Democrat Energy Policy

[harpman1]

If Nancy Pelosi thinks tapping the strategic oil reserve for 750 million barrels will lower gas prices, why won't drilling for 750 billion barrels offshore?

Methinks she may have flunked math.

Or is a lying incompetent dragging her party to a stunning defeat in Nov.

I'm guessing it's both.

[jgaffney]

It's easy to see, silly. The 750 bbbbbillion barrels are already here, bought and paid for from Canada and Mexico. It's petroleum that the Speaker can put on line without stepping on the toes of the environmentalists who are personally pleased that gas is so expensive.

Never lose track of the aspect that the environmentalsts and peak-oil fanatics have been praying for this day for years. So what if they are at odds with the majority of Americans - they have the Speaker and the Majority Leader in their pocket, and that's all they need. Although, it seems that Dingy Harry is starting to slip off the reservation. The Hill has this:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has split the Democratic front opposed to drilling with a plan that would open new areas for exploration.

Reid’s proposal was meant to insulate Senate Democratic candidates from public anger over gas prices. Instead, it has created a divide with liberal colleagues and drawn fire from senior House Democrats.

A group of influential Senate and House Democrats has sided with environmental groups against Reid to call exploration in new areas unnecessary.

The legislation, drafted by Reid and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), would open nearly a billion new acres off the coast of Alaska to study for drilling. It would also dramatically accelerate oil leases in the western and central Gulf of Mexico.

“I am unalterably opposed to drilling,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who cited a massive oil spill that closed nearly 100 miles of the Mississippi River last week.

So, some Democrat senators are opposed to new petroleum sources, no matter where they come from. Remember that the next time you fill your tank up.

[The Big Dog]

For what it's worth the bill that Madame Speaker and Leader Reid are standing in the way of allows for states, such as California, to keep off shore leases closed if they choose to, but allows for states that want the leases opened within their waters to do so. Most credible analysts are conceding that the bill is fair and allows the states a strong position of control in the process. There also appears to be an overwhelming number of votes, in both houses, in favor of that measure the Democrat leadership is keeping bottled up.

I believe that the Democrats have an opportunity to pick up seats in both houses this November. However, if the leadership continues to play this game with oil and gas prices over the roof, that opportunity could blow away quickly and lead to a stunning reversal. I have to believe Dingy Harry can read those tea leaves, even if Madame Speaker can't.

[jgaffney]

BigDog, that's exactly the point I was making earlier in this thread. Why can't the decision to allow offshore drilling be devolved to the states that are affected? Even if Pelosi and Reid were to allow a vote on this bill, a vote they would almost certainly lose, what are the chances that California would agree to more offshore drilling? After all, we were the ones stained by the Santa Barbara oil spill FORTY YEARS AGO. Even the prospect of additional revenues from the royalties on the extracted oil would probably not convince our illustrious State legislature, who are much too busy regulating transfats to be concerned about raising more cash.

[The Big Dog]

Dingy Harry has been making noises that he might let the bill come to a vote.... hence my reference to him reading the tea leaves.

The Santa Barbara spill killed about 3500 birds in total by most reports. I'd wager predators (sharks in particular) pick off at least that many in the water every year. At least.

[jgaffney]

Here's proof that California is not the only state where we talk the talk, but refuse to walk the walk. This is from the Wall Street Journal, but unfortunately, the online version requires a subscription. I got the full text from the county library.

Amid the rolling hills and verdant pastures of south central Virginia an unlikely new front in the battle over nuclear energy is opening up. How it is decided will tell us a lot about whether this country is willing to get serious about addressing its energy needs.

In Pittsylvania County, just north of the North Carolina border, the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States -- and the seventh largest in the world, according to industry monitor UX Consulting -- sits on land owned by neighbors Henry Bowen and Walter Coles. Large uranium deposits close to the surface are virtually unknown in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River. And that may be the problem.

Virginia is one of just four states that ban uranium mining. The ban was put in place in 1984, to calm fears that had been sparked by the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island outside of Harrisburg, Pa. in 1979.

Messrs. Bowen and Coles, who last year formed a company called Virginia Uranium, are asking the state to determine whether mining uranium really is a hazard and, if not, to lift the ban. But they've run into a brick wall of environmental activists who raise the specter of nuclear contamination and who are determined to prevent scientific studies of the issue.

The Piedmont Environmental Council is one of the leading opponents. It warns of the "enormous quantities of radioactive waste" produced by uranium mining.

Jack Dunavant, head of the Southside Concerned Citizens in nearby Halifax County, is another outspoken critic. He paints a picture of environmental apocalypse. "There will be a dead zone within a 30 mile radius of the mine," he says with a courtly drawl. "Nothing will grow. Animals will die. The radiation genetically alters tissue. Animals will not be able to reproduce. We'll see malformed fetuses."

Yet it is not as if we have no experience with uranium mining, which is in fact relatively harmless. Handled properly, the yellowcake that is extracted is no more hazardous than regular household chemicals (and unlike coal, it won't smolder and combust).

