By JR Dieckmann
Ridiculous, you say? Is it really any more ridiculous than the statement “We need to end our oil addiction?” Just look at the hazards being created by telephones today; avoidable auto accidents, filling our landfills with non-biodegradable plastics and electronics from disposable phones, polluting our air with radiation from cellphones and cellphone towers, loss of productivity due to excessive phone babble, and disruption of peace and quiet by people walking around in public places talking loudly into these tiny boxes.
So you see, if you want to make a case for the need to end our addiction to telephones, you can do that. But the truth is - we are not addicted to phones anymore than we are addicted to oil. Both provide us with the means to maintain our comfortable standard of living and productive economy. We depend on them in our daily lives - we are not “addicted” to them.
“Addiction” is a term applied to oil by the left, to demonize the oil companies. It has been foolishly used by others, such as President Bush, to promote alternative energy sources, which can never replace oil in our society. As long as America is an industrialized nation, we will always need oil to fuel that industrialization in one capacity or another. And why not use it? Oil is the natural energy source provided by God and Mother Earth to power our civilization and provide the raw materials for most of the products we use today. There is nothing else like it, not even close.
But let me get right to the point; oil is not a “fossil fuel” and the natural supply of oil is not limited. We have been raised to believe that oil is what’s left over from dead dinosaurs and that soon, it will run out. This is not true. The most direct evidence of this is where oil and dinosaur fossils are found. If they were related, then they should be found in the same places, right? They are not.
While dinosaur fossils are found just a few feet below the surface of the planet, oil fields are found much deeper, usually a mile to three miles below the surface and even deeper, at levels where no prehistoric life ever existed.
How can this be if oil came from dinosaurs? Well, you might say, it sunk down into these depths from closer to the surface. That would be a false assumption. Oil is lighter than water, and rock. It doesn’t sink into the earth, it rises up from the earth due to the Earth’s internal pressure and centrifugal force caused by the rotation of the planet.
An example of this is found at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles where about 8 to 12 gallons (32 - 48 liters) a day ooze and bubble to the surface. This has been going on for the last 40,000 years, during which time it has trapped many animals and birds from prehistoric times that are now extinct. The “light crude” evaporates away, leaving only a “heavy crude” sticky tar. It does not sink into the ground, it rises to the surface.
A recent article by Consulting Forensic Engineer and Technical Writer, Peter J. Morgan, entitled
Oil Is Not A Fossil Fuel And AGW Is Non-Science describes at length the centuries long debate over the origins of petroleum and the petroleum research conducted by Russian scientists over the past 50 years. Morgan’s article relies heavily on data developed by Dr J. F. Kenney, of Gas Resources Corporation, Houston, TX, who, along with a team of Russian scientists, have actually built a reactor vessel in which oil was produced by combining calcium carbonate and iron oxide (two of the most abundant compounds on the planet) under conditions that exist deep within the Earth's crust where temperatures are roughly 1500c and pressure is about 50,000 atmospheres.
Morgan explains that this is the same process that creates oil and will continue to do so until the death of the planet. “The high pressure causes oil to continuously seep up along fissures in the Earth's crust into subterranean caverns, which we call oil fields. Oil is still being produced in great abundance, and is a sustainable resource – by the same definition that makes geothermal energy a sustainable resource.”
Don’t be misled by those who tell you that we are “running out of oil, and must wean ourselves off of it.” This huge lie comes from the liberal environmentalists who object to the use of any oil as a motor fuel and try to force socialism on our society by promoting the hoax of man-made global warming. We are not, and never will, run out of oil, and the planet is perfectly capable of dealing with the disposal of hydrocarbons in the air, as it always has, as long as we do all we can to limit them.
This is a lesson that China has yet to learn, as evidenced by witnesses to the Summer Olympics. We have cleaned up our air, but China is polluting enough for the both of us. How is legislation in our Congress going to stop that? It can’t, but can only serve to make American life more difficult, expensive, and uncomfortable.
These liberal Democrats who tell us we are running out of oil are the same people who tell us that it would do no good to drill offshore or in ANWR because the oil wouldn’t be available for 10 years and would have no effect on today’s gas prices.
They tell us that by doing this, the new supplies of oil would only amount to 3% of the world’s oil supply, so it isn’t worth it. Even if they were right about only 3% - which they are not - 3% of world oil supply would be more than 10% of American oil needs which would end our dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, if we kept it here for use in our own country. ANWR alone could supply enough oil to do that.
The glaring fact staring us in the face right now is that oil has dropped from over $140 a barrel to under $120 a barrel just since, and as a result of, President Bush’s repeal of the executive ban on offshore drilling.
As for the 10 year estimate for making oil available to consumers, that too is a lie. There are two factors that contribute to the delay. One is building the infrastructure to deliver the oil away from the drilling sites. The other is the government red tape; infinite tangle of federal regulations, environmental permits, and lawsuits that delay the process.
