5 Myths About Breaking Our Foreign Oil Habit

Something to think about.

Whether the author of this piece agrees or not.

This thing is full of holes! First of all, starting with point #1, yes, Canada and Mexico supply more than the Middle East. That doesn't mean we can't eliminate the Middle East by simply reducing our dependence on foreign oil - in fact, it means we could say goodbye to their oil first, and hopefully (eventually) do the same with oil from Canada and Mexico!

The underlying tone of the article seems to be "Don't think about reducing dependence on foreign sources of oil...just keep bending over at the pump and learn to enjoy it!"

If oil is a fungible commodity, we're creating the market and thus supporting terrorists, no matter vwho we buy our oil from.

:thumbsup:

Here's what his bio says on his own website: (link: http://robertbryce.com/homepage?page=1)
"Robert Bryce's work has appeared in numerous publications including Atlantic Monthly, Slate, American Conservative, Washington Post and The Guardian. A contributing writer for the Texas Observer and managing editor of Energy Tribune, Bryce is also a fellow at the Institute for Energy Research. His third book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence," will be published in March by PublicAffairs. He lives in Austin."

More information about the Institute of Energy Research: (link: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_Energy_Research)
"The Institute for Energy Research (IER), founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organisation, advocates positions on environmental issues which happen to suit the energy industry: climate change denial, claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless, and the deregulation of utilities. It is a member of the Sustainable Development Network. The IER's President was formerly Director of Public Relations Policy at Enron."

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It was hard to find any information on the Energy Tribune other than it's principals appear to all be associated with the oil and gas industries. I couldn't find who owns it, finances it, or who is behind it. But from a brief perusal of their website, it appears that the Energy Tribune is "uncertain" of scientific claims regarding global warming, and are ardently against the idea of peak oil.

I'd wager my next pay check that Robert Bryce is a paid propagandist representing the interests of big oil rather than the citizens of the U.S. or the world.

1 Energy independence will reduce or eliminate terrorism.

In a speech last year, former CIA director R. James Woolsey Jr. had some advice for American motorists: "The next time you pull into a gas station to fill your car with gas, bend down a little and take a glance in the side-door mirror. . . . What you will see is a contributor to terrorism against the United States." Woolsey is known as a conservative, but plenty of liberals have also eagerly adopted the mantra that America's foreign oil purchases are funding terrorism.

But the hype doesn't match reality. Remember, the two largest suppliers of crude to the U.S. market are Canada and Mexico -- neither exactly known as a belligerent terrorist haven.

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OK, there is a simple logical flaw here... it's not a question of how many dollars (or pennies) per gallon go to terrorists, the correct question is how many dollars that terrorists receive come from the purchase of oil products in the US. The higher THAT percentage is, the more YOU support terrorists will every fill up. Eliminate the import of their oil, and you might be able to dry up that much of their monetary support.

Let's say that 30 percent of every gallon is from the ME... at $3.33/ gallon that's a buck a gallon. Now say that 5 percent of the money spent on that ME oil goes to support terrorists. So, that's like a nickel a gallon going to the bad guys. Might be reasonable, might not. They claim that we use 320 billion gallons per year (OK). So that's what, $16 billion dollars to the terrorists. Which is likely a *lot* more than they actually get. so maybe the only get 1% of every dollar spent on ME oil, and ME oil only makes up 30 percent of our total oil consumption. But that 1% probably represents %100 percent of their funding, which is still $3.2 Billion Dollars per year. No matter how small the fraction of every gallon that you buy is that goes to terrorists, the total represents a huge fraction of the terrorist funding.

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2 A big push for alternative fuels will break our oil addiction.

The new energy bill requires that the country produce 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022. That sounds like a lot of fuel, but put it in perspective: The United States uses more than 320 billion gallons of oil per year, of which nearly 200 billion gallons are imported.

So biofuels alone cannot wean the United States off oil. Let's say the country converted all the soybeans grown by American farmers into biodiesel; that would provide only about 1.5 percent of total annual U.S. oil needs. And if the United States devoted its entire corn crop to producing ethanol, it would supply only about 6 percent of U.S. oil needs.

