McCain Energy Policy - Drain America First

By Cernig

We all know that McCain is now following the Bush line to start drilling for oil in Alaska and offshore. It's a flip-flop propelled by campaign donations from big oil, but does it make sense? Well, it might eventually (around 2010) take 6 cents off the price of a gallon but Cheryl Rofer at WhirledView has been crunching some numbers and says that the Bush/McCain policy amounts to a serious national security misstep in that it amounts to a policy to Drain America First.

The first ten countries, in decreasing order of reserves, are

Saudi Arabia
Iran
Iraq
Kuwait
United Arab Emirates
Venezuela
Russia
Kazakhstan
Libya
Nigeria

The United States is number 11.

The first ten countries, in decreasing order of production, are

Saudi Arabia
Russia
United States
Iran
China
Mexico
Norway
Canada
Venezuela
United Arab Emirates

The difference in these two lists suggests that the famous peak oil hypothesis is not the whole story. In some countries, like the United States, production has peaked, due to what a colleague called the drain-America-first policy. He argued that it would have made more sense to keep our oil in the ground and use up other countries’ reserves first. We can see that President Bush belongs to the drain-America-first faction, urging that American production be increased, when it is already high in proportion to our proved reserves. Russia is following a similar policy of depredative nationalism.

Notice the big reserve holder who isn't on the big producer list? Iraq. Spencer Ackerman notes a NY Times report today that says Iraq is about to award no-bid contracts to Western oil giants.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

The invasion of Iraq wasn't just about oil or even oil money, but it certainly seems as if McCain is following Bush's lead in wanting to treat Iraq as America's strategic oil reserve. After all, they "broke it so they own it."

Non-coincidentally, big oil campaign dollars this cycle are flowing into Republican coffers at the rate of three to one over donations to Dems - a ratio repeated in the McCain/Obama race. Always follow the money.

Comments

[Geoffrey Britain]

Making the argument that republicans want to 'Drain America first' is doomed to failure.

Here's why;

Gas is headed toward $5+ a gallon and is predicted to possibly go much higher. Every 50cents up is another 1% of the public who decides we should drill.

People have to drive to work, especially outside the cities.

In the cities, a greatly increased ridership would overwhelm mass transit systems never designed for such levels of usage.

Trucks are needed to bring food and basic supplies to market.

Hundreds of trucking firms have already gone out of business.

Telling people that they have to 'suck it up' till alternative solutions arrive will not suffice.

Because republican 527 ads will be citing these figures and arguments:

Offshore reserves alone are estimated to contain 86 Billion barrels of oil and 420 Trillion cubic ft of natural gas.

Nations like China are already tapping into these reserves. Taking the oil off OUR coasts.

Dependence upon foreign oil is forcing the US to stay in the ME out of necessity. Becoming independent will break the chains of our dependency.

Republicans are proposing to place offshore rigs 40 miles off the coast, far over the horizon and use horizontal drilling techniques, so that our pristine views are preserved.

Montana and South Dakota have oil shale deposits, whose useful capacity is estimated to meet the needs of the entire US for the next 41 years...and the same horizontal techniques can be used there to avoid strip mining.

85% of France's electrical energy needs are met with nuclear plants... which have a great record of safety...and are much more efficient than our old technology. A French nuclear plant produces 3% of the nuclear waste of our old plants. OUR old plants, in an entire year, produce only enough to fill a pick-up truck...

Now I don't know about you but 3% of a pick-up truck bed, for an entire year seems reasonable to me...

Everyone knows that alternative energy is the future and is needed.

Scientists say that it will be many years before we have a truly practical source of alternative energy. Because the problem with solar, wind, wave, etc. is that these resources are not energy 'dense' enough.

They do not have enough concentrated energy, so to use them on a commercial scale, much higher efficiencies are needed to make them competitive with oil and nuclear.

To put that in prespective John Q public, imagine if gas permanently costs much higher than $5 a gallon...

(That's an easy sell, to a public that @ $5 a galloon, just wants the problem to go away. And places personal survival ahead of a robust polar bear population.)

Finally, republicans will say that until practical technologies arrive, we have to drill, etc. but we can do it in an enviromentally safe way and we will.

These are the facts and arguments that will be made.

As for the 2-1 donations, being used as an argument that repubs are in the 'pocket' of big oil... the republican response will be:

Two democratic party Congressmen have threatened the oil industry with nationalization.

Threatening to take away someone's livilihood, tends to create defensiveness in people...

How would you expect them to react?

By offering donations to the party that wants to put them out of business?

Would you do that if your livilihood was at stake?

[Cernig]

Jeepers, was it 'troll newshoggers" day for you Geoffrey?

I didn't say whether I thought the argument would work - I said what I thought was true. It's a national security misstep.

Aren't republicans meant to be the ones who take national security too seriously to play political games with it?

Oh - and just in case these comments today are more than just drive-bys, we expect linked cites for statistics here at newshoggers. Like your stats on waste.

In 2004, the last year for which figures have been released, the US nuclear industry was sitting on 165,854 tons of radioactive waste, of which 47,023.4 was uranium. [source - official EIA statistics]

That sounds like more than a few pick-ups worth to me.

"the problem with solar, wind, wave, etc. is that these resources are not energy 'dense' enough."

Odd. The Government is committed to obtaining 20 per cent of all its energy from renewables by 2020 and offshore wind power has been identified as the key factor in reaching the target.

The UK is about to overtake Denmark as the world's largest generator of wind power and within five years we will be able to obtain as much power from wind as we do from nuclear plants. [Source - Daily Telegraph, 4th June 2008]

I don't believe the UK is more windy, more sunny or has more tide than the US.

Keep trying, by all means, but spin is spin.

[Valerie]

A wise person might want to consider how much drilling China is doing off its own coastal shelf.

[Steve Hynd]

Valerie,

China is doing a fair amount of drilling in the South Chian Sea. However, there are two different reasons for that - 1) the reserves there are largely un-explored and unquantified in detail, 2) the Chinese are using the drilling as a means of asserting rights of ownership in areas which are in or near disputed territory.

A wise person, it seems to me, might also want to consider not being too paranoid about the Chinese menace. What honest difference does it make whether the Chinese are drilling or not to the question of what the US should be doing?

Regards, C