Today the EPA announced its proposed 2012 Renewable Fuel Standard requirements:
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) established the annual renewable fuel volume targets, which steadily increase to an overall level of 36 billion gallons in 2022. To achieve these volumes, EPA calculates a percentage-based standard for the following year. Based on the standard, each refiner, importer, and non-oxygenate blender of gasoline or diesel determines the minimum volume of renewable fuel that it must ensure is used in its transportation fuel.
The proposed 2012 overall volumes and standards are:
Biomass-based diesel (1.0 billion gallons; 0.91 percent)
Advanced biofuels (2.0 billion gallons; 1.21 percent)
Cellulosic biofuels (3.45 – 12.9 million gallons; 0.002 – 0.010 percent)
Total renewable fuels (15.2 billion gallons; 9.21 percent) [click to continue…]
Get with the Plan
In The National Review, T. Boone Pickens again makes the case for The NAT Gas Act of 2011. I slept through the first few paragraphs (the piece began with a constitutional argument).
There isn’t a whole lot of new information in here, its more of a response to the ongoing attacks on the legislation. He reminds us that Americans get all antsy when gas prices go up, but when prices drop again we are lulled back into indifference.
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Update 6/3/2011:
In a hastily written post, I erroneously conflated the difference between ‘oil shale’ and ‘shale oil’ and incorrectly thought that the report mentioned below was referring to ‘shale oil.’ Had I been more careful, I would have noticed the end of the report where the author meticulously differentiated between the two. As written, the post below is mostly useless now as I criticize claims that weren’t made. The phrases ‘laughably naive’ and ‘willfull ignorance’ would seem to be more appropriately directed towards my own writing in this case. I apologize to the authors, and thank them for politely pointing out my error in a personal e-mail. Mea culpa.
Unedited, original post below:
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So says The Checks & Balances Project.
As evidence for a shale oil boom being science fiction, the report cites a bunch of newspaper articles in the past (seriously, some from the early 20th century) where oil shale is mentioned as a potential future energy source. So, because analysts or politicians (or journalists) thought shale oil would come around sooner than it did, present day shale oil production is apparently science fiction. How about a current newspaper article that actually shows companies using fracturing techniques to get shale oil out of the ground, wouldn’t that disprove the whole ‘science fiction’ notion? The New York Times, Oil in Shale Sets Off a Boom in Texas, from late May: [click to continue…]
General Wesley Clark and Congressmen Bruce Braley have teamed up with a Huffington Post op-ed to remind Americans that they still want you to care about those darned oil imports (we also import olive oil).
Right now, the United States has an addiction to foreign oil — an addiction that is not only crippling our economy, but is also funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign governments and corporations. It’s the biggest problem in America that no one seems serious about discussing and solving.
Part of breaking that habit is acknowledging just what kind of problem we have, and who benefits from it. That’s why we’ve been working together to build support for country-of-origin labeling at the pump — so that we know where that $4/gallon is coming from, and move beyond acknowledging our problem to solving it. [click to continue…]
1. Everything you’ve heard about fossil fuels may be wrong, Michael Lind (Salon):
The arguments for converting the U.S. economy to wind, solar and biomass energy have collapsed. The date of depletion of fossil fuels has been pushed back into the future by centuries — or millennia. The abundance and geographic diversity of fossil fuels made possible by technology in time will reduce the dependence of the U.S. on particular foreign energy exporters, eliminating the national security argument for renewable energy. And if the worst-case scenarios for climate change were plausible, then the most effective way to avert catastrophic global warming would be the rapid expansion of nuclear power, not over-complicated schemes worthy of Rube Goldberg or Wile E. Coyote to carpet the world’s deserts and prairies with solar panels and wind farms that would provide only intermittent energy from weak and diffuse sources.
A healthy, optimistic look at future energy supplies.
