Saving the American Economy and our Future

In 2009 I posted a list of suggestions for a sensible and progressive energy policy. The Obama administration has not made any progress in this area and energy is an even bigger drain on our economy. Fossil fuels could be a major stimulus to our economy if the Government and its minions would get their foot off the necks of the Energy companies and work with them to solve problems in a cooperative and amicable way. That just doesn't seem to be the way that the current DC bunch works. They get a thrill out of thrashing the opposition and that seems to be all that matters to them. Now, in the aftermath of the oil spill in the Gulf, we are importing even more oil from Countries that are not friendly, thereby enriching them immensely. There is no alternate energy source that can step in to take the place of fossil fuels, in spite of all the hype. My suggestions in the 2009 post would go a long way toward helping us to immediate economic recovery and intermediate term independence from imports.
Now let's talk about the National Debt crisis. We as a nation own immense tracts of land and huge expanses of public roads. The sale of some of our public lands has become an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY.  We can still have control of the development of the lands that we sell bu we must not let environmentalists keep us from selling the land. It is our future that is at stake. Secondly, it is time to sell some of the interstate highway system. The result would be that the roads would become toll roads. Toll roads are a pain but so are taxes. Many of the roads are not being maintained well and making them private toll roads would solve that problem as well. Wild Life Refuges have grown to be a major portion of the Governments Land Holdings. Many of these should be sold to environmental defense groups to whom these are important projects. These groups are the ones who lobbied for the purchase of the lands to begin with so now they need to step up and repay the treasury for the cost of the land. It's not like this in not being done right now by groups like Ducks Unlimited. We just can't afford to satisfy every small group's desires for assistance anymore.
Now to Taxes. I like use taxes like sales tax and toll roads. It is time to change our tax system. For one thing, it is built on the model of the young employee who receives a regular pay check. That young employee has no ability to duck taxes. Self employed persons, however, duck a lot of taxes. If they are paid in cash or barter, they usually can skim a large amount cash without paying taxes. There are a lot of loopholes that strong lobbys have gotten for their emplo yers. All of this could be made fair again by switching to a use/sales tax. It is time for a Tea Party Revolution on Taxes Some Liberals feel strongly that "Rich" people should pay most of the taxes in America. This is exactly what a national sales tax will accomplish. People with money spend the most money and thus would pay the most taxes. The retiree.living on a meager pension, should not have to worry that regressive property taxes will drive him from his home. A national sales tax can replace all of the regressive and complicated taxes in the current system and be fair, progressive, and effective in paying down the national debt.

THE ELECTRIC CAR

The electric car is here. Zero pollution - right? Now let me see ..... electricity comes from burning Coal, or Natural Gas ..... that means the pollution is in someone else's back yard. Also, electric   cars require large batteries that contain toxic stuff like Lead, Lithium, Zinc..... what happens when these batteries are tossed into the junk pile. Don't tell me about recycling; it's a myth that Americans bother about recycling. We just discard and buy new. What about the ability of the electric grid to deliver enough energy for the additional needs of electric cars. A car will use as much electricity as 4 houses each month. Thus a two car family wil add 8 houses worth of demand to the grid. Things had better go slow because the flexibility is just not there. I wonder if the electric rates go up, and they will.  Will hybrid users then use the gasoline engine to recharge the batteries? If that happens, then electric hybrids will just be inefficient  gasoline powered cars that drag a heavy battery around with them.

The BP Oil Spill

We have learned a great deal from the oil spill.
Fact 0: Natural Oil emissions from the sea floor keep the Oceans continually Oily. This has been the case for eons. The natural response of Nature was to develop an array of Oil eating organizms that clean the place up. When the BP spill came along those organisms had a population explosion resulting in a rapid natural clean up.
Fact 1: The environmentalists and their scientist friends have greatly exaggerated the short and long term effects of oil spills. They do this to get rich on their own energy schemes (alternatives). They are so obvious that I don't need to belabor the point.
Fact 2: The Exxon Valdez oil spill was entirely different than the BP spill and no comparisons can be made. Fishing was little affected in spite of the claims of the fishermen. They have simply fished out some species like herring.
Fact 3: Oil after a few days on the water is no longer toxic. The marshes are alive in spite of contamination and the fish are still there. On top of this, the fish do not absorb oil either directly or by eating oil soiled food. The hysteria about this has been criminal
Fact 4: Many Academics have behaved like ambulance chasing lawyers in this tragedy. They make hysterical claims to the press so that they can make research grant proposals to the naive federal Government and get rich off the tax payer while providing no useful product.
Fact 5: The public has absolutely no chance to learn the facts unless they know to go to certain blogs and bulliten boards where Oil professional have been discussion the spill in great detail. Do you know that BP is only legally liable for $75 million and yet has taken full responsibility? Do you know that the American company Anadarko is reponsible for 25% and the a Japanese company for 10% and that they are currently refusing to pay a single dollar?
Do you know that BP is made up of at least three large American companies which they merged with in the past: SOHIO (The Std Oil of Ohio), AMOCO (The Std Oil Company of Indiana), and ARKO (Atlantic Richfield). The first two were members of the original 7 sisters of Oil.

