Robert Ellis
Researched Position Paper
December 05, 2009
Buying Time: Drill to Sustain the Oil Addiction
For an easier read please go to robertwritingblog.blogspot.com
Earlier this year a majority of parcels to drill in Utah were rejected federally. Joan Lowry of 24/7 Breaking News states that in a media briefing Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior said "17 parcels were approved for drilling and eight rejected" leaving 52 parcels "on hold" (Lowy, 2009). Senator Orin Hatch of Utah, blasted Salazar's decision declaring that, "The argument that these leases have been canceled to protect our national parks is a fairy tale conjured up to win public support for what is actually a very dangerous anti-oil agenda" reported Patty Henetz (Henetz, 2009) the Energy & Environment Reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune. Utah is at a crossroads and must understand that under the current timeline and circumstances that the U.S. is not producing enough to meet national consumption and consumers are being slow to adopt new technology; oil is a necessity.
These Public Lands can be preserved for the recreational and aesthetic enjoyment of future generations or it can be drilled to preserve the enjoyment of the American Dream, which is sustained by oil.
The American lifestyle, and as many world citizens would say, the "American Dream", is sustained by oil. In his State of the Union Address, President George Bush (2006) agreed saying, "we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil." America does have a serious problem based in an inability to sustain energy demand without foreign support. The American Petroleum Institute (API) reports in a recent article that U.S. oil production is at an average of 5 million barrels per day and that U.S. oil consumption dropped from almost 21 million to almost 19 million barrels a day, due to a "sluggish economy" (Landry, 2009). The U.S. produces only a quarter of the oil it consumes.
Figure 1. U.S. Oil Consumption Exceeds U.S Production
Note: From the article Oil Jitters from the CQ Researcher. cqpress.com
With the low U.S. production and oil being a "non-renewable energy source", petroleum will be depleted (Katel, 2008). LiveScience reports that petroleum forms too slowly for it to be the "solution to our petroleum supplies" (Than, 2005). Some experts like Peter Davies, chief economist at BP believe that we have less than 40 years before all the major oil reserves are depleted (Conway, 2004). Houston energy consultant Matthew R. Simmons, a leading proponent of the peak oil theory says that we have used half of earth's oil, "run out of mega-fields, and demand is not going to slow down" (Katel, 2008). In the CQ Researcher article Oil Jitters, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which examines the use of public funds; evaluates federal programs and policies; and provides analyses, recommendations, and other assistance to help Congress make informed oversight, policy, and funding decisions, reports that "the amount of oil remaining in the ground is highly uncertain, because the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) controls most of the estimated world oil reserves and its estimates…are not verified by independent auditors" (Katel, 2008). GAO (2005) also states in their Energy Markets report that oil prices are "directly" linked to the price of gasoline and that when OPEC members, who "produce 40 percent of the world's crude oil and control almost 70 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, collectively agree to restrict production of crude oil" world prices increase and that price is "passed to consumers" at the gasoline pump. With the probability that the world's major energy source, oil, will not be able to meet the demand in upcoming decades, an entire lifestyle is at stake and though we may not see the effects now, the next two generations will feel the full consequences of our decisions.
Figure 2. OPEC Controls Majority of Crude Oil
Note: From the article Oil Jitters from the CQ Researcher. cqpress.com
The United States has set-up different services to protect public lands. One of these services is the National Park Service, its responsibility is to "[manage] areas … in such a way that will leave resources unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations" (Smith, 2009). Future generations will lose their life style and their ability to enjoy the outdoors if we don't act now. I would like to depict an image of reality for the average person who enjoys the outdoors. Most outdoor enthusiasts -whether they be hikers, fisherman, backpacker, climbers, or hunters- all drive to their location-whether that be a lake, a trail head or a camp ground- and use gasoline to fuel their vehicles. With over 50 percent, according to a CNN (2006) article, of the U.S. population living in suburbs, there is large quantity of people who drive to get to their scenic location. And with bio-plastics just emerging the majority of outdoor equipment used is petroleum based plastic. We rely on oil to enjoy the outdoors.
