This from the Wall Street Journal.
There is so much wrong with this article, it's hard to know where to start.
I'll begin by harkening back to a conversation we all had years about about the Kyoto Protocol. Note please, that Brazil signed the protocol and we did not. And we are being excoriated for being the one country who isn't drilling like mad. George W. Bush has been a wreck in so many ways, but not signing the Kyoto Protocol is just not one of them. It was a waste of everyone's time and he was willing to say so and resist the politically expedient thing. So good for him on that.
The author of this piece is a moron. His argument boils down to, "We need to drill because it will enhance our world status." and, "If we drill we'll drive the price of gas down, maybe."
We have plenty of world status, and so far we may be in a recession, but we're still fine, price-of-gas-wise. Why not, in a world where we are the dominant force politically, militarily and
monetarily, should we not sit on an enormous future lever which could keep us powerful in the very long term. If we ever do slip into something other than having the #1 world status in everything, then we can drill for oil. When you are stronger, faster, and quicker, you can keep your brass knuckles in your pocket until you need them.
He also says "But we can wave goodbye to the $1.25/gallon gasoline that in 1990
allowed a President Bush to airily lock away the nation's oil and gas
jewels."
Oh yeah, because there's no way a new president/congress could get at ANWAR if we needed it. If oil hits $1,000/barrel and only our reserves were left, I'm sure we'd just be handcuffed by the Alaskan Caribou Protection Act of 1990.
This article is really poorly thought-out and the WSJ should be embarrassed.
9 comments:
I've got whiplash. I read the link first (seeing that it was an WSJ op-ed I read with an eye to disagree) but actually I found myself with a little bit of agreement there (more on that in a moment), then I went back to Matt's post, expecting to have him agreeing with the op-ed, only to find a vehement disagreement.
I've gotta stop with the preconceived notions thing...
On the merits, I agree with Matt that the author is a twit. His thesis is just dumb. He also conveniently ignores the fact that the oil we have off shore is not easy oil to get at. It's cheap and easy to put a few thousand drill holes into the desert; oil derricks in the ocean are a different matter. Even a full-throated exploitation of those resources would provide only a trickle of our energy needs (and would have no measurable impact on world prices).
Curiously, despite my orthodox liberal credentials, I'm not opposed to increased development, though being a good liberal I'd like it well-regulated and as environmentally safe as possible. That's my only area of agreement with the author.
I hadn't thought about it this way, but in our world of declining known oil reserves and flat production, I like Matt's idea of "keeping our powder dry," as it were. When things get bad enough that we really need that oil, those resources may be the difference between total economic collapse and survival.
OTOH, it may be that if we do ever move beyond the carbon economy -- efficient solar, nuclear, fuel cells, or what-not, then we may never actually need those reserves, which would not be a bad thing either.
Oh, one point of order: Kyoto is not germane to this, I think. Kyoto involves only carbon emissions, and not oil exploration. Also, Bush did not kill Kyoto. Gore signed it in 1998 (?) but it was never acted on in the Senate due, I am sorry to say, to bipartisan opposition. So if anybody killed Kyoto in the US, it was Jesse Helms and Robert Byrd.
Bush has, it is true, allowed Kyoto to languish, but with the current composition of the Senate, needing 66 votes, I blame Bush only as one of many conservatives responsible for its demise.
Just for the record, I'm pro-kyoto in the general sense that it sounds like a good idea, not in the sense of having actually read the document or actively supporting it.
Yeah, the Kyoto thing was a stretch, but it just popped into a conversation I had earlier today. The world signed Kyoto and was pissed off that we didn't, and it turns out that we're the only large country on Earth that actually does a damned thing to restrain ourselves. Not much, of course, but I admire a move by our normally pandering government that says, "We're not signing a useless document that only we will try to live up to."
And I totally agree with you, we can live with $5 gas for a while, and why not just see if we get to better source first...
...which by the way are, in order of viability, most viable at the top, in descending order:
A) Nuclear
I see red every time someone talks about how irresponsible it is to NOT drill in places like ANWAR. It's a drop in the F*ing bucket, it won't make a damn bit of difference, and the damage will be done. You are right on, Matt.
I think you guys are wrong. The Union of Concerned Scientists presents that the US is using about 17 million barrels a day (using 25% of the world's oil).
If this WSJ moron is correct about what we have in reserve, not including ANWAR, we have 14 years of oil in those reserves. Hardly a drop in the bucket. In fact if the world reaches a point where oil is running dry and we can go 14 years beyond that?
This is where we approach the limits of my knowledge. From what I vaguely recall, FWIW, the rate of extraction of these oil fields would necessarily be low enough that it would likely represent a very small fraction of current total oil use. This was because the deep-sea platforms and arctic fields are technically more challenging and more difficult to scale up. I could be wrong on this.
I would like to see safe nuclear energy scaled up. Bush was pro-nuclear power once. That is one of the many failed promises of the Bush presidency. It's ironic that every good policy he ever advocated he failed to deliver on (immigration reform, tort reform), while being so effective with his malign policy execution...
It got to a point that it is profitable for Canada to extract its sand oil. Sea extraction is *way* cheaper than that. And North Sea oil has been profitable continuously from the beginning of time.
That 86 Billion barrels are ours for the taking when we want them.
true that it'll be profitable. (and as I said, I'm not opposed to the extraction) but my point was that the rate of extraction from deep sea (or from canada's sand pits) is slow enough that it won't make much of a dent in our import needs.
Sea extraction is *way* cheaper than that
So I read a wired article where they talked about pushing the envelope on drilling deep in the Gulf. The oil company was leasing a ship that cost $500,000/day, and it was not going quickly. Is the deep drilling really cheaper?
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