Government’s role in energy

I am astounded and frustrated over the fact that our country does not have a comprehensive energy policy that includes fully developing our own oil resources. Things are just going to keep getting worse if we do not make fully developing all our own oil reserves a major part of a national energy policy.

It is just ridiculous that we sit here and plead with OPEC to increase production while at the same time we will not allow drilling in parts of Alaska and other areas with proven oil reserves.

We need people in Congress to take action now! Speeches that blame the oil companies are nothing more than smokescreens to hide the fact that the person making the speech does not have a clue as to what the real problem is and what it will take to solve it.

We cannot drill our way out of this crisis, but drilling has to be a part of the overall solution. Eventually we will have to replace oil as a primary energy source, but this will take many years. Putting this off because new drilling and exploration will not make an impact right away is a pathetic excuse for inaction.

W. Douglas Gibb
Overland Park

Recently, some have suggested that our government nationalize the oil industry.

Our government has sold its soul to the oil industry. That’s why the “Enron loophole” will never be closed and why we’ll always be paying for “hot fuel.”

Mark Forster
Lee’s Summit

Everyone is screaming, “We need an energy policy!”

Wake up, people. Shortly after Bush was appointed to the White House by the Supreme Court, Dick Cheney held meetings with executives of the oil and gas industries behind closed doors. The participants and proceedings were kept secret, and Cheney was sued and then won in the Supreme Court after going hunting with Justice Antonin Scalia.

What we are seeing today is the national energy policy. Anyone who can’t see this is dumber than Bush, and that is dumb!

Mark Anderson
Lee’s Summit

Comments

[Mark Robertson]

That would be, you're welcome instead of your welcome. Thankyou.

Mark Robertson
Independence

[Engineer]

Pub 17
So you don't have the slightest idea but you are all for it? I am not opposed to the idea but so far I have not found any detailed description of T. Boone's plan. I have read what I can find on the web. How private enterprise could pay for the massive changes and additions to the grid that would be required and the huge wind farm construction also required seems to me to be a real problem. Also, due to the variations in wind locations and therefore generation ability at various times at various locations, the total installed wind power wattage generation capacity would need to be much greater than demand. The payment must ultimately come from the users of electric power. But there are so many different regulatory agencies that have control over electric power rates. Just how you get around this difficulty is not clear to me. Perhaps T. Boone has a plan but it has not as yet been presented. It appears to me that Federal laws would be required overriding the authority of State regulatory agencies' and putting a Federal Agency in charge of setting rates.

[Pub 17]

Engineer, do your own dam' research if you're really interested, which I suspect you're not.
When a self-made right-wing billionaire puts his own money into a project, I'm not going to try to convince myself or anyone else that he hasn't worked out the details first. Trying to pick his business model apart from the comfort of my La-Z-Boy seems to be a titanic waste of time. This isn't politics, this is business.

[Engineer]

Pub 17
Whatever T. boons's status may be he has not provided answers to those questions. Can you provide them?

[Pub 17]

Yeah, that imbecile Pickens, just one more dreamy, impractical liberal who wants to change the world but can't afford to buy his own lunch.

[Engineer]

T . Boone would have private industry build the extremely extensive, elaborate and expensive power grid additions that would be required to get the power from where the wind was blowing at that time to the area in which the power was needed at that time. But how would you compensate private industry for the costs of building the grid? And where would private industry get the huge sums required for the construction of the grid and the additional wind farms? Current utility rules do not allow charges for improvements and additions until those facilities are on line. And what do you use for "back up" and how do you pay for constructing those facilities?

[Mark Robertson]

Of course we can't drill our way out of the oil crisis. It would be successful, and the leftists just can't have that. It would make it much more difficult for them to advance their anti-capitalism, and socialistic welfare programs. Thus it would make it more difficult for them to control us.

Mark Robertson
Independence

[Mark Robertson]

Mr. Anderson,
You forgot to mention that "Bush" knew about 9-11 ahead of time. Your welcome.
You probably though were just trying to not overload us with your brilliance. Our simple minds can deal with only so much intelligence at one time.
You mean Scalia went hunting with Cheney and survived. I find that hard to believe. Thankyou.

Mark Robertson
Independence

[Pub 17]

And as usual, Rogue got nothin'.

[Rogue]

Another brilliant remark by the Pube. I bet if he is able to get up in the morning and get dressed all by himself it is a great day for him!

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

Mark Forster is obviously misinformed. Can you say Sarbanese-Oxley? Actually the government has sold out to bottled water companies with their 50% net margins.

[Pub 17]

Silly as saying, "you can't drink your way out of alcoholism." Of course you can. Or, not.

[Rogue]

I have heard that for every grid powered by wind you need to have a conventional source of powere backing it up to the tune of 905 of the power the wind grid produces, simply because the wind does not blow 24/7, 365 days.

I also love the pharse "we cannot drill our way out of this". That is like saying you cannot "eat your way out of starvation". It is just silly.

[Pub 17]

Things I Never Would Have Known If I Hadn't Been Wasting My Time On These Blogs:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html

I had no idea. THIRTY-ONE YEARS AGO.

Ladies, you're not going to get any more cheap shots in on Carter. You're going to hear about this one again and again, world without end, amen.

Thanx and a tip of the Hatlo Hat to jack

[jack]

Ole T. Boone claims the central U.S is the "Saudi Arabi of Wind".

But what the hell does he know? Damned communist!

[jack]

whispering: Thanx for letting us know that everything has it's price!

I used to love stopping in the Amanas for the night. Never ate so good in my life!

[whispering_to_kc]

One of those big wind farms is in the Tehachapi Mtns between Mojave and Bakersfield, CA.

Hundreds of wind turbines, scattered along the hillsides west of Mojave. From miles away, as you approach Mojave on the drive west, it's about the coolest thing you'll ever see. Hundreds of distant, sparkling propellers spinning away in the desert sunshine.

On the other hand, if you ever spend the night in Adair, IA, ask for a motel room facing the highway. If they give you a room on the back side of the motel when their similar turbine is in gear and spinning away it'll keep you up all night.

Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.

[whispering_to_kc]

http://www.pickensplan.com/

No one here likes Wikipedia but ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickens_Plan

[jack]

The problem is we have no energy policy. I heard on NPR that if we had simply done what the failed president Carter had spelled out in his "sweater speech" we would now be independent of foreign oil. I guess that proves that any plan is better than no plan at all.

T. Boone Pickens, the oil man of oil men, has a website up with a plan to acheive energy independence (quick, someone put up the link, I've forgotten what it is).

Drill, conserve, find new sources, develop a new strategy, develop alternative fuels.

We have essentially done nothing toward our energy future for well over 20 years. We've urinated away the time that was available then to work on solutions.

Doing something, anything, has no guarantee of success. But one thing we do know. Doing nothing guarantees failure.

DO SOMETHING!