The Coming Energy Wars

We love to pass the buck don't we? The politicians are causing this! The oil companies and their greed are to blame! OPEC is out to get us! China and India are selfish! Rich people are greedy!

Blah blah blah. . .Just remember; anytime you point your finger, three more are pointing back at you. YOU are the problem and YOU are the solution.

I say this with full knowledge of my own hypocrisy. Instead of trying to reduce my own energy use, I complain about the guy next door who has more money, uses more electricity and drives a bigger car. This is like Jeffrey Dahmer defending his killing 20 people by pointing out that Henry Lee Lucas killed 50. So what? Another's greater crime doesn't absolve one of their own culpability.

The fact is, we Americans, all of us, are guilty. Our politicians only reflect our collective apathy. Oil companies only act in accordance with the business climate our actions create. Laying blame anywhere other than at our own feet is exactly the action required to ensure nothing changes. We've known for decades this day would come. We knew the earth's population was growing exponentially. We knew the world's oil supply was running out. We knew the pollution we spewed was rising to catastrophic levels. What did we do about it? We buried our heads in the sand. We blamed others. We bitched and moaned about our government while increasing our individual energy consumption.

Well, now it's time to pay the piper. What will we do now? Nothing. the end we'll waste alot of energy crying crying about how we've been stabbed in the back; which is true enough. However, we'll never open our eyes to the fact that the hand holding the knife is our own.

Go ahead. Blame the politicians. Blame the corporations. Blame other countries. Just don't expect anything to change.

The oil crisis is in reality "The Environment Crisis". The price of oil is irrelevant. The strength of the dollar is irrelevant. The only hard fact is that we must stop burning fossil fuels. The continuing release of methane gas that was locked up in the shale beneath us must stop! If we don't, we are dead. It should be obvious to all that the vertical rise of Co2 on the graph is related to all these "super storms".

Back in the 70's, Henry Kissinger made a deal with the Saudis. We buy their oil, they get rich. They also had to do all oil business in U.S. Dollars, and take on paying OUR NATIONAL DEBT. This is the reason we are not getting the Alaskan oil. Doing so would cause the Saudis to drop the deal and America would CRASH. We are sitting on two (2) of the largest oil fields in the world (Alaska) and we are afraid of using them. Wake up Americans, and read about OUR Forefathers and how they wanted the U.S. to be run.

In my research, I have found a couple of major problems for the best solutions on the drawingboard. One is funding, nobody is willing to cut their own throat. That means many who can invest in technology are unwilling to do so. An example is auto makers, there is a mindset that goes back to Henry Ford, 'they can have any color of tin lizzy they want, as long as it is black', they will continue to build vehicles which reap profits from the technology that has been used for decades, why change? At best, a new automobile is obsolete technology. They will not invest in developing new technology until market share forces them to. Oh, they will add little things to enhance sales, you can get a radio, AC, PS, etc, etc, but no major improvements which require investment, why should they, the fools just keep buying! Then there is distribution and taxation of fuel, we do have a system in place, you go to the gas pump, you pay tax, this supports the building and maintenance of roads, etc. We want good roads to drive on, well, money has to pay for them. Government is comfortable with the status quo. In order to get government funding for R&D, it is easier to persue avenues that don't rock their boat. The private sector is reluctant, because more efficient methods would affect their ability to get return on their investments. So, where do you turn? R&D is expensive! Electric is good, hydrogen is good, renewable is good, but there are these problems to address, first.

So all of this means that within the next couple of decades or so, Moslem Arabs would be Sultans of the world and the rest of the world would be left with no choice but to comply with every single one of their wishes, desires and wants. So we would be going back to the dark ages!
Cheers for capitalism !

Hey even if the public isn't fully aware, the government is fully aware of what???s going on and does nothing about it. Billion dollar profits equal billion dollar hidden monopolies and get rich interest groups. These oil companies have no interests in reinvesting their profits to provide a better future, so why do we continue to let them rape our economy. Tax them like everyone else and establish legislative reform to insure they alter output accordingly and not conveniently.