Frankly, I come away from this with a feeling of disgust for many of my fellow scientists and absolute dismay at the incompetence of much of the Press. CNN made a big deal recently of the fact that there are tiny amounts of Oil in the beach sands that can only be seen in the labratory. The lab tech measured it at around 2 ppm. CNN was elated that they had proved that the Mississippi beaches were toxic and dangerous. It didn't seem to matter that the lab tech in the back ground was saying that he didn't thing that there was any danger because the amounts were so small. It was clear that the reporters had no concept of the size of the contamination =0.0002%.

Obama's Political Revenge on the Gulf Coast

What follows is directly from Wikipedia. Ask youselves "why would the president not accept help from a country that has the ability to save our coast?"

Three days after the oil spill began, the Netherlands offered ships equipped to handle a spill much larger than Deepwater—at no charge. "Our system can handle 400 cubic meters per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide. Each Dutch ship offered more capacity than the total for all ships that the U.S. was then employing.^[205]
The Dutch also offered to prepare a contingency plan to protect Louisiana marshlands with sand barriers and a Dutch research institute developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long (100 km) dikes within three weeks. The Netherlands government owns ships and high-tech skimmers and gives an oil company only 12 hours to demonstrate it has a spill under control. Otherwise, the government dispatches its ships at the company's expense.^[205]
According to a Dutch official, the U.S. government responded to the Dutch offer with "Thanks but no thanks," despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment.^[206] After the U.S. refusal, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby. By May 5, the U.S. had also turned down offers from 12 other governments that maintain spill response fleets. Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The Dutch vessels, for example, continuously extract most of the oil and return vast quantities of nearly oil-free water to the sea. However, "nearly" doesn't comply with the U.S. standard of 15 parts per million and so the technology was rejected.^[205]
In U.S. waters ships must store oil-contaminated water. Admiral Allen explained on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have been removing material that is 85-90% water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities to off-load, an approach Koops calls "crazy."^[205]
The Americans later relented and took the Dutch up on part of their offer. The U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And the U.S. further postponed the clean-up operation to train U.S. crews to operate the equipment.^[205]
To avoid using Dutch ships and workers, the U.S. government asked them to train American workers to build the sand berms. Apparently using Dutch trainers was acceptable. According to Floris Van Hovell, a Dutch spokesman, Dutch dredging ships could complete the Louisiana berms twice as fast as the U.S. companies.^[205]
This is not the first time the U.S. spurned Dutch help in an oil spill. When the Exxon Valdez leaked oil in 1989, a Dutch team with clean-up equipment flew unasked to Anchorage airport to offer help. They, too, were told to take their equipment and go home.^[205]
The U.S. Jones Act prohibits the use of foreign ships and foreign crews in port-to-port shipping. However, U.S. officials have offered conflicting statements about its applicability to the cleanup task. Adding to the confusion, on June 19, the Coast Guard actively requested skimming boats and equipment from the Netherlands, Norway, France, and Spain.^[206]

As of June 25, The U.S. State Department listed 70 assistance offers from 23 countries, and indicated that 8 had been accepted, counting the Dutch skimming equipment (but not ships) as such an acceptance

Revenge? Power Lust? you decide

Oil Spills a NECESSARY RISK

As an oil explorer of 45 years experience, I look at the BP and Exxon oil spills as unavoidable  to an industrialized society. Oil,and Coal are absolutely essential to our economy and our personal well being.The problem is with the hysteria and naive solutions being recommend. Rachel Carson embarked on a similar path with her book “silent Spring” which succeeded in eliminating DDT from our environment. The unintended consequence was the death by starvation of perhaps millions of children in the third world as insects devoured their crops. Every major change in the world has unintended consequences. The fall- out from the BP oil spill will undoubtedly lead to less drilling and production of oil and gas in the US. The unintended consequence will be vastly greater importation of Arab oil. This will keep our balance of trade negative and we will all suffer at the gas pump and the general economy will suffer severely. Don’t think that alternative energy can quickly step in and save the day because if it could have made a difference it would have done so long ago. Most of the alternative energy either requires oil and gas for it’s manufacture (hydrogen, bio-fuels, etc.), has no infrastructure to distribute the energy to the cities (solar, wind, geothermal) or has serious environmental problems of it’s own (nuclear). In short, we are trapped by urban sprawl which requires oil to transport us to work, we don’t have a rail system thanks to President Kennedy’s political debt paying to the teamster union which spelled the end of significant rail and made us dependent upon the car and truck. In a nutshell, we have to move forward with our techno-industrial society. We need to learn and improve after a disaster but massive punitive response will always lead to serious unintended consequences

