The Tennessean
By Gerry Calhoun
Published: August 30, 2008
Current energy proposals present a grab-bag of both constructive and destructive suggestions. Optimistic, fact-based ideas include drilling offshore, opening ANWR, and enlarging activity in federal lands from New Mexico to Montana. A cry goes up, "We can't drill our way out," to which I reply that we need every source of energy our ingenuity can create. The domestic oil industry has recovered from a 15-year depression and is now drilling new wells at rates not seen since 1983.
Advances in safety have leaped. Despite the double blow of Katrina-Rita, minuscule amounts of oil were spilled. In fact, spills onshore in rivers and lakes inject 30 times more oil into the ocean than all offshore drilling and production activity.
The pictures you see of ANWR are actually taken 200 miles inland from Area 1002, the proposed drilling area. Porcupine caribou calving there occurs some 10 miles from prospective production. Recent estimates indicate that of the 3,600-square-mile area, less than four square miles would involve actual drill sites. Area 1002 is a barren ice sheet for nine months of the year and for the other three months is a flat, melt-pond swamp with visibility limited to one-half-mile by mosquitoes.
Those who decry the millions of leased but undrilled Bureau of Land Management acreage in the West betray their fact-starved perception of actual field conditions. Many oil and gas prospects cover a dozen square miles, but the BLM allows competitive bidding on only small tracts spread over several years. Breakthroughs in treating the kerogen called "oil shale" could reduce the cost of mobilizing and refining this oil precursor in situ. This deposit may contain more oil than the world has produced to date. The next bill passed should rescind the shale ban.
Renewable biofuels offer potential, especially if biodiesel from rendering plants can achieve profitability. Yet ethanol has environmental and efficiency problems that would require a separate article to enumerate. Wind and solar have their place in the energy mix but lack dependability. Wave power, commercially available in Europe, can provide dependable power along the coasts and deserves federal simulation.
Nuclear power, despite irrational, knee-jerk fears, is now a valid power source. Sixteen new plants are under construction around the world. France uses nuclear for 70 percent of its electricity. Coal provides 48 percent of our electrical energy. Carbon capture and sequestration can remove CO2 from flue gases and permanently store it in deep geologic formations. We may never replace coal in our energy mix, so legislation is needed to expedite CCS use.
All our ingenuity must focus on both short-term as well as permanent solutions to energy problems, buttressed by a rational national policy.
For original article, click here.