U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

[photoncounter]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/bu...1&ref=business

And not just here. Across the country, the oil and gas industry is vastly increasing production, reversing two decades of decline. Using new technology and spurred by rising oil prices since the mid-2000s, the industry is extracting millions of barrels more a week, from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the prairies of North Dakota.
At the same time, Americans are pumping significantly less gasoline. While that is partly a result of therecession and higher gasoline prices, people are also driving fewer miles and replacing older cars with more fuel-efficient vehicles at a greater clip, federal data show.

National oil production, which declined steadily to 4.95 million barrels a day in 2008 from 9.6 million in 1970, has risen over the last four years to nearly 5.7 million barrels a day. The Energy Department projects that daily output could reach nearly seven million barrels by 2020. Some experts think it could eventually hit 10 million barrels — which would put the United States in the same league as Saudi Arabia.

[don]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

There's little mystery why so many Americans are cuckoo. The Cognitive Dissonance was full-blown on today's front page of the NYTimes. In addition to the "energy independence" nonsense (no mention of the ongoing global energy grab) was:

U.S. Relaxes Limits on Use of Data in Terror Analysis

The Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday signed new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center, which was created in 2004 to foster intelligence sharing and serve as a terrorism threat clearinghouse.
The guidelines will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire databases and “data mining them” using complex algorithms to search for patterns that could indicate a threat.

accompanied by:


Obama Seizes Chance to Score as an Everyman

WASHINGTON — President Obama loves basketball, as everyone is reminded in March — especially in an election year in which he has been jumping through you-know-whats to assert as much.
In addition to doing his annual N.C.A.A. bracket thing on ESPN last week (picking the swing-statey University of North Carolina to win it all), Mr. Obama boasted in a podcast that he knew about the Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin before everyone else did, referred colloquially to the point guard’s “P.T.” (playing time) and chomped on a widely photographed hot dog at the Western Kentucky-Mississippi Valley State game in Dayton, Ohio. All the while, he looked like any other everyfan in section 101, albeit one with a large security detail and the prime minister of Britain at his side.


Go nuts America, it's okay . . . and understandable.

[photon555]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

Exactly right photoncounter and Don. As the dollar is devalued oil will continue to climb. When the yuan is repegged or cut loose the SwHTF. The US doesn't have a National Energy Corporation, so all that oil doesn't belong to American citizens, it belongs to whichever energy corp can pay the biggest bribes and make the sweetest deals with DC. Since oil is priced globally the US price will soar as the dollar sinks. We'll be producing more oil, but it will be exported to whoever can pay the highest price. (China?) The same will be true for any commodity that can be exported. Why would US agribusinesses sell a bushel of wheat for $10 here when they can get $20 equivalent by exporting it. As for export limits by DC... your congressman needs a new beach house, his old one is only 5000 square feet. What will people do when a loaf of bread costs $20, especially those living on food stamps? Anybody remember the riots in the 60's. Better get a fire extinguisher, the biggest one you can find.

[doom&gloom]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

We don't have to export it for the price to rise, imports will rise and dag up domestic prices accordingly.

Obama was all proud to say imports of foreign oil were down. On that note he was absolutely correct. the slight of hand was, the percentage of foreign oil used in the US was actually UP!

The takeaway is that 'peak oil" in the US is still occuring on the downslope, and Bakken oil-shale or whatever dish du jour in the enegy sector is fed us is still not enough.

[don]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

Without oil would any of us know what fungible means

[lektrode]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

what i'd really like to know is: how much of this years price run up at the pump due to EXPORTS of finished gasoline ?

oh and more anecdotal evidence of 'subdued inflation'
here in SLC, gas is appx 3.60 - was 2.99 when we left a month ago...
(can hardly wait to see what it is when get home)
20% uptick, in ONE month? and in feb-mar yet.... just imagine what it will be by memorial day.

this might explain why the news media is suddenly waking up on the inflation front....

