Article

2010-04-01 Economy

Off shore drilling approved, but years away?

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Posted by Besoeker 2010-04-01 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 The best time to plant a fruit tree is 20 years ago. But the second best time is right now. Let's go for it, even if it's years off.

Posted by no mo uro 2010-04-01 07:05|| 2010-04-01 07:05|| Front Page Top

#2 I'm afraid the drilling going on is that of the American people.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-04-01 10:35|| 2010-04-01 10:35|| Front Page Top

#3 SO many of the worlds problems could be solved if we found Oil other than the middle east.

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2010-04-01 10:45|| 2010-04-01 10:45|| Front Page Top

#4 If we had started drilling when gas was over $4/gallon, we'd be halfway there by now.

Posted by gorb 2010-04-01 10:46|| 2010-04-01 10:46|| Front Page Top

#5 It's understandable that people don't want oil wells in sight of their beaches. I really don't want it either. Did you ever step in oil while you were walking on the beach? I have. You see little globules of it floating in the water when you're out surfing. You get ugly brown splotches on your surfboard and then it gets all over you and it's hard to wash off. I don't even want to think about the Exxon Valdez.

We had to get desperate enough before we could do this and after 9/11 it became apparent that we had reached that point. I can't wait to see the Soddies being forced to lower their prices. Maybe they'll even have to use a higher percentage of their profits to buy food instead of exporting their perverted ideas about religion. But then the Chicoms will just buy more. And it may well be that we had to have a commie like Obama in the White House to get it done because if Bush had tried this there would have been one hell of an outrage.

I'd still like to see more trains and buses instead of cars. Cars can be handy to have around but driving one to work every day is for the birds. I still think solar panels on top of every roof should be part of every municipality's building code just like plumbing and wiring. Does that mean I'm not macho? Does that mean I'm a Californian? I dunno. I just think it makes sense.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-04-01 12:07|| 2010-04-01 12:07|| Front Page Top

#6 Solar Panels are too expensive, I looked into putting a farm up for my own use and to power My home would cost a Hundred Grand in Solar Panels alone, can't do it.

Posted by Redneck Jim 2010-04-01 12:22|| 2010-04-01 12:22|| Front Page Top

#7 This is probably a place for Glenmore to contribute. He seems to be familiar with the oil industry.

My 2 cents. I am jaundiced and suspicious about just about anything that comes out of Washington--either party. They don't seem to do much well. That said, if the government could be more business/industry friendly instead regarding them as the enemy, some good things might get done. The Department of Energy is worthless in getting much done in the 30 + years since creation--maybe it should be abolished. However, tax incentives could be given to industry to do research that would push oil replacements if oil drilling is a problem. Bush pushed quite a few inititives in powering autos, e.g hydrogen fuel cell technology. The MSM never reported much good that he did. And yes, I do miss him. I don't know why we don't mount a "Man on the Moon- like effort for more oil independence. I think we could get there fairly fast.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-04-01 12:29|| 2010-04-01 12:29|| Front Page Top

#8 Anything this President promises is the exact opposite in what you shall get. Even if this guy makes more signing statements to drill, his EPA will NOT let it happen.

The $500 Billion a year we send to the middle east will only become more. And the price of petrol shall become more further hurting our economy.

Posted by newc 2010-04-01 13:04|| 2010-04-01 13:04|| Front Page Top

#9 EU6305, I understand your point. The arguement as far as I pin it is not some biological rejection of energy other than oil etc. The arguement is not theoretical or idealogical, but practical. To completely oversimplify the situation, its not letting go of the vine ya swinging by until ya got another vine to hold onto. An individual Tarzan could do it most of the time, but whoa the consequences of missing just once. To make all the USA do it all at once and suddenly our Tarzan becomes a blindfolded Ted Kennedy - the odds of a successful transit becomes below an acceptable level of risk.

For example: us prarie folk enjoy our sunsets and stars probably as much as nantucket folk enjoy their dingys, but we get to tilt at windmills while they bask in their view.

Believe it or not, the wind does not blow here all the time. Snowy or dusty environments hinder solar collection. Geothermal or hydroelectric is very dependant upon the location. Those energy efficient LED light sensing street lights are great on paper but don't cut fog and ironically do not put off enough heat to prevent them from frosting over. The electric or hybrid engine is far from replacing combustion in work vehicle apparatus. In a word, unreliable. I would not drive a car which the brakes didn't work one time out of a hundred.

