The Bias Against Oil and Gas

There isn't one mention in the entire column of climate change, the reason why there is a "bias" against oil and gas. Where does Samuelson get this idea that it is in the national interest for the US to experience wholesale global climate change? He brands all those who see climate as a problem as "insane" by implication. Expanding fossil fuel production doesn't "offend" many Americans, it is seen as a bad idea. In the face of the evidence, it is expanding fossil fuel production that appears to be, to use Samuelson's word, insane.

The oil and gas industry should be getting some help. Right now Exxon Mobile, Chevron, and Conoco Philips are sitting on around $50 billion in cash reserves, while they will not be raking in record profits. Their profits will put them in the top 10 most profitable companies this year. This industry has always received tax breaks and government donations and when oil prices are at rock bottom that is OK, when they are flush with cash and report huge profits is not the time.

The matter of how and where the United States gets its energy is an extremely complex issue involving financial, environmental and national security considerations. Too often it is diminished to a kind of good versus evil dynamic, and more often than not the parties that argue for any expansion in domestic oil drilling are cast as the bad guys. This, even though any reasonable person knows that our country will remain at least partly dependent on fossil fuels for generations to come, regardless of how much we invest in alternative energies.

Like the airline industry, most industries that rely on oil have worked hard to limit their consumption by adopting more efficient ways of operating. But improved efficiency does not negate the need for oil. When it comes to domestic production, we???ve been good at taking the moral high-ground and imposing drilling moratoriums across much of the country. But when it comes to consumption, we conveniently look the other way, choosing to ignore that our cars, planes and domestic industries are more often than not running on imported oil. That is oil that takes both significant power and cash to import and which complicates our national security.

It???s time for a domestic energy policy that looks to all our natural resources: wind and solar power, shale and natural gas, and oil, that is produced and transported with regard to the environment. But until we make an honest assessment of our needs and our resources, the country will remain far too dependent on foreign sources of power, which is not good for our economy or our security. David Holt, President Consumer Energy Alliance.

When plug-in electric vehicles begin to displace gasoline cars as they must ten years from now, will you finally send Robert Samuelson and his ???at least decades away??? arguments packing to some think tank for irrelevance?

Mr. Samuelson argues that the administration is wasting its time and our money pushing with solar and wind, and that we better focus on developing our national oil and gas industries instead.

I have two huge problems with this view:
(1) Any one who cares to take a look at the planetary energy reserves cannot but conclude that the only scalable energy resource for the future is solar -- and to a lesser extent wind -- energy, and that we???d better develop these resources as fast as we can.
(2) Not one word said about global warming impact. Does Mr. Samuelson think it is a hoax, or did he simply choose to ignore this ???tiny??? problem because it would put a fly in his case???s ointment?

Excellent article! According to the US Department of Energy (April, 2009, Modern Shale Gas Development in the United States: A Primer) natural gas, coal and oil supply 85% of US energy needs today and will supply about that much 21 years from now. Alternate fuels will expand, but not as fast as energy demand. Natural gas use will increase by 2030, it is a very clean fuel, releasing about half of the CO2 as coal for the same amount of energy. Other pollutants are negligible and it is abundant in the US. The EPA called Honda's natural gas (CNG) car the cleanest car in the world and natural gas costs 50 cents per gallon-of-gasoline-equivalent less than gasoline today, it is both cheaper and cleaner.

For these reasons, the US Energy Information Agency predicts that natural gas use will increase 22% by 2030. Oil use in the US is predicted to stay roughly constant through 2030. Total energy use will increase, with alternate fuels taking up the rest of the slack. But, alternate, renewable fuels (biofuels, solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, etc.) will still be a very small percentage (EIA estimates less than 9%) of total energy supply in 2030. Coal use (for energy) will go up only a small amount according to the EIA.

Thus, oil, coal and natural gas are projected to be needed in larger quantities in the future in the US. Alternative fuels will grow faster, but they are such small sources of energy that their increase will not even supply the increase in demand. They are all very expensive also, relative to oil, coal and natural gas. Thus, for the US to truly become energy independent, we need to increase our local production, not decrease it by increasing taxes on local oil and gas companies. It should be obvious to everyone, the more you tax the production of oil and gas in the US, the less we will produce and the more we will import.

Excellent article! According to the US Department of Energy (April, 2009, Modern Shale Gas Development in the United States: A Primer) natural gas, coal and oil supply 85% of US energy needs today and will supply about that much 21 years from now. Alternate fuels will expand, but not as fast as energy demand. Natural gas use will increase by 2030, it is a very clean fuel, releasing about half of the CO2 as coal for the same amount of energy. Other pollutants are negligible and it is abundant in the US. The EPA called Honda's natural gas (CNG) car the cleanest car in the world and natural gas costs 50 cents per gallon-of-gasoline-equivalent less than gasoline today, it is both cheaper and cleaner.

For these reasons, the US Energy Information Agency predicts that natural gas use will increase 22% by 2030. Oil use in the US is predicted to stay roughly constant through 2030. Total energy use will increase, with alternate fuels taking up the rest of the slack. But, alternate, renewable fuels (biofuels, solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, etc.) will still be a very small percentage (EIA estimates less than 9%) of total energy supply in 2030. Coal use (for energy) will go up only a small amount according to the EIA.

