Published: July 12, 2008 07:32 pm      

Here are some solutions to the gasoline ‘crisis’

It’s costing us $700 billion a year! Not the war, but money we are spending to import oil. And much of this money is sent to our enemies, along with thousands of high paying jobs.

But we have enough oil in the U.S. to avoid any importing, so why is our government not permitting any new drilling? We know there is a lot of oil in ANWAR, a desolate corner of Alaska, and offshore drilling probably even more. Last year Brazil found a large oil field offshore that may contain more oil then Saudi Arabia.

Of course it was our companies that did the deep water drilling. The last oil spill was in 1969, and the technology today is far superior. All the deep-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico did not lose a drop of oil when Katrina hit!

Unfortunately oil drilling has become very political, especially with Texans in the White House and the vice president being a former CEO of Halliburton. The Democrats like this “oil crisis” since it will win them votes as it destroys our economy, the republicans are frozen in fear since it’s losing them votes, and we have a unpopular lame duck president who is not able to get any energy policy set up, especially with the media going after Vice President Cheney, Halliburton, Enron.

This power vacuum is being filled by small special interest groups, many who want to ban cars, have us all use public transport, and basically change our way of life!

Why then has oil become so expensive? Is it the greedy oil companies? OPEC? Greedy speculators? It really is simply supply and demand, along with a weak US dollar. Today the world uses 84 million barrels of oil a day, but we can only produce about 87 million barrels, so any loss in production will really rattle the oil markets. China has 25 million new cars a year; India and Brazil are becoming more prosperous and need more energy!

It is estimated that by 2020 the world will need 120 million barrels a day! What will happen then? Long lines for gas, maybe even a war for the precious black gold! It’s obvious that we can’t just drill our way out of this dilemma, but we have to both increase production and decrease demand.

A billion years ago the earth was a much different place. The air had more CO2 and the life forms consisted of algae and small one-celled animals! They lived in water, mostly swamp like inland lakes. As these organisms died and fell to the bottom of the lakes and ocean, their bodies became oil and coal!

That’s why it’s called fossil fuel, because it really is from dead carbon-based organisms, which essentially acted liked giant sponges or filters and removed most of the carbon from our air. Over many millions of years the CO2 in our atmosphere became very low and O2 (oxygen) increased.

However in the last 100 years we have taken much of this carbon (oil and coal), burned it (combined the C with O), which gave us cheap energy and CO2 released into the air. I personally have many doubts about the global warming “crisis,” but releasing all this carbon into the air can’t be good!

So we have the problem of expensive and diminishing supply of cheap fuel in the form of oil and coal. This cheap energy is what made us rich over the last 100 years, and it will make us poor unless we change. And evidence that all the carbon being released into the air may cause us problems in the future. How can we solve these problems!

Immediate reversal of bans on drilling in the US. Ten years ago, when then president Clinton banned drilling in ANWAR, a desolate corner of Alaska that you will never see, many oil speculators said that in 10 years we would pay for that policy.

The argument against drilling is that it will take years to get any oil, well if had drilled 10 years ago, we probably would have 50 million gallons of gasoline a day from ANWAR. If oil speculators really see that we are serious about solving this oil crisis, they will probably run the price of oil down 50 percent, and that’s a immediate result!

Cut the use of oil! Go to plug-in hybrids, electric cars, hydrogen. The technology is here today and it will not only cut our energy need, but also lower the release of carbon into the air. It’s estimated that if everyone had a plug in hybrid today, we would not need to import any oil! No more Hummers or Escalades!

Start using other forms of energy. Nuclear can provide cheap and safe energy! All of our submarines are run by nuclear, as are the large ships! If the Navy can do it, then certainly we can domestically! And we have storage deep in Nevada for the spent rods.

The biggest cost to more nuclear power is all the lawsuits. We really have to stop all the litigation if we want our children to prosper. We even have a large supply of uranium from all the nuclear weapons that have recently been decommissioned. Nuclear accidents in past were due to human error, but with new powerful computers running the plants, human error can be eliminated!

France gets more then 80 percent of its power from nuclear. Wind and solar also have great potential, but will probably take many decades to really become useful.

The bottom line is that our leaders can use this recent energy crisis for their political ends, or they can solve the problem. Don’t let them make this political drama, demand action and answers!

Dr. Robert Damean Cendo

Cumberland