 The balancing act: Energy is coming home to roost Now that President George W. Bush has finally written an executive order lifting the ban on offshore oil recovery in the outer continental shelf, the onus is now on the Democratically controlled Congress to end this energy mess. The American public is fed up with $4.50 a gallon gas when they know the United States is sitting on perhaps three times the oil than is in either Iran or Iraq. There is no reason to be held hostage by evil megalomanic dictators like Hugo Chavez. It is time to develop our own oil resources, which measure even by the Sacramento Bee's admission more than over 100 billion barrels plus 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the outer continental shelf alone. And that is not counting the North Slope of Alaska that contains an equal amount. What do you (Barack Hussein Obama) mean that we can't drill our way out of this problem? Nancy Pelosi says she will not allow a vote on this issue to come to the floor of the House of Representatives. She continues to say we can't drill our way out of this problem. That mantra is going to cost Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrats in Congress the election. Finally a respected media outlet has done it. A week ago Investors Business Daily has called for Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the House, to resign. While Pelosi has said that supply is not the issue and continues to refuse a vote on opening areas for energy recovery in Alaska, the outer continental shelf and the Gulf of Mexico, she has now said that petroleum should be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease the price pressure on gasoline. If supply isn't a problem, Ms. Pelosi, then what good is the SPR going to do? Containing about three quarters of a billion barrels of oil, the SPR was set up for a national emergency such as the cutting off of foreign oil supplies during a war. It was not created for a temporary political fix for high oil prices as Ms. Pelosi wants to do before an election. As said by the IBD, her feckless running of the House has now gone to reckless. "Where she was once just incompetent and irresponsible, she has now with her latest scheme to fix oil prices become dangerous." Pelosi and the Democrats took control of Congress complaining that gasoline was $2.50 a gallon (doesn't anyone remember?). They were going to fix it. Under her incompetent leadership, gasoline has risen to $4.50 a gallon in her home state. IBD counts 14 specific actions on her own Website that have restricted supply, blocking drilling in the outer continental shelf and the Alaskan North Slope, denouncing fossil fuels, blaming the oil companies for high gas prices (they control only about 3 percent of the world supply), supported and voted for bio boondoggles such as ethanol and claims it's the oil speculators that are responsible for the climbing prices. Of course the poster child of offshore drilling oil spills is the 1969 Santa Barbara accident five miles offshore on a Union Oil platform. However, the cause was from a disastrous pressure increase that occurred during a well casing pipe extraction that was not sufficiently compensated for by the injection of drilling mud. That would not happen again. But there are other startling facts about the Santa Barbara channel that might put a different light on this issue of drilling there, which has continued without a human caused spill for 40 years, and that is the large reduction of natural seepage. With or without the 1969 well blowout, the Santa Barbara channel is continually seeping oil on the beaches and in the ocean. The reason is natural seepage. According to Dr. Bruce Luyendyk, professor of marine geophysics at UC Santa Barbara, traces of seepage go back to 5000 B.C. when the Chumash Indians used the tar from the seepage to waterproof canoes. In 1792 British explorer George Vancouver entered into his ship's log of an oil slick in the Santa Barbara channel. Luyendyk said the seepage in the channel is about 10,000 gallons a day. In a little more than two years that would equal the Exxon Valdez spill. He also said that 3.5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day are bubbling out of the same fissures (think of the global warming that causes). That equates to the usage of natural gas by 14,000 homes. Physicist Bruce Allen from a local group called Stop Oil Seeps said "there is significant evidence that oil extraction can reduce oil seepage" and there is plenty of evidence to support the position. (For reference, see June 2 Santa Barbara News Press, Jeremy Foster reporter, Measurement of Oil and Gas Emissions from a Marine Seep, 2007, 2Leifer, Boles, Luyendyk). The bottom line here is that although there was an accidental oil spill in the Santa Barbara channel that is used to say offshore drilling is environmentally dangerous, the accident is preventable and that oil drilling off shore is beneficial in that it relieves natural seepage pressures and actually reduces the oil fouling our beaches and oceans and methane releases into the atmosphere. If you are worried about global warming, methane is about 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. United States Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a close second to Pelosi when it comes to energy. When asked by Fox News, "What's the most important thing we can do? What is your plan? What is the most important thing we can do to bring down the price of oil?" Feinstein answered, "The main thing we can do is push as hard as we can to move away from fossil fuel use, to develop those alternatives as quickly as we can: solar, wind, hybrids, hydrogen, conservation, biofuels and all those things that can make America truly energy independent and solve what is becoming a major problem." What she really said is give up oil and hope we can turn "horse poop" into horsepower. All those alternatives do not work. End of story. Wind and solar power contributes .002 percent to our current power grid. What are you going to do, build enough solar panels and windmills to produce 500 times the energy they produce now? The entire United States would be covered by solar cells (which need replacement about every 20 years) and windmills. There would be no birds (they couldn't get airborne without running into the windmill blades). And what do you do for power on a still night? You just don't fire up a power plant. Windmills were used for power in the 15th century or before. It would be like going back to the dark ages. Hybrids still get most of their power from gasoline. What do you do after a few miles, push or park it? Hydrogen has so many insurmountable problems, it would be easier to turn the Empire State Building into a rocket ship. With respect to biofuels, how much does DiFi want food to cost, double or triple? And then biofuels are still made at an energy deficit. These people are delusional. They should be institutionalized and yet they are leading the country. The inmates do have control of the asylum. There is only one way out of this problem and that is recover our own energy from known sources, which is now being prevented by political action. The problem we have is political, and only political. By the way, since President Bush's announcement for offshore drilling, oil has dropped $15 a barrel (something I predicted months ago in this column). When Congress is forced to go along, it will drop another $15 or $20 a barrel, maybe more. Larry Weitzman is a weekly columnist for the Mountain Democrat. The Mountain Democrat Newspaper is published Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday by Mountain Democrat Inc. |
