The thread to discuss political policies, and private sector news that directly affect US Energy Policy. ---------------------------- Keystone Pipeline, and drilling for oil and natural gas projects pros and cons. My subjective view about the keystone pipeline is this: 1. The pipeline goes through a lot of personal people's lands and the company is trying to bully citizen landowners to give them permission so the pipeline can run through their land. I don't think this is cool, nor do I think many libertarians would support this kinda of move to leverage consent from a private citizen for a business project. (Not everyone wants to be bought) 2. I am concerned about drilling fracking methods because I talked to some geologists and the fracking technique for drilling for natural gas and oil, involves literally creating fractures in the rocks, which are commonly known to us as faults. In theory, the more faults there are, the higher the potential for Earthquakes, which cause property damage, which would eat into whatever profits the oil and natural gas would bring to a local community. So I ask, what's the true liability/assets ratio when big oil, and natural gas projects are launched?
Well, first of all, "US Energy Policy" is pretty much an oxymoron, like "Military Intelligence". It hardly exists. A high percentage of our elected representatives at the Federal level are bought off by political contributions from the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries, so mostly what we get are policies written by lobbyists from those industries, promoting half-assed ideas like "all of the above", "clean coal", and "energy independence". It's been like this for a hundred years. The American people suffer now and even more so in the future, from lack of long-range planning. If there was such a thing as US Energy Policy, it should be based on science and reason and would have the objective of maximizing some blend of prosperity, health, security, and preserving the environment. I wish we had something like that.
The Canadians are not capable of building a refinery? Refine that shit yourselves. Sorry--I didn't really contribute to the discussion. But I do wonder why they don't.
That oil is to go directly to a port where it will get loaded into a tanker and sold to the highest bidder. It will get to a refinery in China...
That's right, and in the meantime the oil industry has successfully confused US citizens into thinking the pipeline will reduce gas prices. It will not.
Agreed. Now switching focus off the oil industry for a minute, I also for the life of me I don't know why we're still using Uranium based nuclear power plants...building a power plant that is more based on the element Thorium is much safer, and is harder to get into a critical mass scenario. A Thorium based power plan was even made in the 1980's and then got decommissioned, and I can't really find a logical reason why other than some conjecture which isn't enough of an explanation for me.
Well its a loose discussion at the moment. To establish a baseline we COULD begin with the history of how coal was the primary fuel of the industrial revolution and then oil soon came after.
The problem is that the ‘energy policy’ argument is often framed in terms of production - the production of energy and the resources needed to produce the energy. But talking of production is a bit of a capitalistic con game. Its not production that needs to be addressed first - it is consumption; it should be about saving energy. The problem is that in a capitalistic context production is the one that is emphasized because its about ‘making money’ it doesn’t matter if it’s wind or coal, nuclear or oil, it’s about selling a product - ‘energy’ - to people and making - cha-ching - a profit. But in lessening consumption…well there is little profit in that for a capitalistic investor (although there is for the individual). Look at virtually every developed or developing city or individual home with a thermal camera and you will see the waste, and that is all energy being sold at a profit. Energy companies and the people that invest in them want us to waste energy. In the cold we turn up the thermostat and in the heat we turn up the air-conditioner. I mean we still build towers of steel and GLASS in the middle of deserts, huge greenhouses, that are only then habitable through the use of air conditioning. If we insulated the buildings we have and built all new ones to suit their environment and with a mind toward low consumption in regard to lighting, heating and cooling, then production would not be such an issue because we would find we were producing way too much – BUT ‘bang!’ there goes the energy sectors profits. I’m all for renewable energy, but we have to get out of the ‘market’ mindset that is generally pushed my most media – which seems fixated on ‘production’ (meaning production of profit) and move toward thinking about limiting production (less profit for companies but better outcomes for the individual and wider society ).
I have to agree with you on this. However in terms of electricity use, California has kept rates flatlined pretty well compared to the rest of the country. But they are the leading state in solar energy production. I don't know about oil and coal consumption though.
When big oil and natural gas projects are launched the true liability/assets ratio is not a factor in US energy policy. US energy policy is that oil and natural gas are commodities; investors assign value to commodities based on current market demand, not future liabilities; a smart investor would be prepared to sell his/her shares before any liability kicked in. The tax-payer would then by default be on the hook for any liabilities. While it is true that energy investors do not directly make energy policy, they sure do use their cash to "influence" it. That, in a nutshell, is outthere's view of US energy policy.
Nicely put. I think it should be a factor though, because public funds, private sector funds, and individual citizens funds are all part of the same monetary flow in some respect and they do impact each other. So I was just saying that if a pro-drilling for oil and natural gas commercial is launched, one has to question their claims about how much benefit such a project would bring to the local community and country at large. That's all I was saying.
Also, if a nuke plant melts down and causes a trillion dollars damage, the US taxpayer is on the hook for most of it, thanks to the Price-Anderson Act which keeps getting re-authorized, despite not being in the national interest. If the nuke industry had to pay its own insurance, it would close down immediately, which would be a good thing.
I agree with you- the true liability/assets ratio should be a factor when deciding energy policy. And of course that wouldn't fit the agenda of say a company like TransCanada, owner of Keystone Pipeline. Its interest is to put a profit in its pocket. So we have a situation where private interest is trumping public interest. More oddly, TransCanada isn't even a US company.
A fuel Oil train derailed in Lac Megantic, Quebec, about 2 weeks ago, what a mess. Should oil be shipped out of a port in Hudson's Bay? is this a better alternative?
