer and is believed to be the remains of organisms that lived in shallow seas during the age of the dinosaurs. It was first drilled in 1859, but was used only for lighting and lubrication until the invention of the automobile. Now it constitutes 40 percent of our energy consumption and is perhaps the most difficult fuel to replace. American oil production peaked in 1970 and is now declining rapidly—a fact that explains much of our subsequent foreign policy. The Arab oil embargo occurred three years following the peak, when the producing states realized we were vulnerable. The question now is whether world production will reach a similar peak and decline. As Matthew Simmons has written: “We won’t know until we see it in the rearview mirror.” If it does come, it may not look much different from the quadrupling of oil prices we have witnessed in the last three years.

Natural gas is generally considered the most environmentally benign of the fossil fuels. It gives off little pollution and only about half the greenhouse gas of coal. Natural gas was put under federal regulation in the 1950s, so that by the 1970s we were experiencing a supply shortage. Deregulation in the ,80s led to almost unlimited supplies in the ,90s. Then we began the fateful practice of using gas to produce electricity, resulting in a price crunch and the loss of many gas-dependent industries, such as fertilizer and plastics factories, which have since moved to Mexico and Saudi Arabia to be near supplies. Now American gas production seems to have peaked and we are importing 15 percent of our consumption from Canada. Huge gas supplies have been discovered in Russia and the Middle East, but will not do us much good since gas cannot be easily transported over water. Thus China, India and Europe will be able to buy pipeline gas much more cheaply and are already out-competing us on the world market.

Alternative Fuels

Given the precarious state of these fossil fuels, people have begun talking of “alternative” and “renewable” fuels—water, sun and wind. The term “renewable” is somewhat misleading: no energy is “renewable” insofar as energy cannot be recycled (this is the Second Law of Thermodynamics). The term “renewable” usually describes tapping flows of solar energy that are supposedly “free.” But coal and oil in the ground are also free. It just takes work—and energy—to recover them. So, too, solar “renewables” can only be gathered at a cost. They are often limited and may require extravagant use of other resources—mainly land.
What about water? Hydroelectricity is a form of solar energy. The sun evaporates water, which falls as rain and then flows back to the sea, creating kinetic energy. Rivers have been tapped since Roman times and, beginning in the 19th century, dams were built to store this solar energy. Hydroelectric dams provided 30 percent of our electricity in the 1930s, but the figure has declined to ten percent. And all the good dam sites are now taken.

What about wind? Wind energy has captured the imagination of the public and is touted by many as the fastest growing energy source in the world. All of this is driven by government mandates—tax credits and “renewable portfolio” laws that require utilities to buy non-fossil sources of power. The problem with wind is that it is completely unpredictable. Our electrical grid is one giant machine interconnected across the country, in which voltage balances must be carefully maintained in order to avoid damaging electrical equipment or losing data on computer circuits. Wind irregularities can be masked up to around 20 percent, but after that they become too disruptive. At best, therefore, wind will only be able to provide the 20 percent “spinning reserve” carried by all utilities. In addition, windmills are large and require lots of land. The biggest now stand 65 stories tall—roughly the height of New York’s Trump Tower—and produce only six megawatts, or about 1/200th the output of a conventional power plant. In the East, most are sited on mountaintops, since that is where the wind blows strongest.

What about the sun? Solar energy is very diffuse. A square-meter card table receives enough sunlight to run only four 100-watt electric bulbs. At best, solar could provide our indoor lighting, which consumes about ten percent of our electricity. But keep in mind: gathering and storing solar energy requires vast land areas.

Sunshine can be harnessed directly in two ways—as thermal heat or through photovoltaics, the direct production of electricity. In the 1980s, California built a Power Tower that focused hundreds of mirrors on a single point to boil water to drive a turbine. The facility covered one-fifth of a square mile and produced ten megawatts. It was eventually closed down as uneconomical. Last year, when Spain opened an identical Power Tower in Seville, U.S. News & World Report ran a cover story hailing it as a “Power Revolution.” That facility, of course, is completely subsidized by the government.

