I’ve helped sell (probably) $500M of computers to oil companies worldwide, and friends include an ex-Chairman of Shell and an ex-Vice-Chairman of Chevron, both of whom think Peak Oil is real and EFFICIENCY is crucial … and know quite well just how expensive and time-consuming offshore development is.

Joe is right on, on this, and I just hope more politicians country-wide get the idea. The interesting question is whether or not this is a state issue, a Federal issue, or both. I.e., if FL decides it wants to allow offshore drilling, should it be allowed to?

[Here in CA, I certainly wouldn’t expect to see drilling in my lifetime.]

You have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that drilling our own resources will not affect the price at the pump. Therefore, drilling our own oil will neither raise consumption, nor hinder sales of hybrids, plug-ins and EVs. CO2 emissions are not affected.

John Mashey identifies the rationale for using foreign oil - better to keep some for later. At one time that was a good strategic argument. But the world has changed. The massive amount of petrodollars leaving the U.S threatens our economic survival. Dependence on foreign oil warps our foreign policy. Unlike before, the technologies and efficiencies necessary to eliminate our need for oil, foreign or domestic, are available or in the near pipeline.

Does anyone doubt that the domestic auto fleet will be 80% hybrids/ plug-in/EV in 2040?

The way he figures it, this would allow us to reduce our Persian Gulf imports by up to 40 percent without abandoning our quest for fuels for the future. ……It would take four to five years to see a real drop, which would likely mean $70-$80 oil, which means a rough range of $2.50-$2.75 for Americans at the pump.”

http://www.chron.com/ disp/ story.mpl/ metropolitan/ falkenberg/ 5876326.html

When I first read this I thought it meant that the additional drilling would cause the drop in oil prices, but now I think it refers to the drop caused by conservation and thus reduced demand. At any rate, it’s an interesting article coming from the only large newspaper in Houston, one of the world’s oil capitals.

Who’s going to break the bad (good) news to the U.S. public? We aren’t going to see cheaper gasoline until we don’t need it so badly. There is no easy fix. There will be no return to the “good old days” whether or not John McCain is elected.

Tragic thing is there’s also a tremendous shortage of wind turbine erection rigs and skilled wind manpower.

In Britain, for all our talk, we can’t install much new wind capacity because the major constructors (German and Spanish mostly) are short of supply. They’re basically sold out for the next ten years for offshore wind!

What’s needed is for oil rigs to become offshore wind construction rigs.

That happens when the money to be made from oil plummets compared to the money to be made from wind - i.e. the opposite of what is happening in the free market right now.

Joe’s Anti=everything stance has me questioning his grip on reality.

The cheaper oil/ or CTL oil is the more money to solve actual problems, the cult of sustainability has yet to grasp their group’s agenda leads to ever smaller pies to cut up. A less than Zero Sum game.

Actually, Joe is pro-PHEV, pro-BEV, pro-wind, pro-CSP, pro-energy efficiency, pro-California’s approach, just to name a few off the top of my head.

Earl Killian, Those oil companies are an important part of our economic system, Do you Hate your colon or pituitary gland? Hating oil companies is just as stupid. You can talk efficiency all you want, the doubling of cost per gallon will take care that without a pile of ill-planned regulations that are obsolete at passage.

Vows of poverty aren’t part of any solution,– the irrational wealth hating needs to stop prior to attempting to change the status quo. Killing the neighbors dairy cow didn’t help the Russian’s peasants standard of living in Stalinist Soviet Union– Over taxing USA”s oil companies won’t forward any type of warmist utopia now or in the future.

Look at the per capita use of electricity in California vs. the rest of the nation. About 60% less (or more–don’t remember the exact number). California isn’t exactly hurting as far as life style. How about arguing using facts?

I think your imports question shows you don’t understand what is really going on. I agree with John, try facts for a change. Remember that the plural of anecdote is not data.

http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/ old_electricity/ us_per_capita_electricity_2005.html

The argument isn’t about the source of power, it is about the amount used. If you can show that these figures are in error, or that more recent data doesn’t still show the rest of the U.S. doesn’t use a LOT more energy, then you will have an argument. Otherwise, not.

What California is showing is that the pie can be smaller, everyone can get their share and be filled up and fully satisfied with that amount. No drop in our standard of living from using less energy. Now the droughts coming our way (compliments of global warming) could be a much bigger problem…

Usually these days I compare the most efficient 10 states to the least efficient 40 (plus DC). That gives similar numbers, and it emphasizes that it isn’t just California. Those numbers are 7,774 kWh per capita for the best 10, and 13,947 for the worst 40 (plus DC). Usually when you tell people about the California success, they say “it’s the weather”. They haven’t got a clue when they say that, but they say it anyway. If you tell them the efficient 10 are California, Rhode Island, New York, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Alaska, Maine, New Jersey, and Vermont it becomes clear weather has nothing to do with it. The correlation between blue states and efficiency and red states and inefficiency is high however. Ideology tends to trump practicality in red states.