James Kelly, who directed the nuclear engineering program at the University of Virginia for many years, says that fears about uranium mining are wildly overblown. "It's an aesthetic nightmare, but otherwise safe in terms of releasing any significant radioactivity or pollution," he told me. "It would be ugly to look at, but from the perspective of any hazard I wouldn't mind if they mined across the street from me."

The situation is rich with irony as well as uranium. While you can't mine yellowcake, it is perfectly legal in Virginia to process enriched uranium into usable nuclear fuel, which is somewhat dangerous to handle. A subsidiary of the French nuclear giant Areva operates a fuel fabrication facility in Lynchburg 50 miles from Chatham. It has been praised by Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, as a good corporate citizen. The state is also home to four commercial nuclear reactors, which provide Virginians with 35% of their electricity. And, of course, the U.S. Navy operates nuclear ships out of Norfolk, Va.

Across the country, there are 104 commercial nuclear reactors. They consume 67 million pounds of uranium annually, the vast majority of which is imported from Australia, Canada and former Soviet republics. The 200-acre Coles Hill deposit (Mr. Coles's family has lived on the spot since 1785) is thought to contain nearly twice that amount. For Messrs. Bowen and Coles, with the long-term price of uranium near $80 per pound, that means they are sitting on about $10 billion worth of ore. But for the rest of us, it means they are sitting on an opportunity to make the U.S. more energy self-sufficient.

So, we want to be energy-independent, but we only want to do it with solar, wind and hydrogen. Oh, wait a minute, wind doesn't really work because all those birds get chopped up in the blades. OK, so it'll be solar and hydrogen. Wait a minute, solar doesn't really work because it eats up scads of desert acres, displacing who knows what kind of endangered species. Ok, so it'll be hydrogen. We have settled on the new alternative source of energy that is both blindingly expensive and the furthest from coming to market. So, the progressives can rant and rave all they want, because they know it'll never really happen. Kinda like their foreign policy.

[The New Guy]

ENERGY PROBLEM SOLVED:


Inflate Here, Inflate Now!


i almost drove off the road this morning when i heard obama telling me that inflating my tires would save as much oil as any new drilling would produce. ;D

[jgaffney]

Daniel Henniger at the Wall Street Journal has this:

When Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats spent a week holding the people's chamber under house arrest, they made plain a political vulnerability beyond drilling. To achieve greenhouse gas goals in the out-years, they are willing to risk a slowdown now in the American economy. How else can you interpret what happened this week? These Democrats aren't environmentalists. They're enviromaniacs.

An environmentalist with two feet on the planet is someone who admits that fixing what economists call "externalities," such as air pollution or climate effects, requires a balance between those goals and protecting the productive economy.

An enviromaniac is the sort of person who would say: "Breaking our oil addiction . . . will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy." The complete transformation of our economy?

So said Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in his major energy statement this Monday. Though the speech had hedged bows to oil, coal and nuclear, it was overwhelmingly a Goreian jeremiad about "building" a new economy on a promise called renewables.

"We can see shuttered factories open their doors to manufacturers that sell wind turbines and solar panels that will power our homes and our businesses," he said. "We can watch as millions of new jobs with good pay and good benefits are created." This will "meet our moral obligations to future generations."

Whoa. "Millions" of new jobs building solar panels and wind turbines, and this is to "meet our moral obligations?"

Virtue aside, here's the biggest problem with Sen. Obama and Democratic enviromania: It's a risky roll of the dice with the U.S. economy.

The economy we've got works. We know that carbon makes the U.S. economy run like a Swiss watch (transportation, distribution, production, commuting). The bet between carbon inputs and growing American outputs is virtually 1:1.

Mr. Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress want a "complete transformation" of an already successful economy. Not partial. Complete. Can any of them say what the odds are that all this economic activity, including the nation's electrical grid, will work as well with their new fuels? Assuredly, growth's odds aren't as good as the ones we have now.

Sen. Obama: "I will not pretend we can achieve [my goals] without cost or without sacrifice." Might this mean foregoing some GDP for five to 10 years? "Growth" appears in Mr. Obama's speech only to describe the "clean energy sector."

The problem with Democratic enviromania is that it's uncoupled from the realities of a nation whose economy has to compete now with the Chinas and Indias of the world, whose high growth rates use proven energy sources.

The Republicans in the Congress continue their vigil in a darkened House. A House darkened by Speaker pelosi because she would not hold a vote on the Republican energy proposal. Have you read anything about that in the PeeDee?

[The Big Dog]

Aug 7, 2008 14:38:37 GMT -5 jgaffney said:

The Republicans in the Congress continue their vigil in a darkened House. A House darkened by Speaker pelosi because she would not hold a vote on the Republican energy proposal. Have you read anything about that in the PeeDee?

Nope... and you aren't going to either. Doesn't fit the agenda.