[Starving Steve]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

Energy supply solution for North America:

(Alberta oil sands) + ( Saskatchewan and North Dakota Bakken Shale ) + (deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico) + ( oil exploration off of the East Coast ) + ( the Hibernia Oil Field offshore of Newfoundland ) + ( rejuvenation of old oil fields such as the Signal Hill oil field in Los Angeles ) + (rejuvenation of oil fields in Texas ) + ( rejuvenation of the oil field at Bakersfield, Cal. ) + ( telling the environmentalists and their EPA to get lost ) + ( more pipelines ) + ( natural gas production and use ) + ( more energy efficient vehicles ) + (more rail traffic) + ( atomic energy ) + (hydro-electric dams ) + ( clean coal ) + (coal-to-oil conversion) + ( rejuvenation of old oil fields in south-eastern Mexico ) + (much higher speed limits) + ( improved traffic engineering in cities ) + (public transit) + ( passenger rail service ) + ( rapid-transit in metro areas) + (bicycles) + (segways) + (walking) + (home offices and internet workplaces ) + ( more drilling and deeper drilling, everywhere ) + (diesel fuel and diesel motors) + ( much cheaper ethanol ) + ( more co-operative wildlife ).

[photoncounter]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

Some more MSM BS (election year ?): http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/23/news...ices/index.htm

[Starving Steve]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

Reading about drilling on both coasts, the East Coast and on the West Coast, in your clip above, yes, I forgot to mention drilling off of the West Coast. And the place that I know has oil just underneath the sea-floor is the southern California Bight, just offshore of Los Angeles, Ventura, Oxnard and Santa Barbara. There is so much oil there that it is leaking out daily into the sea and floating onto southern California beaches. This has been occurring for decades, ever since the oil was discovered there before WWII.

Both coasts need to be explored and drilled. There is oil offshore of Florida, for sure oil offshore of Florida's west coast. There is oil in the California Bight, and that is cheap, light-weight and sulfur-free oil in shallow water. There is oil on the south-side of the Brooks Range in Alaska. There may be oil offshore of Alaska in the Gulf of Alaska and offshore of the Aleutian Islands. That oil needs to be drilled and pumped out. And speaking of other spots with oil: Pennsylvania, Ohio, western New York, and likely in south-eastern Ontario. Other places just begging to be explored and drilled are offshore of British Columbia, offshore of Nunavit, the Yukon and the NWT, not to mention more drilling needs to be in western Kansas, eastern Colorado, Wyoming, western Nebraska, South Dakota, southern Saskatchewan, eastern Montana, southern Alberta, south-west Manitoba, western Oklahoma, eastern New Mexico, Louisiana, and most of Texas. There is still more oil to be taken offshore of Newfoundland.

The entire North American continent is floating on oil, and there is no reason in the world for the environmentalists to have destroyed the oil industry and to have run gasoline prices up to where they are now. It is high time now for both Democrats and Republicans to boot the environmentalists out of their parties. It is time for both liberals and conservatives to boot the environmentalists out of their ranks. And in Canada, the same thing has to happen: the NDP, the Liberals, and the Conservatives have to boot the environmentalists out of their ranks.

[solitas777]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

I kind of like the fact, our country has been anti-progress in regards to looking for our own supplies of oil here. When the world runs out of oil, we'll be the last ones to have it.

[doom&gloom]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

I kind of like the fact, our country has been anti-progress in regards to looking for our own supplies of oil here. When the world runs out of oil, we'll be the last ones to have it.

ya might almost think it is a conspiracy, huh?

[Starving Steve]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

I kind of like the fact, our country has been anti-progress in regards to looking for our own supplies of oil here. When the world runs out of oil, we'll be the last ones to have it.

The oil will never run-out, at least not for thousands of years, because there is coal-to-oil conversion which can be done with the vast coal reserves of the world, especially with the vast coal reserves of North America.

Another frontier with oil is MUCH CHEAPER ethanol production which would allow for cheaper blends of ethanol and gasoline..... So far, ethanol has been an economic failure, but this does not have to be. Since ethanol alcohol does not have the energy locked into it that gasoline has, the ethanol (and ethanol/gasoline blends) must be sold to the public at a much cheaper price than the price that heretofore they have been offered to the public........ Otherwise, the public turns-away from ethanol, as has just happened, because the public gets wise to the inferior fuel when their fuel economy drops in half.