Quite simply, one cannot climb from the foot to the crown of the Statue of Liberty in one step. Not being dependant upon foreign countries for energy - and that includes solar and wind generators built out of country as well as Saud and Hugoil - gives us some good step climbing footgear.

Not lecturing, just a perspective.

Posted by swksvolFF 2010-04-01 13:06|| 2010-04-01 13:06|| Front Page Top

#10 You are so correct, swksvolFF.

And there is this notion we will all grab the reigns of our unicorns and fly off into some utopian neverworld where mermaids sing and tuxedoed dolphins deliver the newspaper every morning.

I say make sure you have food enough for today before counting on the apple tree you have not even planted tomorrow.

Even if you had the magnificient "alternative" energy run car today, it would take 50 years for the world to be able to adapt it. Drill the ocean and damn the beach. You may walk on the beach for a few years and die of starvation, or drill now and live. Besides, our technology has improved so well in the last few decades that it is very possible that you may have the best of both worlds.

Posted by newc 2010-04-01 13:26|| 2010-04-01 13:26|| Front Page Top

#11 I've heard quotes for solar panels on my roof for $15,000. That still sounds like a lot and it might not provide all the power I need. But if they were built into all new buildings just like the codes now require electrical wiring and plumbing it wouldn't add that much to your monthly mortgage payment. Cost of doing business. Then consider the savings in utility bills over the lifetime of the house/building and extrapolate that across the country. Your results may vary especially if you live in Minnesota. But it seems to me that over time there would be net savings.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-04-01 13:28|| 2010-04-01 13:28|| Front Page Top

#12 Tarzan swings,
Tarzan falls,
Tarzan breaks
his might balls.

I learned that little rhyme in second grade and I don't want to fall. I'm not saying don't drill and I don't drive a Prius. I am saying that oil is messy and that if we were a truly advanced and civilized society we might be able to find a better way. Keep drilling until we find that way but don't let moneyed interests keep us from trying to find it.

I'm very, very suspicious that moneyed interests have killing viable alternatives for quite some time. Everybody in Southern California has heard the fable of how in the 1920's GM, Firestone and Standard Oil conspired to bribe/talk the powers that be in Los Angeles out of developing light rail in favor of freeways and far flung suburbs. So now we have suburban sprawl as far as the eye can see, gridlocked freeways and smog.

I didn't make this up. Here is just one of the results you get if you google los angeles gm firestone standard oil freeways.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-04-01 13:49|| 2010-04-01 13:49|| Front Page Top

#13 Choo choos do not work because Americans like independence. They like to be afforded the oppertunity to be late for work on their own merit, not have to carry bags full of work stuff, and drink coffee while listening to AM radio during their morning commute. They do not like living in stacks of building surrounded by other people. They do not like to be told how or where to live. They, WE like to determine our own destinies. So while you may think New York is ideal, many would rather live away from the carnage that will ensue when the nation collapses because of the ideal policies that you control freaks set up.

Country or suburbs will be a far better place to be when that happens. At least there, you may defend your turf, or get in a car and move elsewhere.

Posted by newc 2010-04-01 14:42|| 2010-04-01 14:42|| Front Page Top

#14 Control freak? Who? Me? I just want a choice. I don't like being a slave to an automobile or a utility company or an oil company. How much are your car payments? How much are your car insurance payments? How much do you pay each month for gas? How much time do you spend stuck in traffic? Have you worn out your CD's yet or do you just listen to talk radio? Doesn't it get a little tiresome? How far do you drive to work? How much does it cost each year to maintain your car? I just had to pay $1000 for maintenance on my car. That hurt. I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather spend my money on. And I own four cars so you can have your car too. You can have as many cars as you want and have fun paying for them too.

I don't know when was the last time you were stuck in traffic on the I-5 in Los Angeles but I'm here to tell you it ain't fun. For me, this is the typical southern California experience: late for an important appointment, stuck in traffic, can't find a place to park when I get there and, to top it all off, gotta pee real bad.

Go for it. You can have it.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-04-01 16:07|| 2010-04-01 16:07|| Front Page Top

#15 Besides, that, people on the trains these days listen to iPods. C'mon, get with it.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-04-01 16:12|| 2010-04-01 16:12|| Front Page Top

#16 Er, they listen to iPods if they're not drinking beer with their train friends.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-04-01 16:13|| 2010-04-01 16:13|| Front Page Top

#17 Whoop, before we caw fowl, robin us of discussion and duck the issue:

I dream of the day *Made in the USA* highly efficient SIPS panels with built-in photoelectric outside coating are used to build new structures. Looks like the point is that the challenges differ from region to region so a blanket cure-all is just does not do it.

