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Let’s Discuss: H.R. 6107, the American Energy Independence and Price Reduction Act
Reps. Don Young and Roscoe Bartlett, The Oil Drum
Prof. Goose writes:
This is an excerpted letter from Members of Congress Don Young and Roscoe Bartlett asking for support from other Members for this legislation. It would seem to me that it contains policy options we should discuss…
This is an appeal for constituents to contact their representatives to encourage them to support and/or co-sponsor H.R. 6107, an Important Step to American Energy Independence and Price Reductions for Consumers. If you wish to find your Representative’s number or email to express your support or contempt for this legislation, go to house.gov. To learn more about the details of the legislation, look it up at thomas.loc.gov .
We must act now and illustrate that we are serious about bringing down the high cost of energy and generating good paying jobs in our communities. Abundant, affordable, and secure supplies of energy are essential to this Nation’s economic and national security.
Unfortunately, our energy supplies are neither secure nor affordable, and much of the reserves of untapped energy we have right here at home has been placed off-limits by the federal government. As a result of our failure to provide access to our own energy supplies, we now depend on foreign nations for two-thirds of the energy we need to keep America’s economy running. And at today’s prices, the cost of our failure to produce is $1.85 billion per day. This is our energy reality.
We simply cannot afford to ignore this reality any longer. The only real solution to our energy crisis is to increase the domestic production of all available forms of energy with an emphasis on renewable and alternative energies and enhanced conservation and efficiency. We need aggressive federal support for technological advances in efficiency and all domestic sources of energy including coal, oil, and natural gas, nuclear solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydroelectric, and ocean energy.
For these reasons, we have introduced H.R. 6107, the American Energy Independence and Price Reduction Act.
(22 May 2008)
Imbalances of Power
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
… More and more, I am convinced that the big foreign policy failure that will be pinned on this administration is not the failure to make Iraq work, as devastating as that has been. It will be one with much broader balance-of-power implications – the failure after 9/11 to put in place an effective energy policy.
It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from what he called our “addiction to oil.”
The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world – the U.S. economy – to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states – from Russia to Venezuela to Iran – that are reshaping global politics in their own image.
… Two compelling new books have just been published that describe two other big power shifts: “The Post-American World,” by Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, and “Superclass” by David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment.
(21 May 2008)
America’s oil crisis demands a leader like Churchill
John Hamilton, South Bend Tribune
Through the 1930s, Winston Churchill was a has-been. He was old; he had been in Britain’s Parliament for better than 25 years. He was an outsider, disliked for policy disasters such as his failed campaign to knock Turkey out of World War I at Gallipoli. He was ridiculed as a warmonger, as, from the beginning of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, he warned of the gathering storm.
In his troubling book on inhumanity in the 20th Century, “The War of the World,” Niall Ferguson described the process and politics of appeasement in Britain. From 1933, when Hitler won power, until even after Poland had disappeared in 1939, most established British leaders wished to avoid conflict with Germany. With that wish, that hope, the leadership acted — by doing little to prepare for what was to come.
Appeasing Germany was politically successful. In 1938 — a few months before World War II broke out — when Neville Chamberlain waved his scrap of paper, declaring, “Peace in our time,” he was cheered wildly. He had told the people what they wanted desperately to hear. Appeasement was policy built on hope — somehow things would turn out well, despite what Hitler had written; despite what Hitler had done as the 1930s rolled to war.
Ferguson has called this desire of Britain’s leadership to wish away the possibility of war — the worst case scenario — “an act of negligence, since politicians have an implicit moral obligation to those whom they represent regularly to contemplate the worst case, to attach to it both a probability and an estimated cost and then to ensure against it.”
What has any of this to do with what we face now?
We will soon vote for those who would lead us over the next four years. The headlines tell us that the price of oil has now risen to more than $120 per barrel. As we strive to use corn to fuel our cars and trucks, the price of food has jumped higher and faster than we have seen in a long time, if ever.
The worst case scenario is that since 2005 the world has been unable to extract as much oil from the earth per year as we had through 2004. The worst case scenario is that the world faces a physical and permanent decline in the availability of oil, a decline that will only become steeper as years pass. The worst case scenario is that the productive capacity of industrialized farming, dependent as it is on massive infusions of fossil fuels — from plowing to packaging to delivery — will shrink.
What are we hearing from our leaders with oil more than $120 per barrel, food riots scattered across the globe; wheat and rice shortages in this country, today? We are hearing pap — from all of them. It is easy to claim that the big oil companies are gouging the American people. But our leaders do not tell us that the “big oil companies” have little control over the oil they process and sell. The international oil companies control only some 10 percent to 13 percent of the world’s oil reserves.
Our leaders do not tell us that the vast majority of the Earth’s reserves are held by nations such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, and several of them are beginning to withhold oil on behalf of their own people. They do not tell us that production of oil in Mexico, one of our prime suppliers, is declining — precipitously.
