Tag Archives: Energy

Energy, Media, Politics

Fossil Fuels Out-Green Biofuels

You gotta love this. If they would ever see it, it would just drive the environmental wackos (you know who you are) nuts. Did you know that it is greener to burn our fossil fuels than to produce and burn biofuels? I think this would be a hard sell to Robert Kennedy Jr. but if it’s the environment that we’re trying to impact less, then we need to get serious about actually getting more of our own oil and gas so we can be less dependent on foreign suppliers. All in one fell swoop we could increase our national security, lower the price of gasoline at the pump, and help the environment. It’s a win win win.

Increasing production of biofuels to combat climate change will release between two and nine times more carbon gases over the next 30 years than fossil fuels, according to the first comprehensive analysis of emissions from biofuels.

Biofuels look good in climate change terms from a Western perspective, said Dr Spracklen, but globally they actually lead to higher carbon emissions.

The reason is that producing biofuel is not a “green process”. It requires tractors and fertilizers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make “green” fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – “it’s essentially a zero-sums game.”

NewsBusters: New Study Recommends Against Burning Biofuels to Solve Global Warming

Will be interesting to see what play, if any, this gets in your mainstream media. And I wouldn’t hold my breath for Kennedy to get on board either. Not with BIG OIL.

h/t Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog

editor’s note: Some things are worth repeating, especially when the MSM doesn’t adequately cover them. This post was originally posted 8/23/07.

Energy, Politics

Democrats Oppose Increasing Oil Supply

To know where Democrats in Washington stand on increasing oil supply, one only needs to look at what they are doing and what they want to do.

They want to . . .

  • Punish the oil industry with higher taxes. This punishes everyone in the form of higher gas prices at the pump.
  • Control the oil industry by telling them where they must drill. They whine about the 8 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico that are not as promising, efficient, or as easy to get to than the millions of acres on land and in other places in the surrounding Gulf, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and ANWR that they demand are off-limits. If it is harder to get to and has less capacity, it will be more expensive at the pump. Not less.
  • Control the auto industry by telling them what kind of cars to build and what kind of ‘performance’ they must have. Right now, GM for example, pays out more in benefits to people that no longer work for them (retirees) than their current employees. In total, they pay out more in benefits than they are making from sales. They pay more for health care for people that don’t work for them than steel for making their product.
  • And right now, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is refusing to send a bill (H.R. 6566) to the floor of the House for a vote that, if passed, will remove the ban on exploration and drilling in all the areas with the most potential. Why is she doing this? Because there are enough Democrats in the House that believe it is the right thing to do and will vote for it. And the last thing Pelosi wants to see is gas prices come down and the economy improve while there is a Republican in the White House. She cares more for her party and holding power than the welfare of the country and you.
  • Prevent development of what is potentially as much as 800 billion barrels of oil shale in Colorado. Rush Limbaugh explains this point in this video, below.

related links: How About An Energy Policy That Gets Some? | Chavez May Thank Democrats for H.R.5351 | National Energy Day

2008 Election, Energy, Pensacola, Politics, Uncategorized, Venezuela

How About An Energy Policy That Gets Some?

The Democrats’ plan on fixing our country’s energy problem of high prices and foreign oil dependency is to punish the only people here that can help, our own oil companies. And as an added bonus, we continue to be dependent on OPEC, Venezuela, and Russia for resources that we have, but are not willing to get.

But wait! There’s more! By campaigning on creating punitive taxes upon our own oil companies, Democrats will also depress the incomes of millions of Americans who are invested in America’s energy industries either directly or through retirement and IRA accounts. We’re talking about the 50k/yr ‘hard working Americans’, people like our first responders, fire and police departments, teachers, factory workers, hospital workers, nurses and nursing home workers, small business owners and their employees.

The irony here is, the very people these Democrats say they are going to help, will actually be hurt twice. In their retirement account, and at the pump. The Democrats know it isn’t a solution, and the dumb masses will buy into the notion that the pain they feel is caused by Bush instead of these lawmakers. The fraudulent impression, or spin, is that the Democrats in Washington are the only ones who really care about them. The only ones that want to help them. All that, and a little dash of class envy and anti-capitalist rhetoric tossed in for good measure. For them, the party comes before the country.

Will robbing the oil companies of their profits and trying to control their industry via the tax hammer, without permitting them to get to our own resources and build more refineries, make the prices go higher or lower? This is a rhetorical question. For those educated in government schools, the answer is it will drive prices HIGHER.

This country needs a leader who will set a goal, equal in size to putting a man in space or a man on the moon. A short-term goal designed to get enough oil, gas, clean coal and nuclear energy within our own borders, including the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico, in order to increase supply. Only then will we see prices fall. The long-term goal would be of course, to invent and develop alternative kinds of energy that will reduce, if not replace the need for fossil fuels.

Oil prices would start falling on the day we adopt an energy policy intended to make the United States an oil producer instead of an oil buyer. And it would only get better as we would bring it to fruition.