"The one I work at has about 270000 barrel a day refining capacityand is only running about 80000 barrels a day. sounds like we could be getting more gas if Big OIL wanted huh?"

You obviously don't work at an oil refinery. The lowest monthly US barrel production was in 2004 with 4.86 million barrels, still at over 90% efficiency. Average efficiency today runs at 98%, combined with constant work to meet new standards to even suggest that more could be produced is ridiculous. From someone who does contract work at refineries, we're stretched to the maximum already, as is every single refinery in this country. Of course, the US produces so little compared to other parts of the world that to even cut our production in half would affect prices by no more than a couple percent, so to say that the refinery you claim to work at is affecting prices by producing so little (which none in this country report numbers close to what you're claiming) makes no sense. Even if your numbers for that refinery were correct, it wouldn't create a change at the pumps. The US as a whole barely affects prices, we use so little compared to other major nations that if we stopped using it entirely production around the world would still be required to maintain the same levels it's running at and prices would only be affected by a mere few cents. Nothing we do in this country strongly affects barrel prices, a huge portion of what we pay comes from land taxes and federal and state taxes that the gas station owners must pay. Again, we're only paying 30 cents more based on inflation than we paid in 1910, the price we pay being cheaper than the vast majority of the world.

"Get the facts America. Big Oil cn still raise output at the refineries. Ours can output 270000 barrels a day and is only running about 80000 barrels a day now."

I don't know what refinery you're working at then, because the lowest producing refinery in the states right now is running at close to 94% efficiency, with the average US refinery efficiency at 98%. This with constant work and billions of dollars a year per refinery to upgrade all of them to match new standards. Even with each oil producer individually spending more on upgrades than the cost of the Iraq War, they're still keeping efficiency at higher levels than we've seen in decades. There's not a chance of output in US refineries being raised, we're being hard pressed to maintain these steady levels as is, which is one reason we're paying so ridiculously little for gas right now, only 30 cents more based on inflation than almost 100 years ago and half what a huge percentage of the world is paying.

It seems no one wants to give up gasoline. Tsk. Tsk.
I am very saddened by this.
The United States didn't learn it's lesson in the 1970's and we are repeating history. Will we learn this time?
Truly, I wonder if anyone really cares about the planet being able to sustain our lifeform. The planet will survive; it has recycled countless lifeforms. But, as humans in the United States, we just don't seem to care if our geneological replicas in the form of great and great-great grandchildren are able to easily survive.
Future be da**ed and give us our oil we seem to say.....quit hurting our pocketbooks so we can continue to travel really fast and tailgate those in front of us in our private chariots.
Why oh why did I choose to procreate, now? My poor baby, being born in interesting times. I hope I can raise her well enough to resist the U.S. society's short-sightedness, selfishness, and self-destructiveness. And, the older generations wonder why the younger generations don't seem to care. We were taught well, my elders, by the fact you all don't care.

The USA has a 500 year supply of coal, an estimated 1-3 trillion barrels of oil in oil shale, mega deposits of natural gas, oil in Alaska, untaped oil in the Gulf and we haven't even looked off the east coast. What this nation lacks is the will. A once can do nation has become the nation of 1000 reasons why we can't while the rest of the world passes us by. Our own reserves in conjuction with nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind and biofuels and conservation there is no reason why we should be buying energy from OPEC or anyone else. You can blame big oil, you can blame OPEC, however the blame should be directed to those beltway do nothing politicians who over the course of 30 years have done nothing to ensure this nation is energy selfsufficient.

Get the facts America. Big Oil cn still raise output at the refineries. Ours can output 270000 barrels a day and is only running about 80000 barrels a day now. All about greed and Money. Better get a farm with that horse because you can't afford to feed it with these huge gas prices.