If the worst case scenario proves true, we are in crisis — right now. Instead of railing against easy targets; instead of easy non-solutions, such as weakening our strategic oil reserve in order to reduce gasoline prices a few pennies for a few months, or dropping an 18 cent gasoline tax, we need real straight talk — as soon as possible.
We have vast amounts of energy capacity in what this nation wastes every day. Our transport system alone could, with real leadership, save enormous quantities of fossil fuels — unfortunately at real human and fiscal cost. We need, now, to renew, expand and electrify our rail transport system. We need to review the energy cost effectiveness of our interstate highway system. As the price of oil climbs, the utility of that system’s massive sunk costs and continued maintenance liability (all those potholes and bridges in danger of collapse) needs to be weighed against reviving and invigorating water and rail transport wherever possible.
We must conserve with as much urgency as Britain confronted its worst case scenario in May and June 1940 as its last ally, France, fell to the Germans in a matter of weeks. It was only then that Churchill was given his chance to demonstrate what true leadership is. Do we have a Churchill?
(22 May 2008)
Canada as an energy superpower
benk, The Oil Drum: Canada
To get TOD Canada rolling again, I’ve written a refresher on Canada’s energy situation. Canada can’t be ignored when it comes to energy. We are a land of plenty. Lots of land, lots of weather, lots of consumption, lots of production. Plenty can easily become scarce though and it has to be managed, and managed well. Management of our resources will be Canada’s challenge in the years ahead. Unmanaged, Canada’s energy consumption is close to the highest in the world and stands at 350 GJ/person, slightly more than in the U.S. and Canada’s energy intensity is the worst in the G7 at 10.6 MJ per unit GDP.
It’s wrong to average Canada’s energy situation though. Even neighboring provinces have vastly different stances: British Columbia has implemented North America’s first consumer based carbon tax and is joining the Western Climate Initiative’s cap-and-trade system while Alberta’s Premier is still talking about bird kills by wind turbines. On the East Coast, New Brunswick has the largest Canadian refinery (288,400 bpd capacity) producing 45% of all U.S. reformulated gasoline imports, is building a new LNG terminal and has plans to become an energy hub for the Eastern U.S. by building a second 300,000 bpd refinery and a second nuclear reactor, both to be used exclusively for export to the US. Energy exports are a huge part of Canada’s economy, accounting for 20% ($90 billion) of Canada’s total exports in 2007.
From the federal perspective, Canada’s government has publicly stated that they are positioning Canada as a “reliable energy superpower”. This is the closest we have to a national energy policy. The wording here is important: By definition, energy superpower implies at least two things: 1) multiple customers 2) willingness to use energy supply as a negotiation tactic.
As far as energy superpowers are concerned, Canada still has a long way to go. Multiple customers are difficult to come by for a country with a single border. As far as “reliable energy superpowers” are concernerd, I rekcon Canada’s just about there, we have no choice but to be reliable.
Ben is completing his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in Canada. His research focuses on the fine details of solid oxide fuel cells, dealing with ceramics and long equations. He attributes his initial interest in energy to the documentary “The End of Suburbia,” which he first saw about 4 years ago. Since then he has felt a duty to get the good word out. Ben has been the host of theWatt Podcast talking about various energy issues, a capacity we are exploring bringing the TOD.
(22 May 2008)
Gazprom to Ship Shtokman Gas to Rabaska LNG Terminal
Enbridge media release (?) , Rigzone
Gazprom Marketing & Trading USA, Inc. and the Rabaska partners, Gaz Metro, Enbridge Inc. and Gaz de France have signed a Letter of Intent outlining the major terms under which GMTUSA will become an equity partner in the proposed Rabaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification project and contract for 100 percent of the import terminal’s capacity. The parties expect to execute definitive agreements before the end of this year.
… “The Rabaska LNG project will deliver the critical infrastructure needed to bring an important new source of natural gas supply to Ontario and Quebec,” said Stephen J.J. Letwin, Executive Vice President, Gas Transportation and International for Enbridge. “This new supply will benefit the two provinces’ growing number of natural gas consumers, many of whom are customers of Enbridge Gas Distribution, as well as support Ontario’s increasing emphasis on natural gas to fuel environmentally responsible power generation. Gazprom’s involvement in the Rabaska LNG project gives strong momentum to advancing this project and meeting those needs.”
(20 May 2008)
Contributor Dr. Larry Hughes writes:
This will be the first east coast LNG facility for the supply of natural gas to Canada (the Irving-Repsol facility in Saint John is for export to New England). Western Canadian gas is in decline and eastern Canadian demand (in Ontario and Quebec) is rising, driven by the rush to switch from coal to natural gas for electrical generation. This is another example of how not to achieve energy security: replacing one insecure supply with another; however, it will allow Enbridge to keep natural gas flowing in its pipelines.
