Pickens: $300 per barrel oil if we "continue to drift"

By: Lowell
Published On: 7/22/2008 12:59:42 PM

Republican and lifelong oil man T. Boone Pickens is absolutely right:

Oil prices will hit $300 a barrel in 10 years if the United States fails to reduce its dependence on foreign imports, billionaire oil investor T. Boone Pickens said on Tuesday.

The United States imports nearly 70 percent of its oil now and Pickens said the world's top energy consuming nation would import 80 percent in a decade if it does not aggressively tap its own natural gas and renewable resources.

Meanwhile, what do we get from non-Pickens Republicans and other assorted dolts in Congress? The same ol' same ol' - drill, drill, drill for oil, even though pretty much anyone who knows anything about energy is well aware that we can't "drill our way out of this."  The reason for that is simple: as any petroleum geologist will tell you, the United States is a "mature" oil province, having produced oil for about 150 years now, and is currently well past "peak" (production having declined pretty much non-stop, with a slight blip caused by Alaskan output coming online in the 1980s, since 1970).  

Also of relevance, the United States contains less than 2% of world proven crude oil reserves, while consuming about 24%. Given those numbers and the...er, slight imbalance they represent, again there's simply no way we can "drill our way out of it," even if the environment weren't an issue at all.

Even stupider ("more stupider?" - ha), we certainly can't "drill our way out of it" by exploiting the miniscule potential oil reserves off the U.S. east coast or in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), that's just a joke to anyone who knows anything. In fact, the US. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - the definitive, apolitical U.S. government source of information and analysis on energy - has estimated ANWR oil might - MIGHT - reduce the cost of gas by a few pennies per gallon by 2027. Yipee!!

So what CAN we do? Very simple: go full-out after the demand side of the equation, as T. Boone Pickens, Al Gore, and others have proposed.  Hey, here's a thought: how about we make Mr. Pickens Energy Secretary in an Obama administration, put Al Gore in charge of getting us off of carbon-based fuels for electricity consumption within 10 years (as he's proposed), sign on to a stringent "cap and trade" treaty, and slap on a revenue neutral (offset by steep cuts in the regressive payroll tax) carbon tax on fossil fuels?  Or would all that be too logical? Yeah, forget it, let's go for the $300 per barrel oil and dependence on the Saudis forever!!! :)

Comments



Just a thought. (perkinsms - 7/22/2008 1:46:25 PM)
I'd like to point out that he mentioned tapping our own natural gas resources first, and renewables second.

So, he's not on the side that we can "drill our way out of it", but he stated that more drilling is part of the solution.



My understanding is that Pickens (Lowell - 7/22/2008 1:51:53 PM)
is saying we should produce our electricity using renewables, then take the natural gas saved by doing so (right now, we use huge amounts of natural gas to produce electricity) to power our cars.  Personally, I disagree with him on the natural gas for cars piece, but I give Pickens tremendous credit for at least coming up with a specific plan and putting his money where his mouth is.  Good for him.


The best part . . . (JPTERP - 7/23/2008 12:34:10 AM)
is that Pickens is thinking about the issue at a high level.

A few questions that I have about the Pickens plan:

1. What kind of impact would putting wind farms in the heartland have on migration pattterns for birds?  Isn't the corridor running from Texas up to Canada a major migratory route?

(I'm not exactly a bleeding heart on this one -- but environmental trade-offs do come with a price tag).

2. What kind of time frame are we looking at in terms of equipping cars to run on natural gas?  Wouldn't this require retrofitting car engines (at a minimum)?

As far as short-term solutions go, eliminating tariffs on Brazilian sugar ethanol is an area that would seem to provide THE quickest relief on gas prices over the short-term.  It would mitigate against some of the environmental concerns as well.  An author at Salon.com also pointed out recently that Cuba has the ability to produce about 3 billion gallons of sugar ethanol a year -- another reason to reconsider our trade relationship with the country.



The bird question (Lowell - 7/23/2008 4:39:29 AM)
I remember having a major debate on this with a bird-watching, environmentalist friend of mine a few years ago.  The bottom line is that the # of birds killed by cats is in the hundreds of millions per year, the # killed by collisions with buildings, cars, power lines, etc. is  also in the hundreds of millions, etc.  In contrast, the # of birds killed by getting shredded in wind turbines is like a few dozen per year, and those are mostly in old, poorly sited wind farms with old technology windmills that are smaller and rotate at much higher speeds than current wind farms.  As an animal lover and environmentalist, I'm not worried about this at all, as long as the wind farms are situated properly...

As to natural gas, I think that's a silly idea by T. Boone Pickens (although I give him credit for, as you say, thinking about this issue at a "high level").  Instead, I'd go with what Gore is talking about: convert the grid to non-carbon-based power generation and switch to electric vehicles.  Voila, you've just eliminated almost all carbon emissions from the U.S. economy, and that's doable within 10-15 years if we undertake a crash program.  The main challenge is building a national power grid that can carry electricity from where it's produced to where it's needed.  The rest is fairly simple and will follow largely via market forces...



Texas Panhandle (Bubby - 7/23/2008 9:33:05 AM)
Picken's windfarm - The Texas Panhandle is a windy, dry and dusty patch, I wouldn't call it "heartland" in fact the only birds I ever saw there were sage grouse and buzzards.  It takes something like a square mile of rangeland to feed a single cow.  FWIW a grouse flies well below the sweep of a wind turbine.