Photovoltaic cells have more promise. They are thin wafers where solar radiation knocks the electrons off silicon atoms, producing an electric current. At present, an installation about half the size of a football field could power one suburban home—when the sun shines, of course. The problem is that photovoltaics are enormously expensive; using them to provide one-quarter of an average home’s electricity requires investing around $35,000. Their greatest benefit is that they are able to provide electricity precisely when it is most needed—on hot summer afternoons when air conditioning produces peak loads.

“The Case for Terrestrial (a.k.a. Nuclear) Energy” (1 of 2) is a post from: Common Sense University

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By definition per Webster’s dictionary, “environmentalists are persons who are experts on environmental problems and who advocate or work to protect the air, water, animals, plants and other natural resources from pollution and its effects. Their environmental resistance is focused on limiting effects of environmental conditions on the numerical growth of a population.” On the surface a very noble goal but in reality a restrictive force that has no concerns over the well being of the human race. They will go to extremes to attain their objectives by whatever means necessary. Their answer to all issues is “conservation”!

The specific topic of this article is the ever-rising price of oil. It has been hanging around for several weeks now at over $100 per barrel. This is reflected at the gas pumps nationwide in the cost of well over $3.00 per gallon of regular gasoline. Without exception, everybody in politics and especially in the media complains about it and are looking for someone to fix the problem and bring the prices down. But hardly anybody goes beyond that and tries to thoroughly analyze the reason for the high prices of oil, especially when it is so easy for so many to blame President George W. Bush for the high price of oil.

In search of a comprehensive analysis, we came across an article posted on March 22, 2008, in the San Diego North County Times newspaper. Sullivan S. Marsden, professor emeritus of petroleum engineering at Stanford University, wrote this piece entitled “Gasoline prices Q & A” and we would encourage everybody to read the article in full. Professor Marsden has listed ten questions and he has stated well-founded and detailed answers to them. His questions are:
 

1.  Who controls the price of gasoline?
2.  What other factors affect the price of gasoline?
3.  Why do refining costs fluctuate?
4.  Why have no new oil refineries been built in the United States in recent years?
5.  Aren’t we overly dependent on Middle East oil?
6.  Has power permanently shifted to oil-producing countries?
7.  Is the world running out of oil?
8.  Has oil’s golden age of discovery ended in the United States?
9.  What about Alaska’s North Slope?
10.  Couldn’t a breakthrough come in the production of Western oil shale?

His answers to these questions are factual, honest and eye opening and we cannot disagree with any of these if we consider common sense. They definitely shed light on the reality of why oil prices are rising and in a way also answer the questions as to why nobody is willing to do anything about it. At the same time, we can lay this inaction by politicians and industry squarely at the feet of the environmental movement in America. It appears that when anybody seriously tries to do something about energy issues, the environmentalists threaten with lawsuits and other reactive measures (such as aggressive ad campaigns and negative rhetoric) which discourage anybody and the result is very elementary: Nobody does anything to address our energy crisis! Complaining about environmental protection seems to be the solution for many environmentalists. Every effort t made to help our environment simply fans the flames of further complaints and demands. If the solution doesn’t fit the agenda, is it a solution? It is too bad that this is the mindset of this movement.

This applies to everybody from the President on down to local politicians as well as anybody else in the oil industry. One should think that well reputed economists should have the strength and conviction to expose the environmentalists for what they are, but no, it may be easier to keep quiet. As we follow the increase in oil prices in regards to its ripple effect through the economy as a whole, it is easy to see why food prices go up, energy prices for utilities go up, housing prices go up, you can look at any industry sector, there is not one that does not depend on energy costs and when they – these costs – go up, everything else eventually follows.

It is truly astounding to recognize the fear that exists in this country when it comes to the environment and its aggressive enforcers; their attitudes and methods border on extremism and we as Common Sense Authors firmly believe that it is high time that something is done about them. Without sounding radical, a strong advertising/information campaign in the media would be a good start. Exposing these people for what they are would probably sway a vast majority of the citizenry in America to reassess their value and dictatorial roles on our lives.

