A tank of gas, a world of trouble
Whether it's $3 a gallon gasoline, spiraling violence and political instability in the oil-producing regions, or evidence of global warming and climate change, there are signs around us that the petroleum-based economy upon which the world has operated for more than a century has entered a transition period.
This Chicago Tribune story (the linked is to a version in the Austin American Statesman) points out just how fragile this economic infrastructure has become.
Here are a few key paragraphs:
Read where the roots of this 7,000-gallon-plus lead:
The article goes on to say that the U.S. generates eight percent of the world's oil, but consumes a quarter of it. And the cost of getting that oil (measured in terms of dollars, political military risks) is steadily increasing.
It has refused to impose tougher efficiency standards on the auto industry. It's been three decades since those standards were set and administrationistration and the Republican Congress refuse to even prod the auto industry to build more fuel efficient vehicles.
As the article hints at, energy efficiency is an issue that has economic, political and environmental implications. Energy diversification holds tremendous potential for Louisiana and the Seventh District. Our strong agricultural base (jeopardized by trade agreements) would benefit greatly from the creation of new markets for sugar cane and other crops that could be used in the formulation of bio-fuels. Louisiana is also rich in other bio-mass products (such as wood chips) which also lend themselves to use in bio-fuel products.
Our dependence on foreign oil also binds our fate to countries and governments which don't necessarily share our interests or values (most of the terrorists on the planes involved in the 9/11/01 attacks were from Saudi Arabia). With domestic production declining as a natural course of events, our depenforeignn foreigh oil is fore-ordained unless we move to break that dependence on oil and the entanglements that accompany it.
We are an inventive people, a nation of entrepreneurs and inventors. The energy challenges we face are the kinds of challenges that have historically drawn the talents of our best, brightest and most inventive to the task at hand. But national policies based on denial of the challenge puts off that creative response and increases the likelihood that shocks to the system will be more severe and more disruptive than they need be.
My commitment is to work to in Congress to create a new national energy policy that frees the entrepreneurial creativity of our people to respond to this challenge while at the same time limiting the social and economic disruption that shocks to the current system might produce.
Innovation is a core American trait. Current national energy policy is denying us the opportunity to have that talent brought to bear on a matter of pressing national need.
You can help change that with new 7th District representation in Congress.
This Chicago Tribune story (the linked is to a version in the Austin American Statesman) points out just how fragile this economic infrastructure has become.
Here are a few key paragraphs:
By now, most Americans realize that something is profoundly awry in the global oil patch.The story traces the contents of one tanker truck full of gasoline and diesel delivered to a Marathon Oil station in South Elgin, Illinois. The paper claims it's the first time anyone has ever been able to do this kind of analysis and credits Marathon with providing them access to the data.
For most drivers, the evidence is obvious: record-high fuel prices that have surpassed last year's spikes after Hurricane Katrina.
Yet to fully grasp the scope of the crisis looming before them, Americans must retrace their tankful of gasoline back to its shadowy sources. What that journey exposes is a globe-spanning energy network that is so fragile, so beholden to hostile powers and so unsustainable that our car-centered lifestyle seems more at risk than ever.
"I truly think we're at one of those turning points where the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face it," said Matthew Simmons, an energy investment banker in Houston who has advised the Bush administration on oil policy. "We're not talking some temporary Arab embargo anymore. We're not talking your father's energy crisis."
What Simmons and many other experts are talking about is a collision between geology and geopolitics.
Read where the roots of this 7,000-gallon-plus lead:
On the hydrocarbon menu that night, in rounded figures:Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola, and Republic of Congo. Reads like an itinerary from an axis of chaos tour.
• Gulf of Mexico crudes: 31 percent
• Texas crudes: 28 percent
• Nigerian crudes: 17 percent
• Arab Light from Saudi Arabia: 10 percent
• Louisiana Sweet: 8 percent
• Illinois Basin Light: 4 percent
• Cabinda crude from Angola: 3 percent
• N'Kossa crude from the Republic of Congo: 0.01 percent
For five months, from September through February, other fuel shipments to the station were analyzed for their crude composition. Molecules swirled through the South Elgin Marathon's gas pumps from Nigeria, Iraq and Venezuela, as well as from declining oil fields in the United States.
Taken together, they revealed the immense human costs, the technical investments, the hardball politics, the hidden exploitation and, ultimately, the alarming fragility of America's epic oil addiction as seen through the prism of a local gas station.
The article goes on to say that the U.S. generates eight percent of the world's oil, but consumes a quarter of it. And the cost of getting that oil (measured in terms of dollars, political military risks) is steadily increasing.
The United States gulps a quarter of the crude pumped on the planet, industry critics point out, yet it sits atop just 3 percent of the reserves.What I find particularly troubling about the current so-called Energy Policy of the Bush administration is its denial of this reality. The administration is committed to oil, the companies that extract it, and the countries that sit atop it, regardless of the economic, political and military costs that policy inflicts on the country.
"You can drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on every continental shelf and atop every hill in America for that matter, and you still won't reverse the fact that our oil production is in permanent decline," said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., a senior member of the House Science Committee. "We're just sopping up what's left, digging ourselves into a deeper hole."
It has refused to impose tougher efficiency standards on the auto industry. It's been three decades since those standards were set and administrationistration and the Republican Congress refuse to even prod the auto industry to build more fuel efficient vehicles.
As the article hints at, energy efficiency is an issue that has economic, political and environmental implications. Energy diversification holds tremendous potential for Louisiana and the Seventh District. Our strong agricultural base (jeopardized by trade agreements) would benefit greatly from the creation of new markets for sugar cane and other crops that could be used in the formulation of bio-fuels. Louisiana is also rich in other bio-mass products (such as wood chips) which also lend themselves to use in bio-fuel products.
Our dependence on foreign oil also binds our fate to countries and governments which don't necessarily share our interests or values (most of the terrorists on the planes involved in the 9/11/01 attacks were from Saudi Arabia). With domestic production declining as a natural course of events, our depenforeignn foreigh oil is fore-ordained unless we move to break that dependence on oil and the entanglements that accompany it.
We are an inventive people, a nation of entrepreneurs and inventors. The energy challenges we face are the kinds of challenges that have historically drawn the talents of our best, brightest and most inventive to the task at hand. But national policies based on denial of the challenge puts off that creative response and increases the likelihood that shocks to the system will be more severe and more disruptive than they need be.
My commitment is to work to in Congress to create a new national energy policy that frees the entrepreneurial creativity of our people to respond to this challenge while at the same time limiting the social and economic disruption that shocks to the current system might produce.
Innovation is a core American trait. Current national energy policy is denying us the opportunity to have that talent brought to bear on a matter of pressing national need.
You can help change that with new 7th District representation in Congress.
posted by Mike Stagg at
10:25 PM
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