What will save our bacon on energy? With no comprehensive energy policy in this country for the past 35 years, what will keep us from shutting down the country for lack of energy?
Will it be solar? No, solar will play a role, but a small role. Wind, again, a role,but a small role. Will the billions we have plowed into scientific research finally pay off? Maybe, but it’s like betting on a 50:1 long shot at the track. Nuclear, no, it could have been but we rejected it for questionable reasons. By the time we get back in the business, it may be too late. Algae, no, there have efforts for 20 years but it’s not cost effective. Biomass, again, it’s not commercially viable.
It’s happening right now before your very eyes. But, few, if any of your are aware of what’s happening. The savior is not Barack Obama, the worst enemy the energy industry has ever seen, it’s not the DOE with it’s $30 billion a year budget, it’s not the ethanol industry that turns your tax dollars into expensive inefficient energy and high food prices, it’s the villanist oil industry. The straw man that all presidents since Nixon have blamed for our energy problems.
The US oil industry has the best technology in the world for finding and producing oil. They have spent billions in R&D to develop the state of the world technology to use computers to find where the oil exists, and new technology to tap that oil in the most hostile environments.
When producing wells in the US began to dry up the oil industry learned to inject CO2 into the wells to extract the dregs. Computers show the geology below the earth and sea and find oil opportunities that reduce the risk of drilling billion dollar dry wells. Horizontal drilling allows one hole to tap several sources of oil. Fraccing, or injecting water and chemicals under intense pressure can penetrate rock that a drill won’t touch.
All of this technology has enabled the industry to find and produce natural gas in the lower 48 that was not commercially available with conventional means. Ultimately, this natural gas will produce electricity and transportation fuels that we will need in the next decade. We could be using more of it now were it not for the blind stupidity of politicians who are putting their bets on electric cars and trucks. Of course, we won’t be able to use our vast resources of coal to produce this electricity and we will run short of electricity unless we produce it with natural gas.
Yesterday, I wrote about the Bakken Formation. If you look at the charts you can see what horizontal drilling and fraccing have done to increase production from those fields. Apply this technology to all of our reserves of oil in this country, even setting aside the stupidity of those we restrict from drilling like offshore and Alaska and we will keep producing more domestic crude despite the oil companies having both hands and one leg tied behind their backs by the environmentalists and politicians.
So, raise a glass to Exxon. They will offset the inane stupidity of Washington and when we get cut off from foreign crude one day soon, we will be able to survive. Just think if all those billions of your tax dollars had not been wasted on chasing bad ideas, and had been used to augment the technology the oil industry has developed, how far down the road we would be. If you question this, look at Mexico. Their fields are dying up. Their government run oil industry has developed zero technology and is begging Exxon to come down and help find new oil. But, their government refused to pay them fairly to do that. Soon, Mexico will be running on empty.
Without the oil industry, so will America.