The Scam of Energy Independence
John McCain keeps talking about making the US "energy independent."
Robert Bryce points out that it is impossible for the United States to be energy independent with current technology.
McCain says nuclear energy can make the US independent of "foreign oil." But the US imports 83% of the uranium it uses!
By the way, if you built a lot of new nuclear reactors, it would cause the price of uranium to go up. There is only so much uranium in the world, so we will have "Peak uranium" after a few years if we go that route.
McCain keeps saying that the US navy has run subs on nuclear power for years and there have been no leaks.
Ahem.
McCain says drilling in the United States can make the US energy independent. Hogwash! HOGWASH. All the offshore fields now known off the lower 48 states, if drilled, might produce 400,000 barrels a day ten to fifteen years from now.
The US imports on the order of 13 million barrels a day of petroleum. The world produces 86 million barrels a day and apparently wants 87. Offshore drilling in the US would yield a drop in the bucket.
In the meantime, China's oil imports were up 12% last year over the year before. The extra oil from offshore drilling would just get used up lickety split.
McCain calls "foreign oil" expensive!
It is all one global market,folks. Once oil is pumped and goes on the market, it sells for the same price everywhere (except if there are government subsidies, which are a huge waste of money and very bad economics). It doesn't matter if it is pumped in Oklahoma or Ahvaz, it is priced the same.
Muhammad Sahimi makes this point at some length.
Moreover, getting more fossil fuels out of the ground will produce more global warming, ravaging the world's coastlines and their inhabitants. Again, it doesn't matter whether American carbon is put into the atmosphere or Chinese. It is all one atmosphere.
The only prospect for US energy independence is cheap and effective power generation from wind and solar energy, which needs new, cheaper and better methods of battery or other storage to be practical.
Obama's pledge to invest $150 billion in alternative energy is a promising first step. That is a little more than what the Apollo project cost the US in today's dollars. And putting a man on the moon was rather less important than, like, saving the planet.
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/07/2008 12:41:00 AM
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In response to the assertions being made recently about energy supply and MIT breakthroughs I'd like to point to an article today over at The Oil Drum. There's a great 'Deconstructing the Media' section together with a discussion of the actual science of this particular 'breakthrough'. I think it serves as a timely reminder that popular media reporting of science and technology should be treated as skeptically as US military pronouncements from Iraq. Sad but true.
In summary, the research is unlikely to lead to cheaper or more efficent hydrogen production and significant advances have not been made. Oh, and the price of cobalt (used in their electrodes) is through the roof. Read the whole thing here:
Local Scientist Splits Water, Saves World, Gets On TV
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4378
The Obama pledge is actually $15 billion a year for ten years.
If the U.S continously spend $15 billion a year towards energy independence/cleaner energy, that corresponds to 0.05 cents per KWh energy consumed.
Sure, if used for research and in the unlikely event this funding causes a breakthrough, it might be effective. But if used to support production of alternative energy, it will hardly be noticed.
Regarding nuclear it may be worth considering that Canada and Australia does about half the world production of uranium. So perhaps foreign uranium is a better dependence than that of foreign oil. And again, forth generation reactors (breeder) will make fuel availability and price of fissile material a non-issue.
But I fully agree the U.S won't be energy independent and carbon free in the forseeable future. Whatever tech you choose, it will take 15 years to build production capacity to be able to really invest and then 50 years of investment to replace what you have. And this is being optimistic.
Here is the ultimate answer! Really!
To make a living, I work at a bicycle shop, and our sales have increased so much since Memorial Day that it’s hard to keep up.
Last night, we were wondering if the country’s health-care expenditures would go down because so many more people are riding bikes and getting healthier. That’s not to mention the mental health perks of reducing stress.
Ride a bike and save on gas and health care at the same time.
Bob Spencer
I really appreciate your informed comments on the Arab world. You are truly an authority in that area and it shows.
But you do not know much about nuclear energy. Please read the nuclear energy option by professor emritus (in physics) Bernard Cohen .
In short. Fuel costs represent less than 5% of the total costs for nuclear energy. They could rise 20 fold and the cost of nuclear electricity would only double. At that price point it becomes economical to extract uranium from sea water. And there is enough uranium in sea water to last a billion years at current consumption.
Also, Australia and Canada are the largest uranium producers.
Drive 55.
That will cut down on oil usage immediately. And it will do far more than keeping your tires inflated.
dancewater
We have untapped uranium mines here in the US. Environmental regulations prevent us from using them.
