May 24, 2008

Dr Laina Farhat-Holzman

Oil is now $120 a barrel but even if it drops to a more reasonable price, we users are in trouble of our own making. We drive gas guzzling cars; drive them a lot; refuse to permit new or increased drilling anywhere in the United States or offshore (containing 25-30 billion barrels of oil); refuse to have new refineries anywhere; and refuse to let nuclear reactors take some of the load off of oil. Then we complain that we are in thrall to Arab oil. This is nothing less than perverse.

The U.S. has about 30 billion proven petroleum reserves today and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas, none of which we are using.We are today the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia - and could be doing much more, but for exaggerated environmental fears and
nasty prejudice against the very energy companies that are trying to serve us. (Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, May 2nd). And this is presidential campaign time, so we are hearing the usual populist-pandering solutions: 'windfall taxes and punishments for the evil oil companies.' What is missing is any thought about a genuine bipartisan energy policy that could be launched the day after the next election!

A survey of the next two decades should lead us to propose that we must increase oil flow domestically - and to do it with a sunset clause: that ten years down the line we revisit this policy and if enough alternate energy has been brought on line, we discontinue it.I believe in sunset clauses anyway - because when we take what seems to be needed actions, they may have unforeseen consequences. Revisiting the legislation can improve or discontinue it.

A bipartisan policy should do the following:

• Open as many proven sites of petroleum immediately, requiring the oil companies to use their best systems for protecting the environment. By the way, they do far better than the state-owned oil companies around the world, which have no incentive to be clean. Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, was astonished when he compared the oil complexes of Chevron and the Indonesian state-owned company on opposite ends of Java:Chevron's was like a national park whereas the Indonesian facility was an ecological disaster. He was surprised.

• Open nuclear plants, and continue to invest in technology to produce a breeder reactor, which can eat the nuclear wastes. This is in the works and may well be close to solving. The French, who are equally concerned with ecology, have not had one bit of trouble with their huge nuclear energy industry.

• Finance R&D of alternate resources - solar, wind, tidal, and thermal. None of these is ready yet to replace oil, but a decade or two may be the time needed. When really feasible technologies appear, the energy companies will be very happy to replace oil. They all emphasize that it is energy that they sell, not just oil.

It is obvious that oil and coal are last century's energy technologies, not right for the second half of the 21st century. By drilling our own oil now, we will have the time to make the transition from oil to its next generations of energy sources. But this step requires all the intelligence that our voters and government can muster. It is disgraceful to whine - and do nothing, our present stance.

Relieving us of the pain we are now having in the exorbitant cost of energy is only one issue. More important is that we are being whipsawed by some of the nastier oil producers around the world who finance their international chaos with our money. If we want to stop being 'over their barrel,' we need to take action that is perfectly feasible: stop pandering to the hysterical half-truths of alarmists and start a real energy program that both can and will work for us.