Do not misunderstand us; we are also supporters of environmental controls but only to the point that it does not severely limit our strengths as a country from an industrial point of view. The environmental extremists want people to conserve and cut back and offer the vague hope of alternative energy sources. Everybody in the know understands that wind and solar power do not bring enough relief to better control the energy crisis we are in today. And what do the environmentalists suggest we do about population growth and increases? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Common sense and reality need to enter the environmentalist movement!

It is time to address these – in our opinion – extremists directly and end the acceptance of their nearly fanatical doctrines. We strongly believe that – should we decide to seriously become energy independent by drilling offshore, producing oil from oil shale and opening up this sliver of land in Alaska called Anwar, the worldwide price of oil would drop overnight to half its current level. Just the threat of America taking serious steps towards oil independence would have this reaction. So the only question remaining is: When will we do it? If $4/gallon for gasoline is not a good enough reason to get serious, what will be?
 

Environmental Extremists Gone Wild! is a post from: Common Sense University

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     We have heard for a very long time now that we, the United States of America, are too dependent on foreign oil. While the percentages and numbers might change from year to year, it is a fact and it will remain so unless we do something about it. We are following the price of a barrel of oil almost daily, we watch it closer than the Dow Jones Industrials since it affects all of us in this country. The increase in oil prices in the past few years has gotten us angry and very upset but we have nevertheless accepted slowly a near doubling of the price at the pump for a gallon of gas.

     Whenever the discussions center on the cost of gasoline, we wring our hands and hope that somebody does something about it, we even curtail our driving to some extent but overall, we blame the oil and auto industries and government for the problem and we call on them for “doing something about it.” The big oil companies receive the brunt of our complaints because their profits suggest that they are behind these higher fuel costs and that they are the main beneficiaries. And of course, since President Bush and Vice President Cheney are former oil executives, they are accused of being in bed with the oil companies, i.e., there is a conspiracy!

     Let us look at the elementary facts (2001 Report): We are using nearly 21 million barrels of oil per day in America. We are producing about 8 million barrels of that oil domestically. Since we are exporting 1 million barrels of that oil to other countries, we are importing approximately 14 million barrels of oil per day. While we receive considerable amounts of that oil from our direct neighbors to the north and south of us, Canada and Mexico, the bulk of imported oil comes from countries in the Middle East with Saudi Arabia as a major supplier. This amounts to about five billion barrels per year, a large quantity that also plays a major part in our trade deficits.

     For answers to this dilemma, people from all walks of life have been suggesting alternative energy sources such as ethanol and hydrogen as well as nuclear power for producing electricity. And let us not forget the favorite alternatives of the environmentalists: Wind and Solar power combined with substantial increases in more fuel-efficient automobiles including electric cars and hybrids. While all the above alternatives can contribute to our energy needs, they will together not substantially reduce our reliance on foreign oil imports since America’s energy needs are growing every year and will continue to grow based on future needs.

America’s Best Kept Secret 

     One of the best-kept secrets in our country is the fact that we are sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world. It is called Oil Shale! Some time in early 2005, the U.S. Energy Department released the results of a land survey conducted to estimate the official amount of oil approximately one thousand feet deep in the Rocky Mountains. The results were incredible, the oil reserves were found to be larger than the currently estimated/proven reserves on this planet. The numbers are staggering, there is over five times more oil (in the oil shale) here than the known reserves of Saudi Arabia. Yes, reserves of about one and a half trillion barrels of oil were found in a relatively compact area between Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The area is generally known as the Green River Formation – a rather barren stretch of land of slightly more than 16,000 square miles in size and over 80% is owned by the Federal government. This in itself is not truly a secret because the Government has known for a very long time that there was oil under ground, in fact, in 1930, the government placed protective legislation on this land forbidding anyone to touch the reserves. The reason for that was simple; buying foreign oil was much cheaper for all these years when the price for a barrel of oil was between 8 and 30 dollars. Now that oil has been costing in recent years between 50 and 80 dollars a barrel, our domestic reserves have become attractive to produce.