As to the radiation leak from the Navy vessel, IHT reports: The chief government spokesman, Nobutaka Machimura, said at a news conference that the radioactive amount - estimated at less than half a microcurie - was too insignificant to "affect the human body or the environment." Any nuclear incident is troubling, but let's put it in proper context.
Go to the USGS web site and you will see we have more untapped oil than you mention. Plus, there is potential for tens of billions of barrels more but, once again, government restrictions make further exploration (which is very expensive) economically infeasible.
One look at our public infrastructure should put anyone off the notion of government "investing" in anything. Investing suggests a return on money spent. An increasing debt seems to be the federal government's main accomplishment.
We need energy independence, and petroleum and coal can bridge the gap while we get there. I like T Boone Pickens' idea, only without the government subsidies. If his idea is so great, it should stand on its own without my tax dollars.
--Nietzsche is Dead
Actually, oil is sold at a variety of markets globally, and the price often differs from the WTI quoted by NYMEX. Further, oil is often sold at a discount to what is called the spot price through bilateral trade agreements. For example, PetroCaribe founded by Chavez's Venezuela offers discounted oil to its members. Lastly, subsidies provided its citizens by oil exporting countries has little effect on spot market oil prices because it's the number of cars being driven that increases consumption, not the price of the gas; if a country like China now has more car buyers because of its booming economy, it's the economy that drives up the price of oil as more people can afford to drive cars at whatever the cost of gas is, and in oil exporting countries this decreases the net export amount which adds to the cost of oil as it reduces the overall global supply.
As for predictions by the USGS, its infamous 5, 50, 95% probabilities of reserves prediction which is cited most often by cornucopians is closely following the 5% amount, which means we are at or very close to Peak Oil.
One should add that there's a lot of gold in sea water too, but no one is attempting to mine it.
It's absolutely impossible to become energy independent while living; for if one were energy independent, one would be dead. Every living thing is absolutely dependent on energy. All animals, such as humans, must kill to live, to obtain the energy needed to operate. Thus Original Sin. Humans might become civilized once we discover how to generate the optimal level of energy needed on a finite planet without destroying our fellows and the other species we share the planet with. But I wouldn't expect this to happen anytime soon given the current politicaleconomic paradigm.
1) Crude oil in the United States cannot be exported, with the exception of Alaska, by law. (As it turns out, this results in a tiny amount of exports of crude from Alaska, b/c America is such a profitable market.) In any case, although crude oil is a "global" commodity, crudes produced in the US stay in the US. Chinese demand will not effect our balance in terms of produced crudes being used in the US. (And, by the way, the EIA reports 9.5% net import growth in China 2007 y-o-y 2006; where do you get 12.5%?)
2) Oil is not a homogenous commodity. There are heavy, sweet, parrafinic, sour, metallic (so to speak), medium, light and combinations of the above. All crude streams are different from one another. Assays are developed for each stream to tell you what will be required in order to get the best product mix out of them, depending on your refinery and current market conditions.
Moreover, as fields are drained the characteristics of the crude will change (because the crude at the bottom of the field is often somewhat different from the stuff at top) requiring updates to the assay.
3) Although the price of oil you hear about is the one broadcast on the futures markets, only 1% of those contracts actually go to delivery. Most crude oil is sold in private bilateral deals between refiners and producers. They sell at a premium or a discount to the futures price, depending on the characteristic of that oil vis-a-vis light sweet. For example, in the week on July 11, 2008, Maya, a heavy sour crude, sold at a $21/b discount to the NYMEX sweet light spot price.
4) 400 kb/d = 1.9% of total American consumption in 2007 (20,697 kb/d. (It might represent a larger percentage of 2008 consumption given demand destruction.)
In 2007, the US produced 8,321 kb/d of oil, 400 kb/d would = a 4.8% increase in total American production (at a time when fields in the US are declining, it might well represent a much larger increase.)
In 2007, the US imported 12,430 kb/d. 400 kb/d = 2.7% of total US imports. As of May 2008, the US was importing 2,450 kb/d of crudes from the Persian Gulf or about 19.7% of our net import requirement. 400 kb/d = 16.3% of our import that comes from the Persian Gulf. Given that the Persian Gulf includes not only the current swing producer, but all currently considered potential future swing producers, that seems significant to me.
So: Oil is not sold at the same price everywhere between all consumers and producers. (You would only need to look at the differential in price between Brent and WTI to know that!) Oil produced does not necessarily enter the world market--only about half of the oil produced worldwide is marketed via export.
Foreign oil may or may not be more expensive, depending. Were it all the same, it would be more expensive simply because of transport costs. But some oil is cheaper to produce and therefor can be made available to the market at a price cheaper than other oils. This is the Persian Gulf's comparative advantage.
