We Must Diversify Our Transport Fuels and Technologies
Written by Rod Hunter, a Hudson Institute senior fellow and former National Security Council senior director
While Senator Obama hedges he’d “look” at drilling, Sen. McCain rightly calls for an “all of the above” approach to energy security, now.
Our energy vulnerability is essentially a transportation problem. Some 96 percent of the energy we use in our vehicles comes from oil. Only 4 percent comes from natural gas and biofuels.
We import 55 percent of our oil, and send billions of dollars to unstable regimes in the Middle East that fund Islamic extremists and to a thuggish government in Venezuela that stokes mischief in our hemisphere.
We must diversify our transport fuels and technologies. Biofuels hold promise. Electric cars may soon enter the mass market. But we can’t know in advance which technologies will prevail, nor when.
Even once breakthroughs occur, transition will take time. Replacing our auto fleet with electric vehicles would take years given the 15-year life-span of cars now on the road.
In the meantime, we must do all we can to expand oil supply from reliable sources, including here in the United States. The National Petroleum Council estimates that off-shore sources could start producing as soon as three years from government approvals.
After decades of dithering, we can’t afford more equivocation and delay. Environmental concerns seem overwrought, given oil industry skills and government oversight.
We must move on all fronts at once, promoting innovation and developing domestic oil sources. Winston Churchill had it right when he said that energy security is found “in variety and variety alone.”
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Rod is saying drilling will increase the supply. If we drill more more rigs and places to drill will be found and production will increase. Do you think things are all in place when an industrial process is started? You start small and build up. We are talking about 10-20 years to get back to 1970 levels. Why do you think oil production went down in the US? Laws and regulation road blocks of course. Another was price, Saudi oil is .10 cents a barrel to produce, American oil is at least $10 a barrel. The oil companies went where it was cheaper just like Wal Mart went to China for its goods. We can replace all current coal and natural gas power plants with nuclear to reduce CO2. We can built thorium nuclear fuel of which we have a large supply enough for hundreds of years, using plutonium we have enough for thousands of years at current output levels. Wind power could be thousands of megawatts if we build the power lines to transmit the energy . Battery powered cars will never be practical for the masses because the metals necessary to build the motors and battery are in short supply and in large part overseas. Instead we could use the energy from wind to make Hydrogen fuel for cars and as a replacement for natural gas again reducing CO2. Charging trucks the actual cost of road repair would force a large amount of freight back onto the railroads which would again reduce CO2 and reduce liquid fuel needs. Making our homes, computers and cars more fuel efficient would be the final step in weaning us off Arab and foreign oil. Energy independence is possible and is the right thing to do to reduce green house gas emissions.
Rod is not much of an expert if these are his views. There are not enough drilling rigs, places to drill, people to run them, that are worthwhile to come even close to what we use now. If we try to suck it out faster, we get even less. The slower you pump, the more you get. Do we want to leave any to our kids? WSJ/Oil and Gas Journal, CIA sources for real facts. Just where these rightwing think tanks like Hudson get their info I don;t know.
Even if there was, it would take too long as we have only a couple yrs, not ten before Iran, Russia, ect own us. And why do we want to drive up the cost of oil which 30% of what we spend on gas goes directly to oil dictators and terrorist!! Shouldn't we want to bankrupt them instead of giving them trillions of $ over that 10 yrs?
We can easily but not through drilling, but eff instead. There is no vehicle I can't make get twice the mileage with present tech but we may have to force Detroit to do it it seems. I now drive a 2 seat sportscar that gets 400mpg fuel cost equivalent. With it's 100 mile electric range and 80mph top speed and could slide a gasoline generator to get unlimited range at about 150mpg.
GM's EV1 which they crushed would too but way to complicated. Instead use forklift tech, golf cart batteries and composite body/chassis instead. Many thousands of daily driver EV's are on the road but most we had to build ourselves. Google EV Clubs for links and ones near you.
EV commuters and eff gas, NG, biodiesels cars can be done now with little problem as Detroit already builds them overseas except EV's. For semi's, hybrid/NG, composite/alum chassis and aerodynamics for them all does the trick.
If you want to drill for energy, how about waste biomass which is easily converted by the FT process into extremely clean diesel, ect. No food needed but it's stalks, yard and other biowastes, Shell, Syntroleum, Sa all have the units to do this though used to convert stranded NG into diesel now called GTL plants. They'll build them for OPEC but not for US alt Energy use! Sasol uses it from coal.
Wind, solar generators and PV along with tidal, river generators can supply what we need in future EV , home energy. There are few places that a well designed home at little or no more cost that homes built now, need no external energy, in fact could charge the EV's too. Many groups, info online on all these solutions.
All of this is current to very old tech. In 1911 there were EV's that went 100 miles and some still today run on some of their original Edison batteries, NiFe. Windpower for homes, small business was perfected mostly by 1930.
So let's take that $700B we spend for overseas oil and build the eff cars, semi's, high speed/commuter trains, refit homes, business for eff and RE power production instead of making oil dictators rich and paying terrorist to kill us This is why Rod is no expert or at least not one I'd listen to..
Jerryd
You can't get something for nothing is an old saying. You can't get 150 miles to the gallon in any kind of car a normal person could drive. Eighty miles on a charge sounds good but how do you get further, you use gas from a small gas engine. To get the claimed mileage would restrict the engine to no more than 4 or 5 horsepower with high gearing, speeds under 15 miles an hour and moving on a flat surface without potholes IE; the railroad. Work the math out yourself, mass delta vee plus wind resistance plus road and tire resistance plus any height changes. A 1500 pound small car gets at best about 50 miles per gallon usually a lot less do to gearing, tire and wind resistence. The mileage claims are at best mild delusions and at worst an outright lie similar to the miracle carburetor that gets 100 miles to a gallon. It would be better to argue the points without making ridiculous claims.
Actually, we have the reserves and the equipment/resources to make America 100% oil independent in 5 years. Too much politics and bad info as you put out contributes to our lack of actionas a country to do it!
* I own several oil wells and have been a member of the industry for over 50 years.