Drill Drill Drill

[Buck]

What 'we' can do to get free of oil........

From the story.....
"By the way, forget about oil shale and the Dakota "Bakken" oil play as anything more than pipe dreams by people who don't understand the economics of oil production or geology.

Is there anything we can do?
Of course... and I've repeated it a hundred times

Rebuild the passenger rail system (and public transit at all scales) with electrification
Prepare to reinhabit our small cities and small towns, while decanting the suburbs and our supersized metroplexes
Grow much more of our food locally around these places
Rebuild local networks of retail and wholesale trade
Prepare to resume manufacturing at smaller scales
Raise interest rates to reward savings
Do not waste alt.energy production on automobile use"

The whole story........
http://www.kunstler.com/Grunt_drill.html

[otobesane1]

Buck, the one thing of which I am ABSOLUTELY certain....I'm more confused by this subject than I've ever been. With "EXPERTS" on both sides (like the global warming debacle) it's difficult to know whom to believe. This much I do believe. We need to drill, drill, drill AND we need to be pursuing alternative energy solutions....ALL AT THE SAME TIME AND WITH EQUAL FERVOR! I certainly don't know whether more drilling will help or not. But it surely can't hurt. (All of you environmentalists just relax) And as for the polar bears, if it helps to solve our energy problem, I'm all for drilling right through their beating hearts to get at the oil. (Ok, all of you PETA people can relax, too) Of course, the governor of Alaska says that the impact will be minimal, so I don't even worry about it.

While we continue to debate the issue and whether it's good for the environment or whether there's oil here or there or whether it will take 2 years or 10 years....WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING! Sitting on our thumbs definitely isn't the answer.

TK

[walls0stone]

At the very word, Drill...the speculator price drops 10 bucks.

those bears have grown in number since they said they would fall from the Earth...and who cares if they do?

This country feels bad about having wealth. It's pathentic.
We can do all sorts of things...then we don't do anything becouse we are afraid of killing the purple spotted mouse.

hey, earth freaks...feel free to have a go at me. as I wright this, I'm eating Steak and Eggs for my morning meal and I think I'll go out and kick a baby seal on my way to work..

DRILL DRILL DRILL!

[madmac]

Buck I don't disagree with what you are saying, although it will take time and money to switch to alternative fuel. Much of what you say we need to do will not be seen in our lifetime. As for the oil. It dosen't take a very smart person to realize the problem at hand. The only solution for America at the moment is to drill. We have China right off our shores drilling like mad dogs. You think that's good. Man what a mess. I am not even sure we will see much relief in oil prices by opening up new wells but one thing is for sure. We will have the oil we need till we find a cleaner alternative to make this country run. Personally I care about the impact we as humans have on our land but not at the cost of keeping this country going. Not to pick on you Buck but why would someone want to leave the country life to move to the city. If everyone lived in the city were would we grow our food. Small scale industry would die at the hands of country like China and Japan. Their is only a very small percent of the population that even gives a crap about supporting American companies. What am I saying? Small scale industry has already died. Good post Buck with some good ideas but I think the ones that would see it through to get it done are too old now as the youth of today have other interest. One a brighter note, here is a link to what one park is doing in an effort to change for the better.

http://start.localnet.com/article.php?article=D9207HS80.html

[jim]

For the near and intermediate future, drilling and coal is the only answer. We do need production of proven technology, and research for the future.

Some form of mass transit is needed, but it ain't light rail. Just run power lines under the pavement and use electric busses to accomplish the same thing with far less cost. The fools that insist on spending a million dollars a mile for light rail should be locked up before they hurt themselves, or if sane, before they rob the public.

jim

[walls0stone]

why would someone want to leave the country life to move to the city. If everyone lived in the city were would we grow our food.
http://start.localnet.com/article.php?article=D9207HS80.html


To Make a living. Most people who come to north Central Pa have ideas of how great it is here, but the area is also very poor. Think about the big picture. If a person can't support a family on min wage..then don't come here. Sure the area has it's trade offs. low crime, space..whatever.

But not all people are willing to work 80 hours a week. That's why they all move. Still, with all the people who are not working in the mid west, and the rural US, it would be of great benifit to start work on those large energy projects.

[EarthMother]

To Wallsostone.

I personally feel no remorse for the wealth of this country. According to history the country was founded by people who expected this land to always be a Godly place. We have been blessed until the 50's when we as a people allowed our right to freedom "OF" religion to become a freedom from religion.
The avarage citizen doesn't like what's going on here anymore than you do. I will proudly sit or stand with you to tell the bleeding heart liberals to sit down and shut up. I won't kick a seal... What did he do? How about we go find the idiots who have changed our constitution to allow them their rights while surpressing yours and mine. That's the ones we need to kick!!!!!

