Domenici and Bingaman are at center of oil debate
Posted 5/02/2008 01:47:00 PM
U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici is leading a Republican charge to try to increase domestic oil production and reduce gas prices, but his fellow senator from
Domenici, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced on Thursday that he was introducing legislation to dramatically increase domestic oil production with more offshore drilling and by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
The proposal to drill in
“For years now, I have been trying to develop more domestic production of oil and gas, and for years, with one exception in the
Domenici said his legislation would produce as much as 24 million barrels of additional oil and would “go a long way toward helping us break the cycle of dependence on foreign sources of oil.”
You can listen to remarks Domenici made about the bill at a Thursday news conference in
Meanwhile, Bingaman, in a Thursday speech on the Senate floor, which you can watch by clicking here, made his own proposals: freezing the filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, taking action to bring the oil market under the control of U.S. laws and regulations, and making suggestions to Americans that include driving 5 miles per hour slower, which would increase fuel efficiency by 7.5 percent.
Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, also said he has reservations about “other ideas” being pushed on Capitol Hill.
“It is an election year, and while there is always a tendency to take rhetorical stands in the run-up to an election, the American people understand that. That’s one reason why they don’t always hold Congress in the highest esteem. Proposals that are mostly feel-good propositions will not fool voters for long, if at all,” Bingaman said.
Specifically, Bingaman said he does not support the proposal by Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton to suspend the federal gas tax, saying it would increase deficit spending and the proposal to reinstate the tax in September would be difficult on motorists, which could lead to an extension of the suspension and further deficit spending. Domenici said he also does not support suspending the gas tax, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
In his speech, Bingaman also took aim at Domenici’s proposal, saying it would be 10 years before any oil would come from drilling in the
Labels: Energy policy, Washington
7 Comments:
Good lord. I am a fan of Senator Bingaman, but he could not have assembled a more lousy platform for reducing gas costs. The strategic reserve does drive up prices because the United States government exists on the market as a buyer in and of itself, but it's so small that we're taking savings of pennies - and at the expense of our national security. This is a bad idea. Taking over oil markets? You want to nationalize the oil market? The global oil market? Really, Senator? And the last idea is to drive slower to increase fuel efficiency. It's kind of silly for a Senator from a huge state to propose that. The reduction of speed spread over just the trip between Alamogordo and Las Cruces would result in the trip taking 7.7% longer, resulting in consumers using more gas. Really, Senator?
The solution is to drill domestically, produce incentives for Mexico and Canada to sell us oil, strengthen the dollar, and build ten nuclear power plants every year for the next ten years.
You could even, if you felt lucky, create a government-overseen company with a mandate to sell Alaskan oil to American consumers at cheap prices. This would have three effects. First, it would provide cheap gas. Bonus. Second, it would reduce our demand for oil sold on the global market, thus reducing the price of that oil, thus making gas cheaper. Third, it would encourage oil companies to sell gas cheaper in America to stay competitive. Our market is huge. There's a broad range at which it's still worth it for oil companies to sell to us. Economics of scale and all that. The profit margin might drop, but they'd still be making billions of dollars that they couldn't get anywhere else. Drilling in Alaska leverages that advantage.
Or we could drive slower (and drive up the price of gas and goods), weaken our national security, and create plans almost perfectly-designed to spook the oil market into higher prices.
Maybe the wrong New Mexico Senator retired.
Add up all the insignificant (or not sufficient) sources of oil that should not be tapped in order to protect the environment/incredibly unique natural asset/the endangered (insert one or more of your favorite species of plants, animal or ecosystems) and pretty soon your talking real capacity. From Otero Mesa to offshore Florida and California to ANWR, ad infinitum, its hard to believe we want to live with the benefits of cheap energy without paying some kind of price.
Realistically its going to take a combination of things over a period of time to evolve into a better energy situation. So yeah throw in some additional conventional sources, use some semi conventional ones (oil sands, oil shale, etc), some nuclear, while going for new technolgies.
A car gets optimum gas mileage at around 60 miles per hour. Over that speed, the miles per gallon goes down. If we changed the speed limit from 75 to 70, we would gain somewhere around 5% better gas mileage.
Despite the fact that Domenici constantly brought home the bacon, which contributed to the national debt I used to think he was at least trying to keep the people's lands open for mineral (metals/oil/gas) exploitation. But. when he sent me an email a few months ago saying he has been trying to change the 1872 mining act I promptly considered him an enemy of the people.
Politicians (social managers/planners) create the problems so we will beg them for relief, which is exactly what is happening right now.