Thus, oil, coal and natural gas are projected to be needed in larger quantities in the future in the US. Alternative fuels will grow faster, but they are such small sources of energy that their increase will not even supply the increase in demand. They are all very expensive also, relative to oil, coal and natural gas. Thus, for the US to truly become energy independent, we need to increase our local production, not decrease it by increasing taxes on local oil and gas companies. It should be obvious to everyone, the more you tax the production of oil and gas in the US, the less we will produce and the more we will import.

Oil and gas drilling makes as much sense as eating your own grandchildren!
Go Space-Based Solar Power (sciam.com April 16 2009)

Setting aside complex economic and environmental arguments, there's a basic ethics issue: Should we save some of this precious resource for our grandkids? Are we really using it so wisely that we can justify burning it as fast as possible?

350.
389.
2.2
450.
Do these numbers mean anything to Robert Samuelson? If they don't, perhaps Samuelson should read the columns written by Newsweek's Science editor, Sharon Begley.. They reflect our planets carbon dioxide count. They ultimately are the only statistics that matter. -350 represents a safe ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 389 ppm is roughly our current carbon count. (Consult the science columns of Sharon Begley.) 2.2 represents the annual increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 450 is doomsday. Scientists are now telling us that we are racing faster to Doomsday than previously imagined.
Robert J. Samuelson's whiny article is ignorant and misinformed. We simply cannot continue to increase the carbon count in our atmosphere. And whether we have more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia is immaterial. Other alternatives exist
Samuelson apparently has not read an article that appeared in Newsweek last July titled, A Bug to Save the Planet ." The article consists of an interview conducted by Fahreed Zakaria with Craig Vetter, who believes we can breed a specialized form of eColi bacteria that can produce a clean-burning replacement for the fossil fuels that are currently destroying our planet. According to Vetter, the bacteria can be produced within two years.
Nor is Samuelson aware of the possibilities of getting fuel from algae, switch grass, or sea kelp.
Samuelson is like an emphysema patient, smoking a cigarette with one hand and inhaling from a portable oxygen tank with the other. We cannot afford to kids ourselves about the future. We either go carbon free, or we don't survive.

As a Petroleum Geologist for nearly 35 years I am one of many thousands that are NOT a part of "BIG OIL". Onerous taxes, delays in permitting, frivilous law suits have a burdonsome impact on the entire industry but especially small guys just trying to make a living like anyone else. The industry is constantly criticized, we are all perceived as "BIG OIL". Speaking of "BIG OIL" when was the last time it was bailed out other than through tax incentives to alleviate some of risk that is taken. The Oil industry has done nothing more than keep the world running for the past 80 years or so...and quite well I might add.

This country should be doing all it can in every facet of energy development. We will still need oil and natural gas well past the time that we are all running on electric cars which is decades away. ( By the way where will you deposit all the old batteries?)

Imagine what would happen world wide if the oil industry imploded like the financial industry has just done? Now imagine that it might be just around the corner...now that's a scarry thought and so are the energy poiicies of the President and Secretary Salazar.

Apparently Samuelson has not read an article posted May 5 by MSNBC, titled "Stimulus Plan Provides Boost to Green Jobs" by Jenny Lynn Zappala. He should.

Samuelson was wrong about the Iraq war. He's clueless about global warming. He just copied the same nonsense that Newt Gingrich published a few weeks ago. And his article is nothing but a copy of the commercials Exxon-Mobil runs on CNN Incidentally, Exxon Mobil spent millions of dollars trying to prove that global warming does not exist, which is the official stance of the GOP.

Apparently, Samuelson has bought into the philosophy of CNBC's Jim Cramer, "What's important when you are in the hedge fund mode is not to be doing anything that is remotely truthful, because the truth is so against your view - it is important to create a new truth to develop a fiction... You can't take any chances."*

All this brinngs up the followin quetion - why does CNBC continue to employ an incompetent liar like Jim Cramer, and why does Newsweek continue to employ Robert J. Samuelson. I'm sure that either Jenny Lynn Zappala or Van Jones would do a better job.

I am by no means an oil or gas supporter, and I disagree with the point that electric cars at the very least decades away from the mass market, but overall, very good article. However, you argue that oil and gas would need to grow by a small amount to equal the job gains that would accompany a doubling of the solar industry. While this is a good point, the solar industry is poised to grow explosively. It has the potential to generate much more than 1% of our electricity, exponential growth that goes hand in hand with job growth. So, while it may be important to increase our domestic production of oil, discounting the solar and wind industries because they are as of yet small is a mistake.

Great article! The logic to produce is clear. The logic to conserve simply produces nothing and leads to a negative economic slope. Wind, solar and the like will never replace oil and gas , as Samuelson says, they are two different entities. Environmentalists have no logic in their arguments. Their only goal is to have zero fossil fuel use without any compromise nor any realistic actually logistically possible replacements. The hypocrisy comes when they start internal fighting about "spotted" creatures dyeing from use of their own "green" energies. Boxer's letter on solar panel farms killing turtles and wind turbines blocked by Audobon folks for killing birds comes to mind. So I guess we can't produce ANY ENERGY in the end....Environmentalists are NIMBY prats with only one word in their vocabulary, "NO".

This essay neglects to consider the environmental costs of "business as usual" in a reasonable way. The writer's ethos was compromised by the dismissive language used to refer to the opposing viewpoint. That's the kind of bias we can't afford to have. I regret that this essay and not Anna Q's in the same Newsweek edition was announcing its author's retirement.

Great article. America needs an HONEST energy discussion that encourages all domestic energy sources - not one that picks winners (through subsidies) and losers (through increased taxation). To continue to grow, we need as many cheap sources as we can get - there will be plenty of room for renewables in the big picture.