Figure 3. Arches National Park, Utah
Note: From the National Park Service. nps.gov
Franklin Seal, a spokesman for the environmental group Wildland CPR says "If you're standing at Delicate Arch ... and you're looking through the arch, you could see drill pads on the hillside behind it" as cited in The Virginian - Pilot (Foy, 2008, p.A.9). However, due to recent technological breakthroughs the oil industry can now drill resulting in reduced land impairment. Gretchen Randall (2001), Director of Energy & Regulatory Affairs of the National Center for Public Policy Research says, "Today there are safe ways of drilling for oil that leave a very small footprint." Henniker Directional Drilling (HDD), an experienced drilling company based in the New England area states "horizontal directional drilling (also known as trenchless technology and directional boring) goes under roads, driveways, wetlands, and other natural and man-made structures" (HDD,2009). The pad does not need to be directly above the oil source, but it could be some distance away. This means that many of our above ground sight-seeing attractions could be kept from harm. Old memories of a sloppy oil industry are not the reality of today. The Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining (OGM) -"Regulates and ensures industry compliance and site restoration while facilitating oil, gas and mining activities"-awarded six Earth Day awards to Utah companies this year (OGM, 2009). The oil industry has improved and has also been forced to spread across the globe to sustain the increasing oil addiction.
Figure 4. Rising Global Oil Production
Note: From the article Oil Jitters from the CQ Researcher. cqpress.com
As the population grows the addiction will grow. The world population is projected to increase from its 6.8 billion people to 9 billion people by 2050" according to a report issued by the United Nations Population Division (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2009). IEA states that emerging nations like India and China will cause "the world's energy needs [to] be well over 50 percent higher in 2030 than today" and that by 2030 China and India together will have 230 million "motor vehicles on the road" as compared with the current U.S. fleet of 250 million (Katel, 2008). The Interamerican Press Association's Bartolome Mitre Award winner Peter Katel reports that Sandalow, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank said, "If those cars and trucks use oil in the same way the current fleet does, we're in trouble, for a lot of reasons" (Katel, 2008).
The lifestyles of future generations will be affected by our current decisions. Petroleum is our foundation and it will be depleted. Our infrastructure will deteriorate if we don't progress towards other energy sources. Consumers worldwide, including the U.S. are slow to adopt new non-petroleum products. We need to buy ourselves time between the depletion of petroleum and the adoption of innovation.
Let's take a look at current innovations, Hydrogen cars have been spoken of as "the future" of transportation. "Hydrogen technology, attractive to many because its nonuse of fossil fuels, is getting a big push from the government — $195.8 million in research and development from the Department of Energy" accounts veteran journalist Peter Katel (2008). However, Peter also reports we are far from consumers using hydrogen cars as acknowledged by Bud DeFlaviis's, government-affairs director of the U.S. Fuel Cell Council statement "there are no truly viable hydrogen fuel cells on the market today" (Katel, 2008).
An innovation that is already on the road with much more consumer attention than hydrogen cars is electric and hybrid-electric car research, which is getting "$50.8 million in research and development money"; however, after an 18-month study, the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) concluded that widespread use of plug-in hybrids would not have a significant impact until 2050 (Katel, 2008). Also, our current power grid cannot bear the electrical demand that would come from majority of the population plugging-in their vehicle during off-time. On our timeline plug-ins will not solve the problem, but they will reduce demands on oil.
Figure 5. The 2006 EnergyCS PHEV Prius Conversion
Note: From the Idaho National Laboratory. avt.inel.gov
Ethanol is a biodiesel is not car, but a plant-based gasoline substitute; it is a liquid mixture from plants like corn. Bush's 2006 energy bill requires the production of "36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022 — five times more than present production levels" (Katel, 2008). This will help us when shortages of petroleum come, but who will be given this ethanol fuel when the time comes? Relying on Ethanol limits our nation's ability to feed mouths. With some farmers fields dedicated to ethanol production we limit food production to a growing world population.
