The Coming Energy Wars

Big Oil has us right where they want us. The American People know so little about the refining process. Just the other day the news said the gas prices are up because of refining capacities are massed. That would be a hugge BS statement. 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?
It's all about the greed and money. People need to just start asking questions and get informed.

I agree with the comments about raising our grain and food prices to match, or even out pace, the cost of oil. But there is another thing we should be doing. Immediately stop driving faster that 55 mph and stop making needless trips to wherever. There is no reason to be driving around for a Sunday drive or other wasteful driving. Do your grocery shopping on your way home from work; shop locally for ALL goods and
SLOW DOWN!!! i still see almost everyone gunning their cars to get to the next red light; driving SUVs and
new pick up trucks like gas is 35 cents a gallon. If you already have an SUV or pickup that's one thing, but
why are you buying one if you do not need it for work--i.e. construction etc. We can't stop OPEC but we can fight fire with fire. Afterall. they can't eat OIL and we don't have to sell them food at any price. As for our government, we have long been duped into believing that oil and 'controlled' energy was the only way to power our vehicles and our homes. BULL!!! Why aren't we using HYDROGEN in our cars? WHY??? Because BIG oil companies control our government through lobbyists. Besides hydrogen for our vehicles, we should be using/developing wind and solar to provide every home with all of the power (electricty)
needed for FREE--save the cost of instalation. Time to get off the grid or at least reduce the size of the footprint you are making using controlled power. Oh, and by the way, our government is still paying landowners (farmers) to NOT grow crops on their land. I personally know someone who has several
hundred acres they are being paid to not farm. So, all this talk about the costs of ethanol from corn causing
food prices to go up is also a LIE. Wake up, AMERICA. Don't be a lemming and believe everything you are
being told. One last comment, these conversations were being had in my high school Ecology class in the late 60s!!! Why has it taken us this long to get our head out of our nether regions and get down to taking control of our country's needs??? Only one answer...BIG BUSINESS AND BIG GOVERNMENT!!!

I agree completely this has now become a situation where it is us over them, cut all funding and aid to the middle east, develop our own oil producing capabilities and be done with it. The fact our president basically has to go to saudi arabia and beg there king to release more oil is absurd , screw them. and like terravista said if all else fails take it. We're protecting the saudi royal family so they can wreck our economy screw that its time they pony up and return the graditude

the coal comment below isn't true. We have only one operating coal plant in alabama anymore. There are few mines left in our country and what is left in this country has been reduced down to strip mining. The abundance of coal is not good at all. Our oil is a better remark than the coal statment but even there I think we lack in oil too but I now we are running out of coal. And Saudi Arabia charges their people 93 cents a gallon for gas, not 10 cents like the guy wrote just belwo. We should charge more for food aide to the sandy countries - they can't grwo asnything there. Pull the p;ug on them = 8 bucks for an ear of corn and you'll see gas prices drop.

I think that we should sell our grain to OPEC and other oil producers at the same price as they charge the U.S. for oil. If oil is $135 a barrel, then, corn and soybeans are $135 a bushel. We would do the same thing that they are doing. In oil producing exporting countries, they charge their own people 10 cents a gallon while charging the the world $135+ a barrel for oil. In turn, we should sell grain to our people for $3.00 a bushel and charge the rest of the world $135+ a bushel. Fair is Fair. They say we need oil because we can't produce enough for our people, well, the same goes for them, they can't produce enough food for their people. It should be "THE FOOD FOR FUEL EXCHANGE PROGRAM". Who cares if they can't eat, then they just die. It seems that we control the world's food supply like they control the world's oil supply. We need to even the playing field. Other countries do not have enough land to grow enough food for their growing populations. Somebody in congress needs to grow a brain and implement this program. GAME ON!

we have enough coal in this country that can be turned into gas ( germans developed technology in WW II) to last us 200 years, current consumption, That's not counting the oil we have. It's all about politics of the wealthy. There is 1 refinery in this country converting coal and no more on the drawing board. Follow the money and find the problem

We, the U.S. have the capability to be COMPLETELY independant of other countries and their products. We have HUGE oil reserves in Alaska, and adding in the oil shale and oil sands of Canada, as well as the oil trapped in the rock layers inbetween Montana and North Dakota. With just the afore mentioned, there are trillions of barrels oil. Yes, trillions. We don't NEED OPEC. It would take a few years to get all of them producing, but once they are all producing we wouldn't need to import another drop of oil for generations. Add into that fact that we have thousands of miles of fertile land on which to farm, we as a country could easily sustain ourselves, and be free of OPEC and other membership groups that rake in money hand over fist at our expense. And as andystractors said in a previous post, maybe we should form FPEC. When they have oil to spare, we'll have food to spare. Does it sound cruel? In ways, sure it does. Isn't is just as cruel for other people to not be able to go to work because they can't afford gas? Or to have money to buy groceries OR fuel (gasoline, fuel oil, natural gas) but not both because the cost of gas has made the cost of food go up so much that it's one or the other? Either way, it doesn't have to be like that...we have oil here, tap into it already and tell OPEC to shove it. We'll do it ourselves on our own lands.

Sadly, the oil companies are to blame. They went into these petrostates promising everything but delivering very little to the people. Add to that host country coruption at every level, and it's clear that the solution will not be quick or pretty. Future gas will come out of the pump blood red as a symbol to those who died geting it there.

