Supposedly dwindling supplies of oil prompted the chants of drill, baby, drill that polluted the public discourse during the presidential election.

Did we miss something?  When oil was $147.00 per barrel, which occurred ages ago (five months as this is written) Big Oil had its army of schills screeching for relaxing environmental protections so they could help America achieve energy independence.

“Just let us at that oil that’s off limits in two miles of water all around the country, and we will rescue the country from the evil oil empires and godless communists/socialists who are holding our economy hostage.”

The chanters have fallen silent.

Did the supply of black gold suddenly increase?  No, the price of oil suddenly fell due to the world economic slowdown and decreasing demand for oil.  So, for now we don’t need to exploit those off shore oil assets.  The fact that drilling for oil in two miles of water is only economically feasible when the price is well over $100.00 per barrel has nothing to do with it.

What would the reaction be if we forced the oil companies to drill for that oil in the interests of national security, or better yet, cut them out and let the government do it.  Cries of socialism, communism, collectivism, and other denigrating isms would abound.  Oil companies are the best to judge when the time is right to gut environmental protections in the interests of energy independence, not the people or the government.

When will we need to drill, baby, drill again?  You got it, when the price goes up again.  It really has nothing to do with supply, it only has to do with price (which of course goes down when demand decreases).

So, by extrapolation, if we could decrease demand for “burning oil” to close to zero, how close to zero would the price go?  (more…)

Do they think we’re stupid?

It is all the rage in Washington to talk about energy independence.  As a matter of fact, Presidents have been talking about it as far back as Nixon.  Watch this video to see how easy it is to use energy independence as a talking point from the right or the left.

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-12-v-65.html

So, what has happened since 1974?  We are dependent on foreign countries for close to 70% of our transportation sector energy (oil).   All they did was talk, not act.

The spike in oil prices this past summer made for more good political palaver.

Drill, baby, drill

How can a country with 3% of the world’s oil supply that uses 25% of the world’s oil drill itself to energy independence?

Then there is “all of the above” rhetoric.  Clean coal, nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, hybrid electric cars.

This is another political pander.  Where is conservation is this mix?  What the heck is clean coal?  Nuclear plants take years to build, we don’t have a way to dispose of the radioactive waste and they cost hundreds of millions of dollars to decommission?

Check out these sites to find out about nuclear waste storage and decommissioning issues:

http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_waste_storage/nuclear_waste_storage.html

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/waste.html

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/decommissioning.html

This is a chance for the people. business and government to work together to merge the two goals of energy independence and ending dependence on polluting fuel.  Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, conservation, plant waste biofuels, electric cars.  These are the things we must do to achieve endependence.

Endependence=energy independence

that ends dependence on polluting fuels.