Algae Oil "is the transformation of algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum" as stated on OriginOil's website, a company using new technology to transform the algae. OriginOil (2009) states that, "much of the world's oil and gas is made up of ancient algae deposits." They seek "to produce 'new oil' from algae, through a cost-effective, high-speed manufacturing process. This endless supply of new oil can be used for many products
such as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, plastics and solvents without the global warming effects of petroleum." Technology like OriginOil will allow us to be self sufficient and independent with energy demands, limit greenhouse gas output tremendously, and use already existing industries and national infrastructure to promote this petroleum replacement. Algae oil will not reduce our farmland's ability to grow food for feeding. "Other oil-producing feedstock such as corn and sugarcane often destroy vital farmlands and rainforests, disrupt global food supplies and create new environmental problems. Our unique technology, based on algae, is targeted at fundamentally changing our source of oil without disrupting the environment or food supplies. Instead of drilling for old oil, we can now manufacture clean, new oil, anytime and anywhere, delivering a revolutionary breakthrough to the world" states OriginOil (OriginOil, 2009). Algae oil will still require time for implementation and adoption into our societal infrastructure. We need to drill for oil in order to buy time required for the implementation of these petroleum reducers and replacers.
Time is certainly a variable marking the depletion of petroleum and our adoption of petroleum reducing products; however time is also unpredictable variable in foreseeing blocked imports.
In a lecture from Heritage Foundation: Leadership for America, Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. (2007) states that this growing dependence on oil will have "dire consequences for the economic well-being of the United States, our national security, and the American way of life." Nations like Russia have recently used oil as a political weapon on countries like Georgia who depend on foreign oil. Our large unsatisfied demands in the U.S. for oil make us easy victims to an economic attack. The price of oil became a weapon when Arab OPEC nations started
"the embargo on Oct. 17, 1973, and almost overnight 4 million barrels of oil a day were removed from world supplies. Demand rose 7 percent above supply, and international prices quadrupled from $3 a barrel to $12… and on Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy and took 52 employees hostage — holding them for 444 days. Panic took hold of energy markets again, and prices shot up to the $45-per-barrel range, as high as they'd ever been".
Business and families will be destroyed if foreign powers decide to strangle the U.S. by its oily throat. We are addicted and we will pay high prices for our addiction.
When natural disasters, weather, political upheavals or war disrupts our oil importation we have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). According to the May 2009 GAO report SPR contained 719 million barrels of crude oil and with current levels of oil demand, the SPR combined with private industry reserve holdings contain "enough oil and petroleum products" for 124 days (GAO, 2009). When are imports are blocked then we will only be able meet a quarter of the national demand after a four months. The SPR is also used to alleviate prices spikes from exporting nations; however, the reserve should be used sparingly to help us shift into new innovative products.
Oil is essential to continuing our current American lifestyle into the future. Drilling in Utah as well as in other similar areas will allot us the necessary time to adopt methods of petroleum reduction and replacement in our nation. George Washington (1796) warned in his farewell address against "ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear" (Washington, 1796) . And Thomas Friedman (2008) author of the book Hot, Flat and Crowded agrees and states ,"While our parents left us an America much wealthier and healthier than the one that was passed to them, our generation seems determined to pass on to our children a downwardly mobile America." What we leave undone today will be left for tomorrow's generation to solve. By moving into oil reducing technologies while drilling Utah, businesses will thrive from selling these innovations internationally. The future is indeed at hand and our decisions will cause the future generations of the world to lose their opportunity for the American Dream or they will live a maintained American Dream because our assertive planning to the oil and innovation timeline.