[mtwildflower]

I am all for drilling and tapping the reserves that we have at our disposal.

I live along the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana and our county as a rural area supported cheifly by agriculture would benefit mightily from drilling on the front. Not only would it stop many of our high school graduates from moving out of state to make a living, it would create and keep the small town industry and infrastructure that is no longer possible from ag related business alone.

The biggest proble with Montana is that there is a mentality that we do not want our population to grow. We call our state the Last Best Place and there is a mindset amongst the people who were not born here and do not have generations of family ancestary that this is their play ground and they want the rest of us to either let them run our state as a park and shut up, or leave. It is so incredibly frustrating when they have come here with money from out of state urban areas and tell us that growing beyond the present population is bad. They do not WANT our young people to stay and so they stand in the way of progress and true economic prosperity through envirometal wacko junk science.

It is not about enviromentalists loving the land and keeping things "pristine" for future generations. It's about edging out the regular...ordinary...common folk who do most of the living and dying and paying so that they, the wanna be elitists, can have some kind of unattainable Utopia tailor made for their delicate sensibilities.

That is why we aren't allowed to use the resources at our disposal.

[bookwormom]

well it does not surprise me mtwildflower.

good to see you posting, I hope you are well .

[MooseToo]

the libs say drilling isn't the answer because it might be ten years before we see any relief -

but they suggest solving the problem by changing our mindset so that mass transit is preferred over personal transit - and relocating massive numbers from large cities to small towns - now, unless you somehow contaminate the interstates and the large cities, that would have to take multiple generations to accomplish -

drill, drilll, drill !

[walls0stone]

10 years ago, we tapped the fed resurve for no reason and gas hit 80 cents... I wonder what would happen if we said that we had tapped it..but did not.

With all the drilling I'm seeing here in Pa, I'd be high as hell to see natural Gas cars. Popular Mecanics had an artical on natural Gas and used veggi oil.

But can you imagine life with out so much crude? and the capital from natrual gas here in the rural US?

I asked a driller yesterday how long the gas at a well sight would last. by all acounts he told me that I'd be taking a long Dirt nap before they got close. :)

Drill Ye rough necks Drill!

[SkooliesRock]

What ever became of the "oil shortage" from the 70's? If that was the beginnings of this go-round, why have they waited another 30 years before considering alternative fuels?

I call BS! Merely a greed-move......

[cinok]

One on the biggest problems with the oil is who has control of it Yes we nee to be me self reliant and explore options but at the same time I still can't understand why we are spending billions in Iraq and not reaping the benefits as for that also the mid-east was a wasteland until oil was found there by western owned companies I fully support what we are doing in Iraq but come one lets get a return on our invest. I saw an article last week, cant quote it but we are still putting money in to Iraqi infrastructure while their oil profits are sitting in a bank or being stolen by their"leaders". I agree Buck we need better a transportation system here but you could build it probably would not be utilized. In order for a transportation system to work its cities and ways of life need to be designed around it not not the other way around. Americans in general are not going to change their ways because its there.

[Buck]

I agree Buck we need better a transportation system here but you could build it probably would not be utilized. In order for a transportation system to work its cities and ways of life need to be designed around it not not the other way around. Americans in general are not going to change their ways because its there. *

Well, not necessarily. I can remember a time in the 1950's 'till late 1960's
that people owned one car and shopped locally. Since that time "just in
time inventory" and outsoucing changed the way business was run
in America.

Wal-mart changed the face of small business in ways we now only wonder
about but in the end small town business started to die. Easy credit also
speeded the death of American commnuity as it was.

The changes brought on by the interstate system upended
the whole American way of life into a false consumer "gotta
have it all right now" and let's travel long distances & often by car.

America could get tons more bang for the buck if Passenger Rail were
restored and the interstate system changed to require permits or tolls
to use to stop the massive $$$ drain to support them. Interstates ARE
a luxury that America had better decide ain't worth it anymore.

[oldnndway]

I'm all for drilling right now ... everywhere.

We've had drilling right off our coast in Texas for as long as I've been aware of, and we've had refineries here since the beginning of the oil business.
More than likely the gas for the SUV caravans that all the big name liberals ride around in could have been produced right down the road from me as well as the jet fuel they burn jetting from here to there.

But not in THEIR state ... no way ! ... it might mess up their beaches or something
(plus you have all that low-life oilfield trash around)

At the same time we need to pursue alternative forms of energy and get them on line to take some of the load off our dependancy on petroleum products.