Another frontier with fuel is natural-gas which can ( and is now ) being used to power certain vehicles such as trucks and buses. Natural-gas conversion in vehicles is possible, and the fuel is plentiful and dirt cheap. Nat-gas is not as powerful as gasoline vapour, but nat-gas is much, much, much cheaper than gasoline. The only big negative with nat-gas is that nat-gas storage tanks are bulky on top of, or inside of vehicles.

[c1ue]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

what i'd really like to know is: how much of this years price run up at the pump due to EXPORTS of finished gasoline ?

GRG55 alluded to the US exporting diesel because US demand for diesel is low, while importing petrol which US demand is high.

If this is the case then the exports aren't the issue.

I think it is also true (but cannot guarantee it) that the US has relatively high refinery capacity vs. its consumption:

http://205.254.135.7/pub/oil_gas/pet..._prod_outp.htm

If so, then another portion of these imports are simply redirecting imported crude oil into refined export outputs for Latin America and elsewhere.

From my view, the EIA notes that 76% of gasoline price is due to crude price, with refinery and tax costs making up the remainder. The gas price jumps don't seem unreasonable to me given the crude price action moderated perhaps by some hedging.

[wayiwalk]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

The title of this thread reminds me of a line I think I read in the Onion once, "The United States is Inching Its Way to the Metric System"....you can guess the satirical content

[don]

Re: U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence

Paul Craig Roberts on the American Way of Empire. Think FIRE, Daddy - O . . .

Empires Then and Now

By: Paul Craig Roberts| March 26, 2012 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: Afganistan, Iraq, Military, Parsons, Taliban, War,


Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires succeeded, because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance. The reason Rome did not extend its empire east into Germany was not the military prowess of Germanic tribes but Rome’s calculation that the cost of conquest exceeded the value of extractable resources.

The Roman empire failed, because Romans exhausted manpower and resources in civil wars fighting amongst themselves for power. The British empire failed, because the British exhausted themselves fighting Germany in two world wars.

In his book, The Rule of Empires (2010), Timothy H. Parsons replaces the myth of the civilizing empire with the truth of the extractive empire. He describes the successes of the Romans, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Spanish in Peru, Napoleon in Italy, and the British in India and Kenya in extracting resources. To lower the cost of governing Kenya, the British instigated tribal consciousness and invented tribal customs that worked to British advantage.

Parsons does not examine the American empire, but in his introduction to the book he wonders whether America’s empire is really an empire as the Americans don’t seem to get any extractive benefits from it. After eight years of war and attempted occupation of Iraq, all Washington has for its efforts is several trillion dollars of additional debt and no Iraqi oil. After ten years of trillion dollar struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington has nothing to show for it except possibly some part of the drug trade that can be used to fund covert CIA operations.

America’s wars are very expensive. Bush and Obama have doubled the national debt, and the American people have no benefits from it. No riches, no bread and circuses flow to Americans from Washington’s wars. So what is it all about?

The answer is that Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions.

The New Empire is different. It happens without achieving conquest. The American military did not conquer Iraq and has been forced out politically by the puppet government that Washington established. There is no victory in Afghanistan, and after a decade the American military does not control the country.

In the New Empire success at war no longer matters. The extraction takes place by being at war. Huge sums of American taxpayers’ money have flowed into the American armaments industries and huge amounts of power into Homeland Security. The American empire works by stripping Americans of wealth and liberty.

This is why the wars cannot end, or if one does end another starts. Remember when Obama came into office and was asked what the US mission was in Afghanistan? He replied that he did not know what the mission was and that the mission needed to be defined.

Obama never defined the mission. He renewed the Afghan war without telling us its purpose. Obama cannot tell Americans that the purpose of the war is to build the power and profit of the military/security complex at the expense of American citizens.

This truth doesn’t mean that the objects of American military aggression have escaped without cost. Large numbers of Muslims have been bombed and murdered and their economies and infrastructure ruined, but not in order to extract resources from them.

It is ironic that under the New Empire the citizens of the empire are extracted of their wealth and liberty in order to extract lives from the targeted foreign populations. Just like the bombed and murdered Muslims, the American people are victims of the American empire.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/