The other way it helps to show the data is as a historical graph, since it is clear that we all were at around 6-7 MWh/person in the 1970s, and then a few stayed slim (e.g. California and New York), and others gorged and bloated. You can find such a graph on page 12 of http://www.energy.ca.gov/ 2005publications/ CEC-999-2005-003/ CEC-999-2005-003.PDF

It goes on and on, with the anti-efficiency folks trying to explain away the success of California and other states. It also helps to know that the GDP per capita is higher in efficient states than inefficient ones (e.g. California is 9th in GDP per capita), and that the 10 efficient states have consumption similar to other modern industrial countries like Japan (7,846 kWh in 2003), Germany (6,900 kWh in 2003), and Korea (7,018).

I’m not anti-efficiency, but it is a short term one time answer to production shortfalls.

Just what does electrical consumption in the People’s republic of Cali have to do with liquid fuel production? Other than the selfish use of natural gas for large scale electrical production when cheaper fuels(coal/nuclear) are available that won’t raise home-owner’s heating cost nationwide. I thought the post was about lowering cost of personal transportation and reversing the balance of trade.

Earl, 1,800,000,000,000.00 dollars = tiny. Wow, I want what you’re smoking. Impoverishing the USA isn’t the road to a ‘Green’ future. Just think a 10% tax would fund over 60 nuclear plants for the as yet imaginary electric cars.

If all the silly ‘green’ ideas are enacted, electrical consumption per capita will have to rise to reverse entropy for all the misguided recycling.

Are you asserting that Japan, Germany, and Korea have no heavy industry because their annual usage is only 7-8 MWh per capita?

Your assertion that drilling in the US will eliminate 1.8 trillion dollars of trade deficit is ludicrous. You’re the one smoking something. You’d have to produce 13 billion barrels a year to offset 1.8 trillion dollars. You would drain the 18.17 that we’re arguing about in this post in just 17 months at that rate. Then where would you be?

Let’s say Congress folds and puts the 18.17 billion barrels up for exploration. Let’s say we pump those fields for 50 years. That’s 363 million barrels a year. That will produce something like 7 billion gallons of gasoline a year, out of 135 billion used for our 2.77 trillion miles of passenger travel (that works out to 20.4 MPG). In 2030, when those fields start producing real volume (an optimistic assumption), US population will have increased to 364M, and miles driven to 3.4 trillion, and without efficiency, at 20.4 MPG we’ll be burning 166 billion gallons of gasoline. Your 7 billion gallons doesn’t stop us from having to import an additional 23 billion barrels. Let’s compare that to what efficiency could do. Raise the fleet MPG of 20.4 to 45 by 2030. Even with the projected increase in population to 364M, and thus a VMT of 3.4 trillion miles, gasoline consumption falls from 166 billion gallons of gasoline to 75 billion, for a savings of 90 billion gallons a year. That’s more than the production from Ghawar. Compare 7 to 90 to see what I mean by tiny. And that is just by 2030. We can keep on going with efficiency (e.g. to a 100 MPG fleet in 2050).

Efficiency never drains; it keeps on saving even when we’ve switched entirely from oil to renewable fuels. Oil fields do drain.

Here are the approximate figures from:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/ cneaf/ electricity/ esr/ table5.html

Region Residential, Commercial, Industrial percentages

U.S. 36.9% 35.5% 27.6%
California 34.3% 46.3% 19.5%

Region Annual KWH, Residential, Commercial, Industrial

U.S. 12600, 4650.81, 4470.58, 3478.61
California 7200, 2468.07, 3331.14, 1400.79

Even if you assume that the U.S. average of 3,478 KWH per capita use for Industrial purposes is all due to more energy intensive industries, that still only accounts for 2,000 KWH of the 5400 KWH difference between the U.S. and California.

How about using facts (which I dug up) instead of suppositions for your arguments?

Efficiency is a side show, a fleet of 60mpg coffins with out oil is useless, Pump the natural oil asap, build an adequate number of coal to liquid plants to avoid any nasty periods of 4$/gallon liquid fuel while inventing the next mobile energy system for the USA of the future. I have never said the USA’s undeveloped oil fields would completely replace foreign fossil oil, that is what the massive CTL build out will do. Can’t you get your head around the fact that at $4/gallon oil can be made out of ANY handy hydro-carbons? It will raining money for the early movers into the synthetic oil market. Let us pray/vote to ensure Washington doesn’t enact some crazy anti-carbon taxes.

Your own numbers show a seven per cent increase in fossil oil, that will lower prices at least seven percent leaving that much more money to spend on the future. Creating shortages have and will destroy the discretionary income needed to build the next energy infrastructure.

Without long term stability of our currency, ability to spend for long term externalities like imaginary carbon-forced AGW will vanish. Any thing that improves the USA’s balance of trade is mandatory for any future that could allow luxuries such as Joe Romm’s wealth destroying anti-carbon jihad.