     Based on the findings of the report by the (other source) Energy Department, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law on August 8, 2005, a mandate lifting the protective legislation on the Green River Formation, this mandate was called The Energy Policy Act of 2005.

     In January 2006, the government gave six companies 160 acres of land in the area to test their oil shale drilling methods for commercial production. Since then, three companies have been cut…only three are left and are continuing their exploratory work. One company in particular, the Shell Oil Company, or more specifically the Shell Exploration and Production division has developed a revolutionary method according to an article in the Rocky Mountain News, dated September 2005, for extracting oil out of the ground. Shell’s method, which has been called “in situ conversion” is a tested and developed concept.

     If we compare previous methods with this new “in situ conversion” process, it becomes immediately clear that this new one is completely environmentally friendly.

     In the past, oil was extracted from the shale by means of open pit mining, crushing the rocks and heating it at the surface, with the problem of having to dispose of the leftover. Open pit mining has been and still is the number one enemy of environmentalists and conservationists.

     In this new (the in-situ conversion) process, there is NO OPEN PIT MINING. After the oil has been extracted from the extraction site, the only thing left behind is a hole similar to a conventional oil well, which is plugged at the end.

     After extraction is complete, water is pumped down into the well. This water will turn into steam. The steam is collected and gunk stripped out, repeated until the water comes out clean. At this point in time the Refrigeration system is removed, the ice wall melts, the holes are plugged, and the whole operation moves to the next site.

    
     The exploration companies have been estimating the costs for such oil production at between 25 and 30 dollars per barrel, in other words it is commercially feasible and they do not need government subsidies.

    
     Conservative estimates by a public policy Think Tank Company, the Rand Corporation, have forecasted that 3 million barrels of oil per day can easily be produced. The U.S. Energy Department estimates an eventual output of up to 10 million barrels of oil per day. Even at this higher rate, it would produce oil for about 400 years! There are of course related logistical issues such as the transportation, refining and distribution of the oil, building of more pipelines and refineries around the country. Their collective enemies are known as the NIMBY’s, a.k.a., the ‘Not In My Back Yard’ crowds and they are huge in numbers and therefore very powerful.

What will it take for America to do this? 

     But it will come to a head when the point is reached when we, as a country, are being blackmailed by the likes of Iran and Venezuela into oil prices of 100 to 300 dollars a barrel. While Venezuela can only threaten us by blocking their exports to America, Iran is geographically located to the north of a very narrow stretch of water at the south-east end of the Persian Gulf known as the Strait of Hormuz and they could, if not outright stop, at the least severely hamper the transportation of oil from the other oil producing countries in the Gulf. Shortages would ensue and definitely drive the price for oil sky high over night. With the current regime in Iran, we should not underestimate this danger.

    
     Now, it will take time to reach a state of foreign oil independency from the situation as described above but then, why would we allow this kind of a situation even to develop if it does not exist already. Although we do not know by how much, we believe very strongly that, even a serious attempt of drilling for oil in the Rocky Mountains, would bring the price of oil down drastically and immediately on the world market. All these oil-exporting countries depend on the money it brings them and they have been reaping huge profits in recent times. They might find a severe reduction of oil prices as a huge incentive to discourage us from taking a serious attempt of becoming oil independent. The choice should be clear: Do we want to keep putting up with the current situation of oil import dependence and by the potential of blackmail from some of these countries for years to come or do we want to do something about it. In our opinion, it is time to put up or shut up. We advocate putting up and doing something about it. Our future should not depend on foreign tyrants and dictators when it comes to energy independence.

     This article and others on Back to Common Sense are designed to provoke further thought and investigation.   It is not the intent for the articles to be politically biased. Sources are referenced in each article to encourage readers to delve into the supporting material.  We welcome all readers to participate with their point of view either in support or contrary with additional information sources.

Independence from foreign oil is possible is a post from: Common Sense University

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