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Energy blogger Robert Rapier has an excellent post about the naive hatred shown towards the fossil fuel industry by what he calls Democrats. I’m not completely convinced that its a position held by all of those on the left (rather than environmentalists, a subset of the left) but the knee-jerk anti energy sentiments tend to aggregate more on that side of the isle. Read the whole thing, especially his thoughts on clueless celebrity activism. He quotes an environmentalist who struggled to come to this realization:
There was virtually nothing in my office—my body included—that wasn’t there because of fossil fuels… I had understood this intellectually before—that the energy landscape encompasses not just our endless acres of oil fields, coal mines, gas stations, and highways…. What I hadn’t fully managed to grasp was the intimate and invisible omnipresence of fossil fuels in my own life…. I also realized that this thing I thought was a four-letter word (oil) was actually the source of many creature comforts I use and love—and many survival tools I need. It seemed almost miraculous. Never had I so fully grasped the immense versatility of fossil fuels on a personal level and their greater relevance in the economy at large.
Comfort, check. Survival, check. And this is a common phenomena by many who engage in similar types of activism against fossil fuels. The individuals who have worked to make our lives, while often getting rich in the process, are reviled by a good portion of the population. A prime example is the newest assault on the Koch brothers by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.): [click to continue…]
The Senate held votes this week on competing Democratic and Republican oil bills. The Democratic bill, S. 940, which would raise taxes on big oil companies, was defeated on a vote of 52 to 48. The Republican bill, S. 953, which would force the Obama Administration to increase offshore oil leasing, was defeated on a vote of 42 to 57. Under Senate rules, sixty votes were required to pass either measure.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had this to say about those who voted against the bill to raise taxes on the five largest oil companies: “They would rather cut college scholarships, slash cancer research, and end Medicare than take away taxpayer-funded giveaways to oil companies that are raking in billions of dollars in profits.” Three Democrats (Senators Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska) voted against the oil tax hike, while the two Republican Senators from Maine (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) voted for it. And Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) had this to say about the Republican offshore bill: “The solution to skyrocketing gas prices is simple: increase supply.” The establishment media regularly try to portray Senator Reid as a statesman and Senator Inhofe as a conservative ideologue. These contrasting quotes allow readers to judge for themselves.
With gas prices hovering near $4/gallon, Democrats are trotting out fanciful “solutions” to temper the price of oil.
On Saturday, President rolled out a three-part plan to relieve Americans’ pain at the pump. The third part was the elimination of Big Oil “subsidies” (in fact, they are tax breaks, not subsidies). This doesn’t make any sense. The point of the tax breaks to Big Oil is to decrease the cost of production. That is, they make oil cheaper to extract. Removing these “subsidies” will in no way decrease the price of gas.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are blaming evil “speculators” for bidding up the price of oil. This is utter malarkey. The price of oil is dictated by a global market. Ill-defined “speculators” are a straw man.
Removing Big Oil’s “subsidies” and prosecuting “speculators” are empty political gimmicks of the sort that the 2008 version of Obama campaigned against. (So much for “Change,” right?) I suspect that the President and Senate Democrats are relying on these bogus non-solutions because, otherwise, they’d have to acknowledge that the price of oil is a function of supply and demand. And if they concede that the market, and not “subsidies” or “speculators,” is to blame for high oil prices, then they’d also have to acknowledge that increasing supply would decrease the price. That is, they’d have to admit that “drill, baby, drill” works. Of course, they don’t want to do that, because doing so would upset their environmentalist base.
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Quebec, long an economic basket case kept afloat by Canada’s federal government, has decided to open up its northern interior to resource development. Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced on Monday an ambitious 25-year “Plan Nord” to build highways, airports, and other infrastructure so that the area can be developed.
According to Montreal’s Gazette, “Investments in energy development, mining, forestry, transportation, and tourism in the 1.2-million-square-kilometre region – twice the size of France – will create 20,000 jobs a year, generating $162 billion in growth and tax revenues of $14 billion.” Large parts of northern Quebec are heavily forested, and there are major deposits of iron, nickel, gold, platinum, cobalt, zinc, vanadium, and rare earths.
The Obama Administration should follow Quebec’s good example. The Department of the Interior and the U. S. Forest Service (an agency of the U. S. Department of Agriculture) control nearly 30% of the land in the United States, most of it in the West and Alaska, plus the Outer Continental Shelf. Federal lands and offshore areas contain colossal reserves of energy and minerals plus the most productive forests in the world. But the Obama Administration is locking up more and more federal lands and offshore areas in order to prevent oil and gas production, hardrock mining, and timber production. And they’re trying to block coal mining in Appalachia by inventing new pollutants to be regulated.
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