One of the first that comes to mind for me is nuclear energy.
It's clean, it's safe, it's being used all over the world and it produces gobs of power at a fairly low cost (and we have yet to reach "peak uranium" that I've heard )

Another is wind energy.
Everytime I get on I-20 around Dallas I pass truck after truck hauling the HUGE blades for the wind turbines going up all over west Texas ... yet Teddy says NO WAY to building them off Hyannisport ... Hmmmm, somebody ought to pull his plug and let him freeze in the dark and he wouldn't be so quick to pooh-pooh the wind farms I think.
If the wind blows steadily anywhere there is a potential for (virtually) free, non-polluting electric generation.

We have dams on just about every stream of any significance around here, all of them generating electricity through hydro-electrics ... works here, why not in all of the other states ?
Water has amazing power or force.
I'm thinking that a simple squirrel cage apparatus floating in current could turn a generator with the right pulley set up and charge 12-volt batteries, why not scale it up and get power from the Mississippi or other large rivers... seems do-able.

Another area with HUGE potential is tidal forces.
The tides ebb and flow twice in 24 hours (on most days) and with those tides comes massive volumes of moving water that is hard to stop.
Work is progressing on harnessing that force and converting it to energy although at this point it is in the early stages.

Solar is there for the taking.
There is enough non-arable land out west to power the world from solar collectors, not real sure on how hard it is to transport but there is defiantely room for it.

Geothermal energy is probably the largest untapped source of energy there is.
Pump water down to the heat and steam comes back out (think Old Faithful)
Simple.
Use the steam to power turbines.

America has just not decided to DO IT yet.
When WE do it will get done ... and get done BIG TIME.
That's why America has always been as big a deal as it has in the world, because when WE make our mind up stuff gets done.

Of course there will be corporations making mega bucks off of it and that will upset all the whiners about profits and such, but shoot, they gonna be upset about something anyway.

[oldnndway]

As far as everyone abandoning the cities and moving back to the small towns and such ...

yeah right !

[walls0stone]

As far as everyone abandoning the cities and moving back to the small towns and such ...

yeah right !

You have a point, Statisticly, we are getting back into our small towns and neihborhoods. Folks are more aware of the local store or the little guys. Megga Radio staions are not showing proffits, but smaller staions are showing proffits they have not seen in a long time. It's about the people around you. I think that's a good thing that has come from the troubles of the last ten years

[SkooliesRock]

I'm all for drilling right now ... everywhere.

We've had drilling right off our coast in Texas for as long as I've been aware of, and we've had refineries here since the beginning of the oil business.
More than likely the gas for the SUV caravans that all the big name liberals ride around in could have been produced right down the road from me as well as the jet fuel they burn jetting from here to there.

But not in THEIR state ... no way ! ... it might mess up their beaches or something
(plus you have all that low-life oilfield trash around)

At the same time we need to pursue alternative forms of energy and get them on line to take some of the load off our dependancy on petroleum products.

One of the first that comes to mind for me is nuclear energy.
It's clean, it's safe, it's being used all over the world and it produces gobs of power at a fairly low cost (and we have yet to reach "peak uranium" that I've heard )

Another is wind energy.
Everytime I get on I-20 around Dallas I pass truck after truck hauling the HUGE blades for the wind turbines going up all over west Texas ... yet Teddy says NO WAY to building them off Hyannisport ... Hmmmm, somebody ought to pull his plug and let him freeze in the dark and he wouldn't be so quick to pooh-pooh the wind farms I think.
If the wind blows steadily anywhere there is a potential for (virtually) free, non-polluting electric generation.

We have dams on just about every stream of any significance around here, all of them generating electricity through hydro-electrics ... works here, why not in all of the other states ?
Water has amazing power or force.
I'm thinking that a simple squirrel cage apparatus floating in current could turn a generator with the right pulley set up and charge 12-volt batteries, why not scale it up and get power from the Mississippi or other large rivers... seems do-able.

Another area with HUGE potential is tidal forces.
The tides ebb and flow twice in 24 hours (on most days) and with those tides comes massive volumes of moving water that is hard to stop.
Work is progressing on harnessing that force and converting it to energy although at this point it is in the early stages.

Solar is there for the taking.
There is enough non-arable land out west to power the world from solar collectors, not real sure on how hard it is to transport but there is defiantely room for it.

Geothermal energy is probably the largest untapped source of energy there is.
Pump water down to the heat and steam comes back out (think Old Faithful)
Simple.
Use the steam to power turbines.

America has just not decided to DO IT yet.
When WE do it will get done ... and get done BIG TIME.
That's why America has always been as big a deal as it has in the world, because when WE make our mind up stuff gets done.

Of course there will be corporations making mega bucks off of it and that will upset all the whiners about profits and such, but shoot, they gonna be upset about something anyway.


And how long has all the technology for all these methods been around? I wonder why it is they haven't been promoted or progressed in their usage? Because there's too much oil money left to be sucked out of hard-working middle-class, that's why.