References
Bush, G.W. (2006, January 31). President Bush's state of the union address. Washinton D.C.: CQ Transcripts Wire. Retrieved on Novemeber 15, 2009 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/01/31/AR2006013101468.html
CNN. (October 17, 2006). U.S. population now 300 million and growing. Retrieved on November 30, 2009 from http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/17/300.million.over/index.html
Cohen, A. (2007, March 22). The national security consequences of oil dependency, heritage lecture #1021. Retrieved October 19, 2009, from The Heritage Foundation: Leadership for America: http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/hl1021.cfm
Conway, E. (2004, June 15). There's enough oil to last 40 years, says BP. The Telegraph . Retrieved on November 13 2009 from http://www.energybulletin.net/node/659
Foy, P. (2008, November 17). Bush plan would put drill rigs across parks' treasured vistas . Virginian - Pilot. Norfolk, Va. , p. A.9. Retrieved on September 18, 2009 from ProQuest Standard.
Friedman, T. (2008). Hot, flat, and crowded. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.p 21
GAO. (May 10, 2005). Energy markets: understanding current gasoline prices and potential future trends. Retrieved on November 26, 2009 from http://www.gao.gov/htext/d05675t.html.
GOA. (May 12, 2009). Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Issues Regarding the Inclusion
of Refined Petroleum Products as Part of the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve. Retrieved on November 26, 2009 from http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09695t.pdf
HDD. (2009). Henniker Directional Drilling. Retrieved on December 5, 2009 from http://www.hddbore.com/index.htm
Henetz, P. (2009, February 4). Obama administration scraps BLM's Utah drilling lease plans. The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved on September 18, 2009 from ProQuest Standard.
Katel, P. (2008, January 4). Oil jitters. CQ Researcher, 18, 1-24. Retrieved November 13, 2009, from CQ Researcher Online, http://library.cqpress.com.ezproxy.ldsbc.edu/cqresearcher/cqresrre2008010400.
Landry, C. (July 16, 2009). Sluggish economy pushes U.S. oil demand to lowest level in decade: API. Retrieved on November 30, 2009 from API: http://www.api.org/Newsroom/us_oil_demand_june09.cfm
Lowy, J. (2009, October 8). Oil and gas drilling ok'd on some disputed Utah lands Bush adminstration had pushed to lease. Breaking News 24/7 . Retrieved on October 31 2009 from http://blog.taragana.com/n/oil-and-gas-drilling-okd-on-some-disputed-utah-lands- bush-administration-had-pushed-to-lease-190965/
OGM. (2009). Retrieved on December 5, 2009 from http://ogm.utah.gov/
OriginOil. (2009). Retrieved November 16, 2009, from OriginOil: http://www.originoil.com/
Randal, G. (July 30, 2001).
Environmental groups target Congress on Bush energy plan/ANWR. Retrieved on December 4, 2009 from the National Center: http://www.nationalcenter.org/TSR73001.html
Smith, B. (January 2003). National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior: criteria for parklands. Retrieved on November 24 2009 from National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov/legacy/criteria.html
Than, K. (2005). The mysterious origin and supply of oil. LiveScience . Retrieved on November 16, 2008 from http://www.livescience.com/environment/051011_oil_origins.html
Washington, G. (1796). President George Washington's Farewell Address . Retrieved on November 2, 2009 from http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/american_historical_documents_1796_president_ge orge_washingtons_farewell_address
Articles of Related Interest:
Article from Grist
Reporter visits deep sea drilling sites
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-08-exploring-extreme-frontiers-of-oil-drilling/
Energy4me Essential Energy Education
http://www.energy4me.org/questions/what_is_industry_role.htm
Power Struggle
Do we need a technological breakthrough to avert the climate crisis?
by Bradford Plumer on The New Republic
June 17, 2009
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/power-struggle
Nov 19, 2009
Matew Berger
Offshore Oil Drilling Debate Renewed in Senate Hearing
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20091119/offshore-oil-drilling-debate-renewed-senate-hearing
Mcain's Drilling won't dent gas prices
June 19, 2008
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/19/MCCAINOIL/
Robert Siegel from NPR
Offshore Drilling May Have Little Effect on Oil Prices
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91819077