Energy, Media, Pensacola, Politics, Uncategorized

Capitalism Works, When Allowed

On the subject of high gas prices and the dog and pony show that Democrat senators put on in front of the leaders of the oil industry yesterday, a local columnist was chastising capitalism and these CEO’s with all the usual stereotypes and talking points that get the dumb masses riled. Things like these execs are robbing everybody and the title, ‘Capitalism at its finest.’ Hark! An educational moment has occured. Below was my reply to the writer.

Quick quiz: assuming a free economy, which is not the case in the U.S. as pertains to the oil industry, the most regulated and taxed industry on earth, but, in a free economy, if supply and demand are just a cliche as you say, then what or who really determines selling prices? Would you prefer that the government do that?

Do you think that increasing crude oil supply will lower the price at the pump? Its a trick question, but please answer it anyway.

“If they’re so worried about demand, how about this one.”

You didn’t see it did you? They’re not concerned with demand. They know, even if you don’t, that the demand will do nothing but increase as our population, both legal and illegal, continues to grow. My private-school education tells me that when demand outstrips supply, prices will go up. Isn’t that what you are seeing at the pump or is it all just going into Hofmeister’s pocket?

I appreciate your frustration with the high prices. All we need is an energy policy that gets some.

–end of reply

One of the highlights of the senate hearing was this response from John Hofmeister, president of Shell.

“The fundamental laws of supply and demand are at work,” said Hofmeister. The market is squeezed by exporting nations managing demand for their own interest and other nations subsidizing prices to encourage economic growth, he said.

In addition, Hofmeister said access to resources in the United States has been limited for the past 30 years. “I agree, it’s not a free market,” he said.

H/T Troy Moon for the inspiration.

related links:Troy Moon| Big Oil defends profits before irate senators | Don’t blame us for prices – oil execs

Energy, Politics, Uncategorized, Venezuela

Chavez May Thank Democrats for H.R.5351

Yes, he can thank Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and 36 co-sponsors, all democrats, for passing H.R.5351, to provide incentives as only Democrats can. What they call tax incentives, is actually an $18 billion tax increase on oil companies and oil producers. But not all companies and producers. CITGO, Hugo Chavez’s oil company (as opposed to the other U.S. oil companies that he seized in Venezuela last year) would be exempt.

So this is how Democrats in Washington plan on fixing our energy problem of high prices and oil dependency? You punish the only people here that can help, and you reward the hemisphere’s idiot, Hugo Chavez. And as an added bonus, we continue to be dependent on OPEC, Venezuela, and Russia for resources that we have but are unwilling to get ourselves.

On February 27, the Democrat-led U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 5351 — legislation that increases taxes some $18 billion on American oil and gas producers — guaranteeing higher prices at the gas pump for U.S. consumers — while at the same time leaving intact tax breaks for Venezuela’s state-run oil company CITGO.

That’s right; the House-passed legislation exempts one of the most anti-American dictators in the world, Hugo Chavez, from the massive tax increase.

The Sierra Club, a Democrat special interest group, refers to this bill as ‘climate change legislation.’ No surprise there. The next stop for the bill is the Senate. Now would be the time to let your senators know your objection to this bill.

related link: Center for Individual Freedom

2008 Election, Energy, Politics

National Energy Day

Everybody is talking about energy today. It’s like a tug of war between those that want energy and those that don’t. President Bush is talking about getting some. Using ANWR for its intended purpose, oil & gas drilling, and building more refineries. Without more refineries, all the crude oil in the world won’t help the supply if it can’t be refined. And, thanks to the environmentalist movement, it has been thirty-two years (1976) since a new refinery has been built in the United States. President Bush from the Rose Garden today . . .

I’ve repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems. Yet time after time, Congress chose to block them. One of the main reasons for high gas prices is that global oil production is not keeping up with growing demand. Members of Congress have been vocal about foreign governments increasing their oil production; yet Congress has been just as vocal in opposition to efforts to expand our production here at home.

The cost of a gallon of gas has become news, as is the economy, and not so much Iraq. Everyone, and two out of three presidential candidates, would like to see lower gas prices, or so you would think? The fact is the environmentalist lobby and those anti-capitalists that have the ears and wallets of Washington actually like high gas prices. They’d be even happier if the prices keep going up. It is believed that they would reach nirvana when everyone quits buying it.

The logo of the environmental movement seems to be the polar bear. The environmental wackos use polar bear images in all of their propaganda. But I digress. Also in today’s news is this effort, by ‘environmentalists,’ to put a stick in the spokes of oil production, based on whether the polar bear remains on the endangered species ‘list.’ Polar bear populations are growing, have been for years.

Whether the polar bear remains means this . . .

If it is listed, campaigners will argue that anything that might impinge on the creature’s habitat, such as recently announced plans for oil and gas exploration off the Alaskan coast, must either be cancelled or put under much more rigorous scrutiny.

And if it is not listed? They lawyer up . . .

[t]o keep it off the list entirely – an option which would immediately lead to further legal action from the conservation coalition.

You like the high cost of gas, and food? Thank the environmental ‘movement’ and spineless politicians that refuse to stand up to them.

related links: ANWR 101 | ANWR | US ordered to act on polar bear | The White House