Energy independence is likely impossible save a major technological break through, but that is no argument against decreasing your dependence! What you are arguing is that a smoker who smokes a pack a day and cannot quit altogether should not do his best to cut down!
6) As foutsc pointed out, if we build breeder reactors, the question of uranium supply is moot.
I am very relieved that Obama has quit this no drilling nonsense and appears to be reconsidering nuclear.
“….The only prospect for US energy independence is cheap and effective power generation from wind and solar energy, which needs new, cheaper and better methods of battery or other storage to be practical….”
VERY INFORMATIVE blog! Now let’s wait for Obama’s $150 billion pledge to produce the HIGH TECH Battery!
The price of uranium is negligible in the price of nuclear power, just as the price of oil refinery parts are negligible in the cost of gasoline.
The USA exports a lot of crude in the form of finished products. Please consult this chart and its footnotes for further info and recent amounts exported. (The amount for May is 1,806 Kbpd, or just under 56 Million Barrels of oil equivalent (MBOE) for the whole month.)
This link I've provided before shows US imports by country of origin. In fact, the "Peroleum Navigator" bar at the top of EIA pages can bury you with data of all sorts.
Lastly, as this article demonstrates, oil production and consumption numbers are subject to multiple revisions, with them sometimes ocurring years later. One thing is certain--very few people in the USA are literate when it comes to matters of energy.
The major supplier of oil to the U.S is Canada and Canada gets it's oil from the 'tar sands', an very expensive oil production technique.
And refinery parts for 'light crude' are very different in pricing from refinery parts for the heavier grades.
Nuclear power costs to build a plant are around a minimum of $2B. Then there is the Shoreham nuclear plant which took nearly 20 years to build at a cost of $8 billion – or close to $7,000 per customer it was supposed to supply. It was closed for safety reasons after operating just one single day.
And of course, what to do with the 'waste'.
It probably doesn't dawn on most and no one is supposed to talk about, but we live in a system whose base assunption is flawed. Specifically, Capitalism is predicated on forever expanding. Just as balloons explode when overinflated, that is the situation re 'energy usage' as long as the current economic system remains in place.
Helpful post, thank you.
There's a lot of posturing nonsense around the theme of energy security.
The reality is that, like many of us, John Mccain lacks the imagination to conceive of a society which has weaned itself off oil and has drastically reduced its energy consumption.
Difficult though this journey is, it is the only way forward if the earth, of which we are stewards, is to be spared irreparable damage which will devastate the human race, especially the poorest.
More drilling for fossil fuels is a fossil of reasoning. Ah, good old backward-looking, fearful conservatism.
So we open up those pristine lands to corporations. They pump out some oil (polluting our lands) and then what?... In ten years time they have some oil to sell.
And they will sell it to the highest bidder. They won't say, here's your $1.30/gallon gasoline. They would rather sell it to China or India than undersell themselves.
Old McCain is a fool. He knows how to sound like his plan might make sense to people who don't know what's going on. But let's remember: gray hair is a sign of old age, not wisdom.
Drilling? No. Better fuel, yes.
Your guys are just complaining and trying to make things sound its the G. Bushs administrations fault, when it was the derequlation started by Bill Clintons nobil idea to get everyone into a home. So he and congress de-regulated the laws to allow people who could not pay for homes to be able to purchase them. Now the people cant pay their mortage and the industry investment are world wild. Oil is a necessity in everyday life, making medical supplies and equipment. Even the stupid styrofoam cups you drink from are made from oil bi-products. Do your home work! We have oil here right now, but are being stopped by envriomentalist extremist who would rather we all walk or go get groceries on a bicycle with a basket. Our government Republican and Democrat caused this problem. Now I have a solution. Now to solve the oil shortage we do need to act now. Utilizing wind and solar in conjuction in all homes and suitable business. If the government isn't sucking up to big oil, take the 50% tax breaks away from oil companies and invest in all U.S. citizens and then finance the cost and installation for all people. This will lower our need for oil by saving energy with a grid system tied into each persons home. Many states now offer incentives exceeding the $2,000.00 Federal Tax rebates for solar heat or P.V. panels or wind energy. This country needs to invest in the people who elected this policticans. And stop special intrest lobbiest who have thousand of dollars to Barrack Obam and was the second largest recipient of lobbiest funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac next to Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Fiance Ways and Means Commettee. Go figure why a deomcractic congress can't fix this problem, but adjourn congress and take a much needed vacation for the summer. Good lord or you republican bashing guys should do some home work.
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