Oil: The Ball Bearing of Industry

Nothing moves without it and without it nothing will move. 

All the solar and wind power in the world isn't going heat your house or keep your air conditioner going all day, all week, all month or all year.  Oil is still the biggest bang for the buck and the world is awash in oil. It's cleaner to store, is transportable and if we need more, it's just right under foot.

Petroleum products are in everything. They grease the gears in wind turbines, they are what electric cars ride on in the form of roads and rubber tires, coat the wires that carry the current, insulate the power supplies and make up the hoses that the coolant passes through from the engine to the radiator. Oil is what makes everything go and to deny this fact is to merely delude yourself. While it's good to save money and to become more efficient, to waste resources on less efficient means of energy production and passing the higher costs onto the consumer weakens the nation and hurts those less able to afford to pay.

This is why rather than sink all this government money into subsidizing alternate forms of energy, taxpayer money I might add, the nation could just as well have put that money into making engines that run on gasoline and diesel more efficient. Since what was the point of alternative energy? It was supposed to help us burn less oil and have less emissions. So if there was an engine, say, that could run 100 miles on a gallon of gasoline instead of it's current 34 miles per gallon, would that not do the same thing? By making oil more efficient would we not require less of it? 

But that doesn't fit into the current blind hate narrative. We HATE oil even though it's in everything and along with it's immature cousin, Coal, is actually what makes the world go around. We would rather have more costly and less reliable wind and solar power and store that power in expensive and massive acid-based batteries for when the wind either doesn't blow or blows too much or when the sun doesn't come out for days. We just want to get rid of fossil fuels!

But it's not going to happen no matter how good this pipe dream makes you feel. It's not making the world any cleaner, safer or more secure. 

Feel good about your electric car? Where does that electricity come from? Hint: Not from a wind turbine! With the more electricity an electric car needs, some guy in a power plant up the road is only going to throw another shovel full of coal into the furnace that runs the turbines. What did you think, that electricity came from an electric-powered power plant?

We've wasted a great opportunity to put the resources into oil efficiency. With all the dough we've already wasted with so little to show for it, we could have funded an oil based Manhattan Project. Who knows what that could have achieved?  But because of politics, this did not/will not happen. Making oil more efficient doesn't even come up in environmental conversation. 

But Oil isn't really the target in all of this nonsense now is it? 

It is industry and the Capitalist mentality that drives industry that is the real target. The environmental movement, Socialist in nature, hopes to control the means of production by regulating what type of power that drives it. The political wing of environmentalism wishes to tell you what power to use, what kind of car you can drive and what kind of power you'll use to drive your business. 

If a manufacturer came out tomorrow and said they could make a production gasoline engine that could get 200 miles per gallon of gasoline, how would you think the environmental movement would react? or perhaps a generator that could power your house all day on just a gallon of diesel? 

Would the environmentalists embrace such dramatic monumental discoveries? 

I'll put my money on an emphatic "no" since it would set back the environmental "movement" if you want to call it that, back a half century.  I think they would attempt to suppress it and claim that it was a concerted effort by Capitalists to discredit their work to "Save the Planet" and that they should still be allowed to continue to explore alternate energies and keep their government funding. Oil and gasoline will still continue to be evil. 

We have yet to wring nearly as much energy out of an oil molecule as lies within it. It would be money better spent to get more out of the most reliable source of energy that we have. 

But that would make sense.  

Obama a Luddite on Keystone Pipeline

It’s only progress when Obama’s contributors can profit. If it’s profit for anybody else, well, we must all reflect and study the issue…for six years and going.

When the government was passing out, and losing in the process, Billions of U.S. Taxpayer dollars in “loans” to manufacturers of solar panels and other so called Green Technology, all with a dubious rate of return in the marketplace to begin with, well this was “moving forward” in America.

But when there is a project with an actual demand in the marketplace and a verifiable rate of return on the investment such as the Keystone pipeline, well that's a horse of a differerent color to our Leftist president.

President Obama’s arguments against the pipeline were always spurious but today appear downright laughable. That the pipeline would benefit Canada and overseas markets, but not the U.S.A.  As if we would only be doing Canada a favor by building this without any net gain to the builders. I believe their would be a slight charge for the use of the pipeline, Mr. President. 

Then there are jobs. Not just the jobs to build the pipeline but the jobs to maintain it. There will be added refinery jobs since the oil will need to be refined where it comes out of the pipe. That means Texas, U.S.A.  The estimated cost of the Keystone pipeline at $ 7 Billion, to put things into perspective, would be half the total cost of Boston’s Big Dig Central Artery project that squandered $ 14 Billion federal tax dollars by putting, basically, the highway cutting the city in half, underground. They didn’t even widen the road or put in a commuter rail and the land freed up for development has remained underdeveloped and has not returned dime one back to the Federal Government.

I heard a knee slapper of an stupid comment about the pipeline on that bastion of Democratic Socialism, Bloomberg Radio about how the country today is almost literally awash in oil so why do we need a pipeline now? Even to a feverish follower of all things Left, this has to sound very short sighted. Six years ago was the time to build this pipeline, not six years from now and need anybody need reminding that back in 1972 the nation had plenty of oil coming into the country…right up until the Saudis pulled the plug.

This leads me to an argument for the pipeline I haven’t heard yet. That the oil will be flowing in these United States. What a novel idea! You mean, we get to handle the oil in this country? Why didn’t anybody think of that before? Of course, in an age long since passed in this country, we did. We called the idea "Energy Independence". Now where have I heard that term lately?

Having control of the means of power production is something every nation would desire. It’s a matter of long-term security and national survival. Who wouldn’t want this?

Obama doesn’t.

There’s nothing for the president or his cronies in having a pipeline actually produce jobs and opportunity in any region of the country that Mr. Obama and the Central Planners hadn’t put forth themselves. It wasn't his idea and I'm sure it doesn't sit well with one group of Mr. Obama's staunchest allies, the Leftist Greens.

As we have seen yet again, the Central Planners do not pick what the market will bring the people but the people will demand and The Market will deliver.

Even as solar and wind have failed to provide the needed power for future development, and as the government marches against coal and condemns Fracking even as the later has put the United States on a more secure path to energy stability and the people in the U.S. are just now reaping it's rewards of lower gas prices which benefit the lowest income stata more than any other, something has to come into the picture to put the wind back into the sails of the U.S. economy and to shore up the still very much open-ended issue of powering the nation into the future.

What will it be Mr. President?