Letter to the Editor
End of confusion
Published Friday, July 18, 2008
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Stumble It!July 14, 2008
To the editor:
North Pole resident Jim Metzger’s letter to the editor on July 14, 2008, plaintively titled “Needs an answer,” demands an immediate response.
First off, one does not need to be college educated to be reasonably informed. No matter how much, where or how deep we drill in the United States, that will not alleviate our energy crunch. We have reached and gone beyond peak oil we produce domestically, it will be sold at world market prices. They have gone up substantially and will continue to do so because nations like India and China, with very large populations, have discovered the joys and sorrows of the internal combustion engine.
Millions of these Indians and Chinese are buying cars. This has put heavy pressure on demand for oil. Even if we pump the last drop of oil from American soil, it will fetch world market prices — and those will rise relentlessly. So we are all staring at the end of the oil age in the face and will have to use all of our ingenuity to find alternative fuels. So, be confused no more.
Community Discussion
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Ok we drill find a ton of oil and keep it for us dont sell it. Now lets here why that wont work come on posters i need something to read on my day off.
Tony my boy what do you have against "free markets" and capitalism? Don't you understand we can't "keep it for us & dont sell it" because that would be unprofitable.. uhm I mean unAmerican or anti-globalism..., well, it's just commie talk. Stop it.
Seems to be alot of talk about energy, global warming and high demand for oil.
Yet everyone continues to ignore the fact that if a National energy policy that provided for and fast tracked the installation of nuclear plants across the USA with a goal of exceeding even the percentage of france would reduce the demand of oil and at the same time appease the global warming theorist and there false assumptions regarding just how climate works.
As for peak oil, maybe someone can explain why is it that some wells that are capped due to reduced flow and then are reopened a few years down the line have nearly as much flow once reopened as they did when the were new?
Or how does one account for some drilled holes that have reduced flow over time and then are redrilled then suddenly having an increased flow once again to that when it was newly drilled?
Peak oil is the result of demand exceeding the current production levels/ drilled holes and zero to do with the total reserves oil worldwide both discovered and undiscovered.
Oil did not just appear suddenly from the demise of dinosaurs. oil is being formed even to this day and will continue to be formed...
As for the recent spike in the price of crude oil, demand has had very little influence in the insanely high prices we've seen this year. Believe it or not, China and India are not buying nearly as much oil as they could be.
The reason for such high prices is the recent trend of barrels of oil being bought and sold excessively on the stock market without the intention of refining it. For example, I buy a barrel for $135, then someone else buys the same barrel for $140, then someone else buys it for $145, then an actual oil refinery buys it for $150 raising the price of all fuels produced by that refinery.
If our country ran a true free market system, there would be nothing the government could do to relieve oil prices and we'd be stuck paying $5 a gallon or more forever.
Anyone interested in oil production should read the Oil Drum http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/overview . Oil production in the U.S. peaked in 1970 and has been declining continuously since then despite extensive exploration and drilling. Opening ANWR and offshore areas will not reverse the U.S. decline in oil production and will not have a significant impact on global oil prices because production will only be a fraction of the 85 million barrels a day currently produced. New oil discoveries have been declining since the 1960's and the oil that is discovered is in smaller fields and more expensive to produce. We nees to wake up to the fact that oil is no longer going to be cheap and plan accordingly.
Why are all of you waiting for the government to give you a solution. Look for a solution that fits yourself. Make smart decisions for the long term. If you're waiting for the government to intervene (sic) , you'll be broke.
Yeah i guess that would not work out drilling for our own oil and being way less dependent on foriegn oil and keeping the oil we do find and i willhave to agree we have more left than people think. I mean what was i thinking about shame on me we must keep our oil in the ground and buy from saudi and keep them rich beyond my wildest dreams and not use our own oil. I guess i better stick to helping save them penguins.
i keep hearing people champion alternative energy. why hasn't some greedy group cashed in on this cash cow and are offering us some cheap alternative energy? (remember the no-nukes) i bet it doesn't exist. i bet no workable form of mass alternative energy sources has been invented yet. i don't think the ecological minded folk who propound alternative energy wants us to have energy. i think they just want the whole way of life in the usa to collapse. they want the grocery stores and everything to go out of business. the want to force everyone to grow their own food, sell the excess at local farmers markets. then they can hobnob with their other hippie friends there and discuss the most recent book they read, which would have been from a decade ago since no new books have reached the shelves in years. not that anyone has time to pursue art since all the energy tools are gone forcing everyone to work 16 hours a day just to survive.
The energy that strikes the earth from the sun in 68 minutes is equivalent to all the energy used by man in one year. Big Oil and Big Government hate solar or any fuel source they can't control. Profits and taxes is why we are still whipping this "Dead Horse". The sheep will change coarse when the trail gets to tough. Baa Baa
According to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, global oil production is now declining, from 85 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is like a 45% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnaly...
I used to live in NH, but moved to a safer place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area, good climate with much rain and good soil?
Clifford J. Wirth
Mr Naske, if what you say is correct...how do you explain the fact that the CEO's of the oil companies appeared before Congress and laughed at our Leaders. What can anybody do to them???The GOLDEN RULE applies here..."WHO'EVER HAS THE GOLD RULES" Doesn't it seem funny that they mentioned to Congress that if they had been allowd to drill offshore around the US..This would have never happened(The Oil Crisis). Doesn't it seem strange to anyone that everytime Congress turns down drilling offshore(or AMWR) that prices go up 30 cents a gallon overnight? The oil companies now rule the world and there isn't anything that can be done to stop it. Nice retirement for Mr Bush HUH? A Registered REPUBLICAN
JayT---
I didn't see the entire hearings that you bring up, but what I did see was completely laughable. I saw Rep. Maxine Waters call for socializing the oil industry. I saw Rep. Wasserman Schultz demand that the oil industry "prove to me that you are not [manipulating the price]". Speaker Pelosi's "...plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price-gouging: rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks, and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies...".
And no, it doesn't seem funny that if offshore drilling would have been allowed, we would not have the shortage of supply not foreign dependent that we have today.
Congress needs a basic education in how capitalism works. Supply and Demand, Brother. And you cant punish a business with taxes. They ALWAYS pass the tax on to consumers. Like the 2.2 trillion dollars the oil industry has been taxed in the past quarter century. Exactly whose hide do you think that money came from? Duh, the consumers. All non-productive fees paid to government.
I cant understand your last sentence, unless you are advocating membership in the Communist Party. This is America. It is legal, and acceptible, to be a registered Republican. The President is not planning his retirement on the price of oil.
Yo g, I think he was saying he is a republican too..."membership in the Communist Party" funny stuff.
I'm glad you paid attention to the Libs...what did the Reps. say? Do you remember...if you dont then put down the koolaid. You might be suprised.
What? We stopped drilling for oil in 2015 and started looking for alternative energy and ended up in a well, (not a depression, A WELL)!Two years later World Famine broke out and soon after 5 Billion hungry Chinese people started marching across Europe and the Bering Straight. They didn't want television as bad as they wanted to eat.
The internal combustion engine has had its day, this is not 1908, this is 2008 and I think we need to move on already.
Is our ingenuity all gone? are little controlled explosions of gas to make wheels turn still the best we can come up with after a hundred years?
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