I don't know a danged thing about LA except I was glad to be flying over it. Light rail system looks like it would be great there. Now, how long to design and build the thing, and who will pay? We must have the economy/purchasing power so that when these new technologies come market online we as a society have that option. But it ain't happening anytime soon - there seems to be an underlying notion that the humanity can get there in 5 years if we just throw enough money at it. The buses in Lawrence KS do a fine job getting people to and from campus and a horrible job getting people to and from downtown, grocery stores - if public transport was going to work in Kansas it would work there. Electric cars may work in SoCal, maybe not so much in Minnesota.

Posted by swksvolFF 2010-04-01 17:35|| 2010-04-01 17:35|| Front Page Top

#18 James Taranto, in today's Best of the Web, raises an interesting point about the American response to the Moscow bombings:
[Bay Area Rapid Transit] officials urged passengers to be alert for passengers acting strangely--dressed oddly, carrying strange objects, lingering for long periods of time or standing in strange places--and report them to station agents or train operators. Hartwig admitted, however, that such behavior is not uncommon at BART, and doesn't necessarily signal a security threat.

That's helpful, isn't it? It's another reason Americans are right to love their cars.

Posted by trailing wife 2010-04-01 17:46|| 2010-04-01 17:46|| Front Page Top

#19 We do get some colorful characters on our transit systems and some of them come with some strange aromas. But cars are also subject to terrorism. Somebody drives a truck bomb onto a bridge at rush hour and you could have a lot of dead people not to mention an expensive repair job for the bridge. Well, you could always drive a few more miles to avoid bridges, etc., etc., etc. Depends on how much you love that car.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-04-01 18:03|| 2010-04-01 18:03|| Front Page Top

#20 You want to get of ME oil, you have to have a plan. To have a plan you need to know where the energy comes from and how you use it. Once you know that, you can start incremental planning on how to get to energy independence. It is somewhat of a moving target, with new resources and technologies coming into play and old ones phasing out.

Washington, DC does not have a clue, because there are few scientists and engineers at the top who know the science to make intelligent decisions.

Here is what is happening now:

Posted by Alaska Paul 2010-04-01 18:52|| 2010-04-01 18:52|| Front Page Top

#21 Neat chart AP. Agreed, one needs to know such things in order to set policy that makes sense.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-04-01 19:17|| 2010-04-01 19:17|| Front Page Top

#22 I remember a few years ago when everyone was crazy over oil prices and there was talk about drilling in Alaska and people said it wouldn't produce oil for four years.

Jon Stewert in one of his best bits said something like: "that's what they said four years ago. That oil sure would be nice about now."

Hydrogen power is always 20 years out. Nuclear plants are ten years out if we even build them. I'm not a fan of oil but at least oil helps us in the short term.

Posted by rjschwarz 2010-04-01 19:47|| 2010-04-01 19:47|| Front Page Top

#23 Ebbang Uluque6305| you didn't add in the cost of maintenance and repair. What happens in a hailstorm? What happens when there are 3 straight weeks of clouds? You still have to have a conventional back-up system meaning you have to pay for 2 separate systems and try to integrate them. At this point solar panels are not practical for the vast majority.

Posted by Deacon Blues 2010-04-01 20:13|| 2010-04-01 20:13|| Front Page Top

#24 I'm reminded of the statement that everything is easy to the person who doesn't have to do it.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2010-04-01 20:50|| 2010-04-01 20:50|| Front Page Top

#25 Here is how I would analyze our energy situation by using the above chart.

1. Our biggest vulnerability is our dependence on imported oil. Where does the oil go to? The main thing it goes to is light duty vehicles. Cars pickups, etc. Next biggest load is industrial. Sure. Feedstocks for industrial processes. Then you have freight uses, like trucks. Then aircraft.

2. How do we get off our dependence on foreign oil? We drill domestically, we utilize natural gas as much as we can for domestic light vehicle fleets, buses, etc. Drilling domestically will buy us time while we work on the problem. Higher efficiencies will buy us more time, IF we continue to develop technologies.

3. We have lots of coal. We could always go Fischer Tropsch and make diesel fuel. That uses 30% of the feedstock for energy. Combine with heat recovery to make it more efficient.

4. Natural gas is a great resource. We have more than we figured. Utilize it any way you can.

5. Utilize biomass. Make it a renewable resource. Not just wood, but grasses, cellulose waste. That will create jobs real jobs.

