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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quehubo who wrote (96144)	4/24/2003 9:19:06 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Alberta tar sands have a big problem. North America is facing a massive shortage of natural gas which is used to heat up the tar to extract it. There is quite a bit of oil available in the ANWR area of Alaska, perhaps Jacob will give us his opinion on oil development in his state. I would imagine that extracting oil from tars sands would have some significant environmental drawbacks. Probably more severe than drilling in ANWR. Seems more like strip mining to me.

To: quehubo who wrote (96144)	4/25/2003 1:33:15 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

Alberta vs. Iraq oil: <I expect the idea of maintaining a limited low visibility security force there (in Iraq) will be the path taken.> That will be the path attempted. Success depends critically on the Iraqis allowing it. Will they? Lots of pitfalls, lots of skills required, military/political/cultural/economic, skills we may or may not have. It's a long way away, in a part of the world we aren't liked very much. On the other hand, getting our energy from Alberta, that's a friendly close part of the planet, and it takes mainly technological, organizational, financing skills, which are our strong points. As opposed to winning a HeartsAndMinds campaign against Shiite clerics in their homeland, which is not a "core competence" of America. You are right, it's a big project. But the oil is there. And it's a proven technology. Almost 1 million barrels/day currently being produced; current plants committed to, will bring that to 1.8 mb/d by 2010. Could be expanded to just about any amount wanted, the supply is effectively infinite. Yes, a lot of natural gas is needed, and the obvious new big fields are just to the North, in NW Canada and N Alaska. Yes, it's strip mining, makes a mess of the landscape. When they're done, they dump all the tailings and overburden back in the pit, cover it with soil, and the forest grows back, eventually. Sure, it'll cost money, to develop. So do all big energy projects. No matter where we get our oil, we'll spend a lot of money. It's safer and more secure, than spending the money on a Global Reach military, and on ME elites. There is an environmental tradeoff here, in deciding to develop a local secure energy source in the NW part of the continent. We could mitigate that tradeoff, by having a lot more energy-efficient cars, houses, and appliances. 2 ways to do that: 1. legislate efficiency standards 2. tax energy use, with offsetting tax decreases elsewhere so it's revenue neutral. simply upgrading the quality of replacement tires to match that of tires that come as standard equipment on new cars would save 5.4 billion barrels of oil over the next 50 years -- 70 percent more than the total amount of oil likely to be recovered from the Arctic Refuge over the same period. Updating fuel efficiency standards to reflect the capabilities of modern technology would produce even greater savings. Increasing fuel efficiency standards for new passenger vehicles to an average of 39 miles per gallon over the next decade would save 51 billion barrels of oil over the next 50 years -- more than 15 times the likely yield from the Arctic Refuge nrdc.org ...between 1975 and 2001, manufacturers developed a new generation of energy-efficient refrigerators that consumed 75 percent less electricity than ones built before, saving 60,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity and reducing power plant emissions. Constructing power plants to produce this 60,000 MW would have cost $50 billion, compared to the refrigerator industry’s investment of less than $1 billion to produce these more efficient refrigerators. Similar advances have been achieved with clothes washers, windows, fluorescent lighting, and heating and air conditioning systems. nrdc.org If it means we fight one less war, I'll accept ANWR/Yukon oil development, oil and gas pipelines south through Alberta, and strip-mining in Alberta.