Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
The World Should Get Ready for a NATO-Style Oil Alliance
James Pinkerton, The Financial Times via New America Foundation
Within a decade, governments will formalise energy policy into national security policy. If war is too important to be left to generals, energy is too important to be left to free-marketeers. And America is likely to lead the way.
Libertarian purists are correct when they argue that entrepreneurs make for more efficient exploration and distribution. But governments are deeply involved in the oil business anyway, as they control territory in which oil reserves sit. Moreover, the business bottom line cannot account for energy’s externalities, from ballooning trade imbalances to global warming. Surging prices—to $73 per barrel yesterday and counting—make the oil industry an even fatter target. But most importantly, if national security seems to be jeopardised by chaotic market conditions, then calculations of economic efficiency will take a backseat to considerations of political sovereignty.
…Oil is that most paradoxical of substances: extremely valuable, extremely necessary and extremely dangerous, in terms of supply vulnerability. So the free market can no longer be oil’s arbiter; politicians purporting to represent all stakeholders are claiming the final word on energy usage. OPEC has already cartelised the producing nations; we are now likely to see a counter-cartel of consuming nations.
(20 April 2006)
Rising price of growing oil alternatives raises demand for oil
David Roberts, Gristmill
Oh, man, I wish I could preserve this article in amber: “Cost of raising corn grows.” [Des Moines Register. May 21, 2006]
Troubling news from the folks who bring you grain-based ethanol:
In February, the USDA forecast that U.S. farmers would spend 12.5 percent more on fuels and oils this year compared with last, with the highest prices this year occurring in the first six months. Fertilizer costs in 2006 are expected to be 6.5 percent higher.
While those percentage increases are smaller than they were in 2005, crop farmers’ costs have risen sharply in the past several years, agribusiness leaders said.
That’s right: The oil-based products and services used to raise everyone’s favorite “alternative fuel” are getting more expensive.
How does Big Ag want to respond to this crisis?
Earlier this month, Iowa agribusiness leaders called on the U.S. Congress to loosen restrictions on oil and natural gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. law prohibits exploration of fields within 200 miles of the Gulf Coast. The newly formed Iowa Consumer Alliance for Energy Security wants Congress to change that.
“High energy costs are a hardship on all of us,” Heartland Cooperative’s Coppess said during a May 9 press conference at the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines. The group is part of a national coalition pushing for increased domestic production of energy sources. Iowans involved in the effort are calling for passage of a bill pending in the U.S. Senate that would allow production inside the 200-mile barrier.
Oh, the delicious bitter irony! The feedstock for everyone’s favorite alternative fuel can’t be grown without oil and natural gas. So rising demand for that liquid-fuel alternative is raising demand for … the very liquid fuels it’s an alternative too.
But surely corn can be raised without all these fossil fuels? Uh:
For grain handlers, farm equipment manufacturers and other agribusinesses, energy costs have become the difference between red ink and black.
“Our business does very little without a lot of transportation fuel expense,” said Magnuson, manager of the cooperative in Sully. “It’s running the trucks. It’s delivering feed. It’s floaters in the field, and it’s high-clearance sprayers. It’s all of our equipment. So that increase is a very substantial part of the impact on our bottom line.”
The absurdity of turning to our petro-soaked agricultural sector to free us from oil will, I expect, only grow more obvious and glaring in coming years.
(21 May 2006)
Related thoughts on ethanol and farmers from Heading Out at The Oil Drum.
Bigger houses, longer commutes
Elsa Brenner, NY Times
ON weekdays, Julie Kroloff sets the coffee maker for 5:45 a.m., then speeds through her kitchen in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., and grabs a cup to fortify herself for the long drive ahead. If Ms. Kroloff, a self-employed consultant, is on time, she backs out of the garage just before 6 and makes the trip from Dutchess County to her office in Midtown Manhattan in just under two hours. If traffic is heavy, Ms. Kroloff’s 54-mile commute can take two and a half hours or more.
…Priced out of an increasingly expensive real estate market in close-in areas like Westchester, Bergen and Nassau Counties, some workers are pushing their commutes up to the two-hour mark, and even beyond.
It is the price they are willing to pay to own the home of their dreams, said Alan E. Pisarski, the author of a series of books titled “Commuting in America” (the third is being published by the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board).
“In essence, what this group of commuters is doing,” Mr. Pisarski explained, “is contributing to their house payment with travel time.”
…With the cost of residential real estate rising sharply in recent years, the geographical boundaries of the New York metropolitan area are being redrawn. Bulldozers are clearing farmland once considered too far away for a commute to Manhattan, real estate agencies are opening offices in outlying areas, and elected officials in once-rural communities are being pressured to contain the encroaching sprawl.
(21 May 2006)
Grass Could Be Future Energy Source
Mike Owens, KSDK
Up the interstate from St. Louis, in Champaign-Urbana, an Englishman is working away on a plan to free America from its dependence on foreign oil.
The work revolves around Giant Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus), a grass that came to this country from Asia. It is a botanical oddity at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Now some experts are saying it could be a source of fuel.
The grass grows to heights of up to 15 feet, but its height is only part of the story. It also grows through a much longer season, from early April to the first frost. It doesn’t need much fertilizer, since it grows from a rhizome, much like alfalfa.
…Experts like Stephen Long, a professor at the University of Illinois, says miscanthus returns five units of energy for every two expended in its production and development into ethanol. Corn, on the other hand, only returns 1.34 units of energy for every one invested. Long says that makes economic sense. He’s hearing from lots of other researchers, newly interested in miscanthus, which also goes by the nickname elephant grass.
(21 May 2006)