Even though I have never liked Bingaman's policies at least he is what he says he is. Having said this, the whole concept of driving slower to save fuel is not only a myth but an outrageous play of propaganda designed for the non-thinking.
For the sake of argument and maintain an equal footing format imagine the following scenario.....
2 radio controlled (driverless) trucks travel 1000 miles from point A to point B.
Each truck begins its journey at the speed of 60 mph and 55 mph.
The road is flat, weather conditions are perfect.
There is no slowing down or stopping for fuel, stop signs, hwy hazards, safety checks, or maintenance. etc.
The rate of diesel consumption by 80,000 pound 18wheelers are common knowledge within the trucking industry.
Truck 1
60 mph speed
6 mpg
166 gals of fuel consumed
16.6 hours travel time
Truck 2
55 mph speed
6.5 mpg
154 gals of fuel consumed
18 hours travel time
Results: Truck 2 consumed 14 gals less fuel, but took 1.4 hours longer to arrive. This 1.4 hours translates into less productivity in a Just In Time commercially sensitive economy. Consequently, Truck 1 traveling 60 mph actually is more efficient than truck 2 at 55 mph, because truck 2 lost 77 miles of productivity due to the slower speed. Therefore, in actuality traveling at 80mph is more efficient than 60 if the same circumstances were maintained. This is what green govt does not state when they (remember when x-Fed Chairman Greenspan ballyhooed American productive prosperity?) touts about how prosperous we are due to higher productivity.
Sen. Bingaman is on the right track, but he doesn't address long term solutions to our energy vulnerability. The only way I would ever support opening ANWR to oil drilling would be if there were an absolute, iron-clad national commitment to develop alternative fuels, an effort of the magnitude of our race to the moon. There has been no leadership from our elected representatives on this vital issue since Jimmy Carter! Imagine how different our world would be now if his policies had been continued. Oil from ANWR is finite, limited. Opening it up to drilling will only weaken our resolve to find alternative ways to satisfy the incredible growth in energy demand worldwide. We need to get out of Iraq, and spend our national treasure in ways that are truly vital to our national interests: alternative energy sources!!
Ben, you usually have sound reasoning behind your posts, with solid facts. This time, do some more homework first. Reducing mph has been proven to reduce gas mileage; we simply don't want to drive slower because we are a nation that is impatient to get where we want to go. As a loyal American I would like to be independent in our oil production. If the world became less stable, however, where would we get the oil we need by the time we used up all our own oil reserves? Remember the Battle of the Bulge in WWII? The Germans had to leave their tanks and trucks when they ran out of fuel. There is a finite amount of oil on our globe. This current rise in prices should force us to seriously enact legislation to find, develop , and use alternate sources of energy that we produce ourselves, like wind, solar, ethanol from grasses, from waste in garbage dumps and from animal by-products, etc. For instance, El Paso has a plant that grows its own algae for conversion to energy.
This is an election year, so many words are being used to "pacify" our collective outrages. Let us look past that rhetoric to find sources of real worth to ease our energy crisis, such as tax incentives for businesses and homes to convert to solar or other natural sources for heating and cooling our homes. Laws and tax incentives should be enacted for transportation engines, i.e., trucks and cars, to use alternative fuels. The technology has been available for decades for some of these, but the powerful lobbyists of the oil and corn producers have Congress by the short hairs. Yes, politics in an election year. Can we all look past the political posturing to find real answers to save our country and save our planet as well?
Dear Fred,
I think I see where my math skewed. If I was getting 21 mpg before, and I'm getting 22.575 mpg now, it takes 3.1 gallons to travel 70 miles instead of 3.33 gallons. My fuel use is therefore reduced, not increased, over the course of the journey. I was rolling the efficiency into mph and that made the math come out all wrong. What do I know? I'm a three-year-old child. Thanks for making me take a second look at it.
My suspicion is that the increased travel time would, due to economics of scale wrapped into marginal industries and lost productivity, result in increased costs to consumers, and would probably result in higher energy costs to the nation overall. Fuel efficiency is all well and good, but productivity inefficiency across an entire shipping-reliant economic system might be not so good. I'm curious now, and will start doing some of my own reading.
As for the Battle of the Bulge, if only we'd been drilling in Alaska, the Cold War would've been fought over Warsaw instead of Berlin. ;-)
Yours,
Ben
Post a Comment
<< Home
Published comments have been deemed by Heath Haussamen to be in compliance with this site’s comments policy. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Heath Haussamen or this site. If you know of a person who is abusing this site’s comments system by impersonating someone else or in other ways, please report it by clicking here.