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Well, 36 billion is a lot better than next to nothing, which is what we have now. And it is 18 percent of our currently imported oil. OK, 18 percent is not 100 percent, and we need to do better... but it's a start. Biofuels are NOT going to be just corn and soybeans. Both crops are not very good at producing net positive energy. But there are others. Corn currently yields 50 gallons an acre per year of corn oil. Oil Palms can do 600 gallons per year (but there aren't many places in the US, or the world, where we can grow oil palms... and we do huge environmental damage when we do. However jatropha is better than oil palm, and can be grown anywhere in the south. And, last but not least, algae can produce 5000 gallons of oil per acre per year (certain algae), and 10,000 gallons of oil per acre per year has been reported. It's not as easy as crops we already know how to grow, but the algae can grow anywhere that gets a lot of sunlight, so the Eat / drive argument might go away. It's not perfected, and isn't ready to take over in 5 years... or maybe even 10, but again, we got to start somewhere.

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3 Energy independence will let America choke off the flow of money to nasty countries.

Fans of energy independence argue that if the United States stops buying foreign energy, it will deny funds to petro-states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Hugo Ch¿vez's Venezuela. But the world marketplace doesn't work like that. Oil is a global commodity. Its price is set globally, not locally. Oil buyers are always seeking the lowest-cost supplier. So any Saudi crude being loaded at the Red Sea port of Yanbu that doesn't get purchased by a refinery in Corpus Christi or Houston will instead wind up in Singapore or Shanghai.

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Absolutely true. And is, pretty much, the same argument that can be used against the "don't buy gas for a week and drive the oil companies into submission" email plea that goes around with certain regularity. If you want to hurt the oil companies, either drive less or drive more efficient. Not buying doesn't do a damn thing (cause you WILL buy eventually, and buy to replace all that you used!). Oil is a world market commodity. Us not buying ME oil (or anyone else's oil) will not deprive them of revenue... however, if we all (the world) buy less oil, and that means we all (the world) have to use less oil, it will drive the price down... and will "choke off the flow of money to nasty countries."

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4 Energy independence will mean reform in the Muslim world.

The most vocal proponent of this one is New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who argues that the United States should build "a wall of energy independence" around itself and thereby lower global oil prices: "Shrink the oil revenue and they will have to open up their economies and their schools and liberate their women so that their people can compete. It is that simple." When the petro-states are effectively bankrupt, Friedman argues, we'll see "political and economic reform from Algeria to Iran."

If only it were that easy. Between about 1986 and 2000, oil prices generally stayed below $20 per barrel; by the end of 1998, they were as low as $11 per barrel. As Alan Reynolds pointed out in May 2005 in the conservative National Review Online, this prolonged period of "cheap oil did nothing to promote economic or political liberty in Algeria, Iran, or anywhere else. This theory has been tested -- and it failed completely."

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True, but a sharp decline in revenues (like an oil crash) is different than a steady state $20/barrel. If someone tomorrow figures out how to burn water (and please don't point me at those who claim they have) in an internal combustion engine, the oil producing countries would collapse completely... whether that collapse would lead to political reform and rights for women and stuff OR would lead to repressive religious theocracies, who really knows. My bet would be theocracies, but then I'm a pessimist. It would lead to change. However, we don't have anything like that to effect drastic change... and even if we moved as quickly as possible to not use oil anymore, it will be years coming, probably decades. That slow of pace will likely NOT be disruptive to the established dictators and kings and what not.

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5 Energy independence will mean a more secure U.S. energy supply.

To see why this is a myth, think back to 2005. After hurricanes ravaged the Gulf Coast, chewing up refineries as they went, several cities in the southeastern United States were hit with gasoline shortages. Thankfully, they were short-lived. The reason? Imported gasoline, from refineries in Venezuela, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Throughout the first nine months of 2005, the United States imported about 1 million barrels of gasoline per day. By mid-October 2005, just six weeks after Hurricane Katrina, those imports soared to 1.5 million barrels per day.

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This is just so wrong. Of course if we kick the oil habit, we will need a replacement. Whatever the eventual replacement is, the production of this will need to be decentralized. And, as global warming increases the likelihood of severe weather systems, the more decentralized the better. Just so we don't have more than very localized price gouging after a Katrina event... or a big earthquake or whatever.

A secure energy supply requires diversified energy production, decentralized energy refinement, and a large distribution network.
Or, since we don't know what forms this will finally take, possibly extreme decentralized production (everyone has their own solar array and we use electricity for transportation, for example).



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Sorry for the long response.