It is possible, but my concern is that Peter actually believes these things. I have seen many people who use anecdote to support a position that has been arrived at by ideology rather than careful factual analysis. Just look at some of the Denier web sites and the kinds of posts that are left in response to a disinformation article. Anything that confirms their ideological position is gobbled up uncritically. Joe has posted on this problem here:

http://climateprogress.org/ 2008/ 06/ 01/ krauthammer-part-2-the-real-reason-conservatives-dont-believe-in-climate-science/

Keep posting statements that violate all know behaviors of markets,” more oil won’t lower prices”, or ” It’ll take 13 years to bring any new production on line.” Moon based oil wells perhaps? Bring some plausible statements to the table, not the straight from fact free misinformation campaign mouth. EIA’s batting average on facts wouldn’t get them on baseball teams hitting rotation. Recall the disappearing thorium? The historical record of the Alaskan oil production’s influence on US oil prices refutes all of the EIA future price claims.

Surely some basic level of learning is a given for an exchange of ideas. If you don’t understand the basics of markets, how can you “fix” them? Did you check the market effects of opening the Alaska fields?

The anti-industrail choir of the AGW clan

[Peter: You are now at the edge of being moderated regularly. If you can’t ask understand basic economics — demand goes up 20% in 10 years, so new supply of 0.1% does NOTHING to prices — then I’m afraid you have no business criticizing others. This ain’t 20 years ago.]

> The post’s main point is false to fact, Extra oil won’t lead to lower prices is false, all historical records refute such a complete misstatement of market behavior. All the numbers in the world won’t help one without even a glimmer of understanding of market basics.

I assume you are referring to the 2 cent savings per gallon in 2025 from drilling in the ANWR? OK, I will grant you the 2 cents as fact. Yes, numbers (= facts) are important in this discussion. I will keep bringing you back to that, as I don’t want others who are approaching this more thoughtfully to be misled.

Oh, by the way, here are the facts regarding my statement:

http://climateprogress.org/ 2008/ 06/ 04/ opening-anwr-cuts-gas-prices-two-cents-in-2025/

http://climateprogress.org/ 2008/ 06/ 18/ eia-bombshell-offshore-drilling-would-not-have-a-significant-impact-on-domestic-crude-oil-and-natural-gas-production-or-prices-before-2030/

This is 7% increase for domestic production. I suppose that even though it would be only 0.1% of total world production, those extra barrels of oil will be sold at below-market prices and thus bring down the cost? Your logic doesn’t make any sense. The analysis from the pro-oil administration doesn’t support your conclusions. The EIA conclusion:

“… any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.”

Apparently, doing an analysis with numbers is important… unless you have secret data not available to the EIA. Please don’t post a fact-free reply.

It is the transformation of oil production rate over time where JR and the EIA create the bold face lie regarding the effects of increasing native oil production. Figures don’t lie, but liars figure. Rational Floridians and Californians will force the leasing of the fields to capture the wealth.

[JR: Disagreement is one thing, Peter. But calling both me and EIA (!) liars means you are going to be moderated from now on. Really absurd, dude.]

“Rational Floridians and Californians will force the leasing of the fields to capture the wealth.”

I can’t speak for the people of Florida, but I very much doubt this will happen in California. We still remember the nasty oil spill decades ago and won’t allow this to happen again. Unless Congress follows Bush on this issue, it won’t happen anywhere.

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1082756.html

Re: “John Hollenberg, I’m a troll who knows that increasing the supply of a good ALLWAYS lowers it’s price”

That’s not the case for those goods with inelastic (and increasing) demand curves, and I’d argue that demand for gasoline fits this profile (at least in the shorter term). The problem isn’t constrained supply (as in the 1970s), but rather a demand shock led by China and India.

The only thing that’s going to mitigate high oil prices is a concerted, nationwide efficiency play, coupled with the increased market penetration of alternative fuel vehicles.

When

Oil field workers will have to live a distance outside these areas and commute.

Since great profit is what this oil business is all about, I wonder if there will
be a second lower tier of salaries for new workers.

Anyway, what I am wondering is if in your climate progress reports you could put some compelling photos there as well? It would help generate more interest in your topics. Believe me many of us are reading.

But, i think they need to put a cork in the idea that they can get any significant oil from any new place in less than 10 yrs. Because they are already experiencing a shortage of manpower and skillsets for oil recovery. They also dont have the rigs available and are scramblin to build enough to satisfy the CURRENT demand for them. Let alone scores more over millions of acres of ocean, at big depths.
Not including the amount of permits, and plans they have to submit to be approved…. its a bit rediculous for FIxed news casters to stand around promoting that they can get oil so quickly if we just open up the OCS.

Why doesnt someone Ask the Oil companies and politicians to sign a Guarantee that they can get oil out in 1 year and still pump oil at all the same places they currently are at the same time. If they fail to get 100,000 barrels a day in less than 1 yr, then they pay a fine and forfeit the leases.

I just want to say that I started losing hope in humanity until I stumbled upon this site. It is GREAT to see some intelligent people debating real issues here. Thanks everyone!

Any comments??