I worked in exploration in the oil fields on 5 different continents. There is not "one magic" bullet to solve the problem. However, the United States sits on a vast amount of energy if the government would let us drill and mine it. We have enough energy stores to be totally independent. The following is a list of energy stores available for us to use. The stores are listed in the order of ease of extraction and thus price.
1. Brakken and Eagle Ford shale oil that is extracted via horizontal drilling. Time frame to bring on line is just a few months from drilling to production. This one is easy and most of the infrastructure is in place to do this today. We currently need many more drilling rigs to exploit this. We can build them. In addition there are other source rocks like the Brakken and Eagle Ford in other basins in the United States and for that matter other countries of the world. One problem is our refining capacity. Due to the EPA we have been unable to bring new refineries on line. Thus ironically if we were energy independent it would be necessary to export the oil for refining and then shipped back to the United States as gasoline and diesel etc.
2. Shale gas from the Utica shale,the Barnett shale the Eagle Ford Shale and other basins in the United States. Today the cost of an equal energy value of gas is 1/7 that of an equal amount of energy from oil. To put this in perspective a gallon of gasoline is selling for about $3.00 today excluding tax and profit. The same amount of energy from natural gas is selling for about 50 cents. The reason for this is simple. We have found more damn natural gas than we know what to do with. This natural gas can be converted in liquid fuels suitable for internal combustion engines or we can use it as compressed natural gas to fuel our vehicles. The engineering for this is nothing new and is very simple. It will take considerable infrastructure investment to brink it to market if used as high pressure compressed natural gas. It will also take considerable infrastructure investment to deliver this to market as gasoline. This would involve major refinery changes to go from gas to liquids. Once it is a liquid the normal distribution system is the same because it is now gasoline. However, there are energy losses in the conversion of gas to liquids. Thus the most energy efficient method would be to use high pressure natural gas for the internal combustion engines.
3. Offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, off the East Coast and West Coast of the United States. There is a hell of a lot of oil and gas there but the United States Government has not allowed us to drill much of it.
4. Shale oil from mined deposits in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. There is 200 years worth of oil there. The mining and extraction is easy. The conversion to usable petroleum product takes a lot of energy. We would have a 82% conversion efficiency meaning that of 100 % of the energy value of the product 18 percent went into the mining extraction and conversion of the shale oil to a usable product. See following link for numbers on this and surprisingly these numbers are from the DOE. Scroll down to figure 1 for these valuesDept of Energy document
5. Coal to gas and liquids. We have hundreds of years of coal reserves. From coal we can make, gasoline or use it as a direct fuel in power plants. The original coal powered plants were very dirty. The new plants are clean and efficient. Coal to gas has considerale energy loss in conversion. It take a lot of energy to do this but the energy loss is only 35%. The one thing that nuclear power plants are very good at and very efficient is the production of heat. If nuclear power plants provide the direct heat (no conversion to electricity) the efficiency of coal to liquid and or gases would be very effective.
6. Wind power and Solar Power is here and is available. It can not compete in a free market. It is too damn expensive. If you need to subsidize it, the free market can give you other sources of power cheaper.
7. Nuclear Power I put last for political reasons and not cost or engineering. Nuclear power plants are expensive as hell mostly because of govenment red tape. However, this source of power is actually very cheap and the disposal problems of spent fuel rods is not an engineering problem but a political problem. This form of energy production needs very tight regulation and monitoring. The reality of politics makes this source of energy problamatical. The recent disaster in Japan with their nuclear reactors was a result of poor engineering and lack of government standards. The reasons for the poor engineering was basically the fact that the supervisory function of the government was bought and sold by the operators of the plants.
The solution is engineering and financial. Any nuclear plant must be designed to "FAIL SAfE" if there is no coolent or electrical power to the reactor. The nuclear plants in Japan did not have this. This is not a problem of engineering but a problem of cost. If the producers of nuclear power were totally responsible for any accidents and this responsibility backed by insurance this would never happened. Insurance companies would not insure an instalation with such poor safety engineering.
If global warming is driven by CO2 (it really is not). We are doomed even if the United States did not put one damn molecule of CO2 in the air. China and India have far exceeded us in this department and will continue to put even more CO2 in the air as they become great industrial nations. The reason I mention this is that each and every complaint about increased power from carbon based energy is attacked because of global warming. Global warming has not happened in the last 12 years and the CO2 levels have continued to increase. ???????????????
Great Post!!!!
If the USA is lucky we will swing this terrible pendulum back to the Right and re-grasp the full true meaning of Freedom. If not, then USA2 or the Texas Secession (and like minded States) will be able to prosper with all the resources the Liberals refuse.