Can anyone doubt that the environmental damage of both the Santa Barbara and Exxon Valdez were monstrously over stated by hysterical environmentalists? There were no mass fish or bird kill and the numbers of cleaned up birds was tiny compared to what exists in the wild. The estimates are wildly inflated in most articles to inflame public opinion. Our legal system functioned as it should have and damages were paid for claims of loss. This will happen again. Lawyers are streaming into New Orleans in hopes of finding work on claims against BP. We do not need hysterical claims of environmental disaster until it has happened. I predict that the final effect will be 10% of what is being said now. After all, this is not the first wild well in the Gulf and natural oil seeps have always been spewing oil and gas into the water. It is time to sit back and watch unless you are one of those on the front lines. Bobby Jindal and Billy Nungesser strike me as quite competent in their efforts and the dredged sand island may become a reality thanks to their efforts.

A major impediment to domestic production is just around the corner. Oddly, this will increase chances of the next big oil spill. Imported oil comes to us by way of Supertanker. The likelihood of an accident will increase as our imports incrfease. Terrorism is also a threat to the tankers.

Fall-out from the BP oil spill

There is not much question that the radical anti-carbon groups will seize upon the tragedy to promote their alternate energy schemes and conservation ideology.. This is inevitable and probably beneficial from a global perspective. Environmentalists will seize upon this tragedy as an opportunity to further turn public sentiment against the " Big Oil" companies.What should our response be as members of the fraternuty of oil worker and investors?

Over my career, I have  continually been amazed at the lack of understanding the general public has about the oil business. We need to arm ourselves with facts about oil employment, economic share and etc.and begin to makes appearances on liberal and environmental blogs and web sites. I suggest that we take a firm but unemotional stand on the value and importance of oil and gas to our economy. I further suggest that we compare the cost of the current BP spill to the cost of drunk driving accidents annually. If rig explosions are a "fixable" wrong then so is drunk driving.

Another thing to drive home to the public is the % profit of oil versus groceries, movies, cars, and etc. Our detractors have made much of gross profits without mention of % return on investment. The radical liberal promotes the idea that companies exist to serve the public and that profits should not be a goal or requirement. We must promote the idea of free markets. The profit motive has always been the driving force behind our successful economy and the radicals would take that away from us. It is important that we not allow that to happen.

Here are some facts that I've found on the net .In 2004 there were 316,000 workers in the Oil and Gas Industry. Their pay scale was from $12 to $50 per hour. The link: Oil Company Earnings has excellent information on Oil Company earnings as compared to other industries. Oil Companies actially are less profitable than many other industries. The charge of obscene profits is definitely a Red Herring.Earnings for a large company are always huge sounding to the lay person. Percent return on investment is a much fairer statistic for comparing companies and industries. One figure that stood out for me was the spending on Carbon Mitigation. The Fed has spent next to nothing on it compared to Industry..
Another link: Oil & Gas Investment  gives fact about the investments that O & G makes in the U.S. Economy. In 2006 new investments amounted to $174 Billion. This is a very significant part of the Total U.S. economy. The current administration is constantly trying to demonize the industry and especially its profits..Armed with the facts we need to fight back, not just for our own sake but for the poor innocent citizens who do not understand the economics of energy and have been swayed by the most heinous missrepresentations of "Big Oil".
Here is the best set of figures yet: Oil Jobs and GDP share . Nine million jobs and 7.3% og GDP depend on the O&G industry. Lets all arm ourselves with the facts and go out and fight for our industry.

Obama, Jindal and the Oil Slick

These men face the trial of a life time. This is what they were elected for. It is time for the rest of us to back off and give them a chance to do their jobs. There is no way that we can be kept informed of the progress so stop clamoring for updates. When they can, the people in charge involved will update us. Also, let's forget the politics for now. Rush was out of order with his rash statements. Those of us who can, should volunteer to help physically with the effort to protect the marshes. If the oil does go onto the beaches of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, then the impact on fishing and birds will be somewhat less and cleanup will be much easier and very much faster than if it comes ashore in the Louisiana marshlands. I don't wish this on anyone, but contaminated sand can picked up and disposed of but contaminated marsh is a decades long process of cleanup and much more devastating to wild life and the fishing industry.

Obama and Energy

As a professional in the domestic oil & gas industry, I am frustrated at the lack of cooperation by local, state, and federal governments with my industry. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if the government controlled lands were opened up to oil exploration 10's of thousands of high paying jobs would be directly created in a year and after that more than 100,000 indirect jobs would be created. Governments would rake in large amounts of money in lease bonuses and fee and then after production starts they would enjoy a rich revenue stream. To jump start this effort, Obama should put a tarrif on imported oil and gas. This would give our home grown industry an advantage over the foreign national companies such as Shell, BP, ENI, StatOil, CNOC, and etc. The tariff would provide another rich revenue stream. It is time that the government began to look after the interests of business rather than trying to kill the golden goose