I included the comment about biofuel affecting food supplies knowing and agreeing with your statement. However, the current state of biofuel does affect food supplies. A lawn clipping conversion program would be more efficient than what we have going right now.
We currently hold 700 million gallons of oil in our reserve here in the United States. The entire point of the reserve is to keep oil shortages from destroying our economy and in case we have to go to war. You state oil shortages of .5 to 1 million daily would raise oil prices drastically and cause collapse. This is the just the government controlled one. There is total in private and public emergency reserves of over 4 billion barrels, 1.5 billion being government controlled reserves. While I absolutely agree than a 1 million barrel a day shortage would cripple the world, I think you are discounting there is a wide safety net at this time that would cushion the prices for a long time while gradually allowing the prices to rise. How long? 4 billion/1 million is 4000. That is a decade. Of course the oil won't go from no shortage to 1 million barrels a day shortage. Even if we stopped being able to produce enough oil to meet the world demand today, it would be a slow drop in production. The SPR(US reserve) is enough to stabilize oil prices for decades on its own if used correctly.
I am not against alternative energies but raising the price of oil causes economic hardships. Opening ANWR or some of the coastal areas and devoting the hundreds of billions of dollars that the government would make from it to alternative energies would be a better idea. This will give us the ability to keep oil prices stable for the next 50 years, not destroy our economy, and still fund alternative energy. All this while keeping money in America instead of shipping it to the Middle East.
I am for alternative energy, but the simple fact is we depend and will depend on fossil fuels for this century.
I could accept raising taxes on fuel if the government decreased income taxes, both are wrong in my opinion, but at least a fuel tax is far and consistent. I imagine the government would give people a 'gas tax credit' or something if they did raise fuel.
How much would gas need to cost to promote alternative energies?
Other non-IEA countries have begun creating their own strategic petroleum reserves, with China being the largest of these new reserves. Since current consumption levels are neighboring 0.1 billion barrels (16,000,000 m[SUP]
3[/SUP]) per day, in the case of a dramatic worldwide drop in oil field output as suggested by some
peak oil analysts, the strategic petroleum reserves are unlikely to last for more than a few months.
a brl = 42 gallons and crude yields between 20 and 35 percent gasoline. U.S. strategic reserve is in crude, about 250 million gallons of refined gasoline. We burn about 400 million gallons per day. Now if you think that foreign reserves or private reserves will ever be used to "top off" U.S. supplies then we have a different discussion. If you think that those reserves will be used to round out semi-perminant shortfalls in global supplies without gouging, hedging and delays then you have not much watched the price of gas vs the price of oil vs supply and demand in this country alone.
So far as your projection that we would never suffer an "instant" shortage, we have seen this before when the OPEC nations precipitated an artificial shortage and it wasn't pleasant. I have been talking about the difference between production and capacity in large oil fields. All fields are judged as to how fast a draw down or true production level vs capacity - the absolute total yield over time. Oil fields are not like bathtubs where we can simply suck as much as we like at any rate we like, over a certain production level the field itself begins to suffer irrepairable damage with that abolute yield suffering as a result. This optimum level changes over time and often drops precipitously when the field is middle aged. The North Slope fields were well managed but the reduction in production is not a gradual slope. Mismanaged fields are even more cliff like. (I am working from memory and can't recall the names of the fields but if you wish I will find my texts) There is a notable Chinese field that was so mismanaged and failed long before the maximum yield was reached.
you saying that rasiing the price of fuel will cause hardship but an uncontroled, left to the gyrations of a global marketplace price will not only cause the same hardship but be perpetualy unpredictable. It is far wiser to create artificial price hikes and (attempt) to put the revenue to good use than allow speculators and energy producers to hold the global economy hostage while we struggle through crisis after crisis hoping for that magic silver bullet of a technological answer.
ANWAR is not an answer, much as those on the right wish to believe, nor is the Baken deposit, nor even all of the realitively new finds in the gulf. As I have said, the Saudi fields are a hundred miles by 25 or more - this is a now rather easily discovered mass and after 100 years of prospecting with high technology methods, we have never found another. Barring deposits at the poles and perhaps under politicaly charged regions, there are no more super deposits. The poles and those other regions present their own challenge.
I may have mentioned that there was a recent find that was considered large in Mexico of an estimated 13 billion brls given an unlimited production potential (which would never happen - Mexico is quite careful with its reserves), the world would use that up in about 150 days (Global consumption of 87 million brls per day). We don't find deposits like that every 150 days.
The point here is not reserves proven or otherwise but production poetential. Production potential is how much we can actually produce without destroying fields.
You are still presuming that we have 50 years worth of oil let alone 50 years worth of sustainable production adequate to meet our needs - we do not.
My estimate currently is that we would need to raise the price of gasoline about 2 dollars a gallon in order to encourage the ongoing and profitable production of bio fuel.
Sounds like a lot but the alternative is far more dire.
