Sunday, August 10, 2008

"But wait! Call now and...

...your order will be shipped in only ten years!"

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Today's 'must read'. They know a thing or two about oil in Texas.

What amazes me is how no one ever wants to discuss how to cut back on our energy use without affecting our lifestyle. Instead, the conversation is always the same: Drill more, drill now, drill here – and by the way, let’s never be dependent on foreign oil again.

Dream on.

First, what do we really mean when we say that we want to stop our dependence on foreign oil? Does anyone really care that we get millions of barrels of oil a day from Canada? After all, that qualifies as foreign oil; and just last week ConocoPhillips announced a $7 billion pipeline project to bring even more Canadian oil to U.S. refineries as far south as the Gulf Coast. Alternatively, does anyone really care that we receive oil from Mexico? Probably not.

Basically, when there is some public outcry that we should quit importing foreign oil, that’s really code for "We should quit importing Middle Eastern oil. And just for fun, let’s stop importing oil from Venezuela too."

Lately we’ve heard plenty of pundits screaming that we should be drilling as many likely locations for new oil supplies as we can in the Gulf of Mexico. However, locating those oil hot spots requires a specific type of oil-drilling ship. As of this week, not only are all of those oil ships spoken for, but if you ordered a brand new one today you might be able to take delivery of it in 2012 – 13. They’ve all been presold until then. So, should you stumble upon a huge new oil field 30,000 feet under the Gulf, realistically it might be somewhere around 2016-17 before your local refinery could turn its contents into gasoline.

I think we should tow Saudi Arabia just off the coast of Florida and sink it. The water's shallow enough there that we could pump our new offshore oil with one section of pipe per well, already-in-place Chinese pipe if you believe that bullshit, and the Cubans could walk here safely. That's not much more fantastical of an idea than what the pols are spouting these days, and the drones are lapping it up.

Please read the rest of the article.

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