6. Do not turn you back on coal. It provides electricity. It will hold us over while we retool for the future. Energy losses in power generation are mainly thermodynamic losses. Capture low level heat from power plants for district heating.

7. Make the power grid more distributed to make it more robust.

8. Nuke plants are good with recovered heat. We ought to burn plutonium. We have more than we need. Security issues.

9. Wind and solar have a place, but not the mainstream. Energy storage is hard. It is not easy to compete with the compact energy storage of a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel. There still needs some more maturity with these technologies, though progress is being made.

The main thing is that we PRIORITIZE our needs. Then form follows function in our solution.

This Washington DC pie in the sky crap does nothing but cost us time and resources, and our national security. We cannot wait for DC to solve our problems. I wrote letters to congress critters since the oil embargo of 1973 1974 and have not accomplished jack sh*t. DC can go to hell.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2010-04-01 21:40|| 2010-04-01 21:40|| Front Page Top

#26 Someone mentioned the issue of oil spills being a concern. Can anyone remember the last time we had an oil spill from offshore drilling rigs. I can't.

I'd say drill. Good analysis AP but makes sense and is altogether to practical for many in Washington. There are some good people in Congress and you can be heard--but there are also a lot of fools that are more interested in poltical correctness than survival of the country.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-04-01 23:23|| 2010-04-01 23:23|| Front Page Top

#27 Today marks the 20th anniversary of our moving into our current home. In that 20 years, we've had to replace the shingles on our roof three times, due to hail. I've had two cars that the insurance companies have totaled due to hail damage. Most solar panels will survive most average hailstorms. The problem is, we don't HAVE "average" hailstorms. Golf-ball size and larger hailstones are NORMAL. One storm about 10 years ago wiped out half the roofs in Colorado Springs, and damaged a third of the solar panels that were installed at that time.

I walked on the beach at Rimini in Italy in the 1970's. There were thousands of cuttlefish "bones" on the beach, and each had a glob of tar sticking to it. It's not pretty. I've also been to Galveston several times. You can see six or seven oil rigs from the beach. There hasn't been a major incident in the last ten or twelve years.

We've come a long way in cleaning up coal waste gasses. We trap the soot, remove sulfur, and remove a dozen other pollutants. There have been new discoveries made almost yearly to reduce emissions of toxic waste. We have coal reserves that will last us several thousand years. That's plenty of time to do the research, develop the processes, and expand the infrastructure for other energy production.

The first nuclear-powered ship in the US Navy was launched about 1954. Since then, we've built dozens more. There has been ONE accident involving a nuclear propulsion system aboard a Navy ship. The technology has improved significantly since 1954. Nuclear power plants can help relieve some of our dependence on coal-fired power generation.

There's plenty of oil in the United States and its territories. Alaska (supposedly) has more oil than Saudi Arabia. Sure, it's hard to get to, and it's a long way to anywhere it's needed, but it's even farther to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf nations. One of the problems in our becoming energy independent is that a small majority do everything possible to keep us from getting that oil, shipping or piping it where it's needed, and building/expanding our refinery capability to use that oil. A couple of very small changes to existing legal rules would put an end to that, but our "elected officials" are bought and paid for by the same group of do-gooders that keep us from drilling.

I won't believe anything has changed until the first barrel of oil actually reaches a refinery, or the first million cubic feet of natural gas reaches a distribution point.

Posted by Old Patriot 2010-04-01 23:31|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/ 2010-04-01 23:31|| Front Page Top

#28 So your answer is to stick it to the taxpayer, Ebbang Uluque?

You think thats an answer?

I could afford more were it not for that Damn Government standing in MY WAY.

Shove your train up your ass.

Posted by newc 2010-04-01 23:43|| 2010-04-01 23:43|| Front Page Top

23:43 newc
23:33 newc
23:31 Old Patriot
23:27 rwv
23:23 JohnQC
23:11 JohnQC
23:11 Frank G
22:51 JosephMendiola
22:48 abu do you love
22:46 JosephMendiola
22:41 JosephMendiola
22:34 Atomic Conspiracy
22:08 Chief
21:55 GK
21:52 Atomic Conspiracy
21:48 Old Patriot
21:41 Frank G
21:40 Alaska Paul
21:40 Frank G
21:39 Barbara Skolaut
21:16 DarthVader
21:12 OldSpook
21:12 xbalanke
21:09 xbalanke