U.S. Energy Policy or Lack Thereof

SEARCH BLOG: ENERGY POLICY

Yesterday, I happen to watch CSPAN as Rep. John Peterson from Pennsylvania was giving a presentation concerning the coming energy crisis.

This was the last item of business for the House of Representatives and Mr. Peterson was speaking for the record since virtually all of the other representatives had left for the traditional 3-day weekend.

From what I could see, Mr. Peterson may have had a few slides that were previously shown, but these pictures taken of my TV screen give a pretty good idea of what he was saying. You can click on any image to see a much larger and clearer picture.

He was listing the shortcomings of the present energy bill before Congress:

• Prevents access to 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the U.S.
• Prevents access to 18% of onshore natural gas in the U.S.
• Prevents access to 2 trillion barrels of shale oil in the U.S. [Mr. Peterson noted that the Canadians were extracting 1-2 million barrels daily from tar sands using technology that would be similar for extracting oil from shale]
• Prevents access to 10 billion barrels of oil from the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska
• Attempts to breach existing, legal offshore energy contracts
• Increases taxes by $15 billion on energy companies [which get passed along in the price of energy products purchased by business and consumers in the U.S.]
• Ignores proven coal-to-gas technology which has been proven since WWII
• Raising expectations that 15% of U.S. energy needs can be produced from renewable resources
  

The chart below shows what our energy sources are. Wind and solar energy are a minuscule fraction of our total requirements.

The largest danger is the petroleum products of which more than 60% are presently imported. Mr. Peterson noted that oil is now $90+ per barrel under the best of conditions. Should storms or significant political upheaval affect our supplying nations, that price could easily reach $125 per barrel.

In addition to our tenuous oil supplies, we are facing critical shortages of natural gas.

Failure to access enormous supplies of domestic natural gas has resulted in the U.S. paying some of the highest natural gas prices in the world. This not only affects the cost of NG used for heating, but the many products derived from NG.

Among the many items produced from natural gas, fertilizer is one. Mr. Peterson noted that because of the dramatically rising NG prices, the cost of fertilizer has doubled and that cost now appears in our food supply.

Mr. Peterson is co-sponsoring legislation [some good graphics] to expand our nations natural gas supply. The following chart shows estimates of the revenue that will come from expanding natural gas leases.

What Mr. Peterson has done is outline the impact of the anti-energy political elements in the U.S. and the economic danger in which those elements have placed the U.S. He is proposing action that, if taken today, may lessen that danger in 10 years... not today since that opportunity passed 10 years ago.

While wind farms may sound wonderful, the reality is that with the U.S. population growing by millions each year [joining the millions who sneak into the country], we cannot afford to place our future in the hands of "if-come" technology... not when proven techonology and proven resources are awaiting our use.