It all boils down to the American people again being screwed by the rich and wealthy. Do you thing $4 a gallon gas affects the rich? Not hardly, it only pushes the middle class further down the economic ladder because their lifestyle was built around the internal combustion engine. I live in the west and mass transit is not an option at all. We all have less to spend on other essentials because we HAVE to have gas to get to work at the job that continues to offer less and less. Wait till the less desireables begin to target those with full gas tanks because the take on an SUV would be hundreds of dollars in potential income. I pray every day because we are in for a real shock in a very short peroid of time.

Quaizywabbit, you nailed it. We still have lots of neutron bombs- kills all the people, leaves infrastructure intact. Ooops, we just accidentally launched one, and it hit Nigeria. Sorry, we'll go fix everything. Well, lookie here - oil wells!!

Scary as hell! Like it expressed in the article ,blood will be spilled. This is not a spoof. The article also stated that conservation is a good way to go, and one we do now or else. We Americans have been through some catastrofic thing, but I believe we're into one that will top all the rest. There is no easy way out and the bandaids are all gone. So now we need to listen to people who really know what to do and get started now. We can't wait for congress to decide if it will be okay and to get the guys in their pockets ready to figure if there is a profit to be made. We are the United States of America we the people, our voice works. We've tried to let congress figure it out but the dollar has blinded them and they have dropped the ball. It's all of us who are suffering more from this Oil Crisis. Washington DC has no idea or clue of how we live out here. I can't trust anyone who leads like that. We are out of honorable leaders. Gasoline and a Big change in Energy use and the type of energy are not a death threat to us just a shock to make us think, overcome and adapt.

all this because we gave up on our energy policy back in 1990 that mandated better and better gas mileage from car makers. thanks george sr. and biil clinton, lets not forget congress!

I am still in need of GPM flow ratings. I am presently designing a new type of hydro power that if my numbers are correct, a single power plant will be able to produce up to 1.8 GWh per hour. To give you a sense of scale, California on its worst day will consume 50 GWh per hour. So a mere 25-28 of my power plants could take care of the entire state of California on its worst day, as compared with the literally hundreds of plants they currently are running. To view some of the other benefits of my technology take a look at www.enerseapower.com But again if anyone can calculate what the GPM flow would be on a 35' diameter pipe with a PSI rating of both 237 PSI and 326 PSI and tell me, I would be really grateful. I am unable to get a hold of the necessary engineering calculators for this due to lack of funding at this point. Please send the answers to ShaunKellogg@hotmail.com Thanks so much for the help!

OK, how about this, we start FPEC, Food Producing and Exporting Countries, we limit food production, and eat it, OPEC can limit oil production and eat it, let's see who lives longest!!!

This will inevitably trigger nuclear war, when some idiot realizes thats its easer to just kill off the demand......

Hey jpatrick1024, the hydrogen car is not a gimmick, I built a browns gas engine 30 years ago, it failed, it was an experiment using a Briggs Stratton engine. We learned that the combustion chambers needed to be insulated internally, and steel valves would rust. My current project is a 5.7L GM, we use ceramic coated pistons, and chambers, as well as ehaust ports, stainless valves and guides, with a stainless exhaust system. This is the 2nd prototype, the first was run on a dyno for 1,000 hours, without problem, then we tore it down. This 2nd prototype we will use under normal driving conditions to record data. We hope to evolve to a non mechanical system at some point.

Americans were warned as early as 1956 that American oil production would start to decline in the 70's. Low and behold M. King Huberts prediction played out and we have been plagued by energy problems ever since. oil; like everything we dig up from the ground IS finite. At the rate we build products and consume energy, there will have to come a time when there's nothing left. Let's face it; if we want to build another planet just like ours; we have to dig up everything here. I have no idea who drops the last spade of dirt on the new planet. We're in for some tough times ahead; or should I say our children are. How many of us can look a child in the eye and not care about their future. Using food as a source of fuel is utter folly. We use oil to farm, consider: there's the energy used in getting the oil out of the ground wherever it might be, it is pumped into holding tanks and fed into pipelines using electric powerd pumps run by...you guessed it...refined fuels from somewhere else, then its loaded into a large tanker that uses oil to bring this crude to our shores, it's off-loaded into hloding tanks and then to pipelines that use electrically powered pumps (powered bu you know what) to further this oil along to the refinery, where more energy is expended and burned off as waste during the conversion to useable gasoline and diesel. From there it is put into a tanker truck and shipped hundreds of miles to it's local distributors. Oh but we're not done yet. There's fuel expended during the growing season to produce the gran of corn which is eventually sent by truck to the ethanol distilling plant (which by-the-way uses fuel to keep the distillery going, it's then loaded onto a tanker truck and driven hundreds of miles to a gas station where you or I can fill up our E-85 Tahoe and proceed to get 20% fewer miles per gallon than ordinary gas. Has anybody thought this process out? WE ARE IDIOTS!
Regardless of expense my next home will be powered by solar cells with a solar water heater, the walls will be better insulated and the windows triple pane. My cars will be a hybrid for long distance and electric (remember those solar panels), We need to move from the dark age of fossil fuels to the enlightend age of renewable and FREE energy sources. America needs to be a shining beakon and lead the world to a brighter future.