The trick to getting fast relief from high prices at the pump is simply to pass new legislation that unties the hands of American oil producers and restores their liberty to do their job and go get the oil without delay.
Get the government out of the way, and here is what we could expect, according to John Hofmeister, former CEO of Shell Oil: Oil from the California offshore coast would be available in mere months. Oil from ANWR would be available in 2 to 3 years. The reason for this is that operating infrastructure is already in place.
Off the California coast, capped oil wells are already there, but were shut down by environmentalists as soon as they were drilled and built. In ANWR, just a few months would be required to explore and sink wells, then a couple of years to complete the pipeline infrastructure to the Trans-Alaska pipeline.
Drilling off the Eastern seaboard would take a little longer - 5 to 7 years, because the infrastructure for delivery would have to be built. But just giving a green flag to the oil companies would trigger an immediate worldwide downward slide in global oil prices.
You have no doubt noticed how oil prices are now declining due to just the debate in Congress and the Republican protest and push for a vote on energy legislation, which is still going on in the House of Representatives while the Democrats are on vacation. And that coming on the heels of President Bush repealing the executive offshore drilling ban. On Friday, oil fell to below $120 a barrel as oil speculators begin selling off the oil shares they have been holding back. Resulting decreases in the price at the pump are now being seen. Just imagine what immediate effect a congressional lift of ANWR and offshore oil bans would have on the price at the pump.
Hofmeister also points out that the petroleum and automobile industries cannot operate on political cycles. They must operate on business cycles. Industry has to plan many years in advance for their new product developments. The government operates on 2 and 4 year cycles. Industry cannot invest billions of dollars in future development, only to have the wind change in Washington with new leaders and legislation that would disrupt their plans. This applies both to the oil and automobile industry with respect to flex fuel and electric powered cars.
Another thing Hofmeister brings up is the 20 year life cycle of today’s automobiles. Even if we could switch to electric powered cars today, we would still need increased supplies of gasoline for at least the next 20 years to power the cars already on the road. We cannot just eliminate petroleum fuel with nothing available to replace it, and that includes ethanol which is not a substitute for gasoline but merely an additive to stretch it out by watering it down with our food.
Hofmeister also contends that we are not running out of oil. He says, in fact, that with our current oil supplies, we have not even reached “peak oil” levels yet. He explains that the current problem is not a lack of “light crude” for making gasoline and other light oil products, but rather as not having enough “heavy crude” for making diesel and jet fuel.
The problem, he says, is that when you buy a barrel of oil, it contains both light, medium, and heavy grades of oil. The top of the barrel has the light oil. The bottom of the barrel has tar for asphalt. The middle of the barrel contains the medium to heavy crude which is needed for diesel and jet fuel, but there isn’t enough of it. They have to buy more barrels, and consequently more light crude, to get the heavy crude they need and that raises the price of everything that comes in the barrel. “They are looking for places to store the gasoline,” he says.
Hofmeister adds that diesel and jet fuel are currently being sold at a net loss, even though they are now higher priced than gasoline. The difference must be made up in the selling price for gasoline. The overall price of the crude oil is reflected in the price of all of the products it provides, but this explains why there is no shortage of gasoline, yet the price is still high.
Because of our high dependence on foreign oil, we must do everything we can to increase our domestic energy supplies, including the use of wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, especially nuclear, and the development of new energy technologies. Those alternative energy sources that can be practically and efficiently used to replace petroleum energy, should be used to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But for some applications such as transportation, there is no better fuel or energy source than petroleum products like gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
Hofmeister says that the only things holding up nuclear energy are two senators from a lightly populated state, who don’t want nuclear waste stored under a desert mountain in their state. Unfortunately, one of these senators just happens to be the Majority Leader of the Senate who cares more about serving his environmental lobbyists than the American people.
In a free country, with a free market driven economy, any new alternative energy sources must be provided by private industry with privately provided funding, and the product must be economically competitive with that which it intends to replace, and do it without government subsidies. If it cannot do that, then the taxpayers and consumers are being cheated and ripped off. The alternate choice should not be forced upon the consumers if it cannot compete without dependence on government. Make it the right way, and make it affordable without government dependence, and Americans will buy it. That’s the American way, and the only one authorized by the Constitution.
Oh, and as for our addiction to telephones, we wouldn’t have them, or most everything else we depend on today without the plastic and other products we use everyday that are derived from oil. If we end our “addiction to oil,“ we will be forced to end our addiction to telephones and most everything else we are addicted to as well in our modern society.
JR Dieckmann is Editor, Publisher, Writer, and Webmaster of GreatAmericanJournal.com. He also works as an electrician in Los Angeles, Ca. He has been writing and publishing articles on the web since 2000. His articles appear on other publications such as: The Conservative Voice; Real Clear Politics; New Media Journal; Mich News; Daley Times-Post; Renew America, The Reality Check, American Truckers At War, and other conservative websites. JR can be contacted at [url=http://www.greatamericanjournal.com/contact.htm]http://www.greatamericanjournal.com/contact.htm[/url].
