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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (14978)	7/15/2007 1:45:25 AM
From: mistermj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

Oil Is A Necessity, Not An 'Addiction' INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 7/12/2007 Oil: The same week the International Energy Agency projects a global oil supply crisis is nigh, a prominent blog claims the U.S. is "addicted" to oil. The former is a compelling argument to drill more, the latter irrelevant. In its Medium-Term Oil Market Report, the IEA, which advises Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development nations on energy issues, doesn't necessarily claim that world crude production has or will soon reach a top. It simply says production will not keep up with demand if both continue at the rates the organization is expecting. "Either we need to have more supplies coming on stream or we need to have lower demand growth," explained Lawrence Eagles, head of the IEA's oil markets analysis. "It's important that we have more investment and a greater emphasis on energy efficiency." Conservation is fine as long as it isn't mandated by a meddling government. But pumping more oil, one of the cheapest, most efficient and reliable sources of energy in history, is the best way to avoid the predicted crunch. And the oil is there. Thirty-five years ago, experts reckoned that known crude reserves could keep up with the rate of production for 35 years. But by 2003, despite 31 years of accelerating oil extraction, they estimated that known reserves could keep pace with production for another 40 years. Given the technological advances in finding and extracting oil, how far with that "life index" of oil reserves be another 30 years from now? The point is, crude is available and will be for some time. It's available, for example, in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve — enough to add 1.4 million barrels a day and cut our imports by 10% or more. It's also available just off our coasts — 85.8 billion barrels of it, or a quarter-century's worth of imports. We just have to get it. But that, of course, isn't so easy, not with Congress obstructing efforts to access our own reserves. Democrats and too many Republicans have shown an unwillingness to realistically address our energy needs through their resistance to expanding domestic sources. Nor is it easy when a cartel, such as OPEC, restricts crude output. Some OPEC members pleaded innocence Wednesday and blamed high oil prices on refinery capacity and politics. But refinery capacity affects the prices of refined products more than crude. Crude prices are mainly a function of the amount of oil pumped from the ground and demand, and they have been rolling upward all year to near nominal records. This is not to say that increased refinery capacity won't help. It would. But to avoid a crunch, oil wells and refineries need to be running at their peaks, untapped sources have to be brought online and new fields have to be found. Pajamasmedia.com would say those needs constitute an "addiction." But that's silly. Are we dependent on oil? Yes. We can't have an economy at any level — local, national, global — without it. It drives our cars, transport trucks, airliners and ships. It lights our homes, businesses and factories. It's a raw input in the manufacture of products as varied as plastic, roads, tires, fertilizers and the ink used to print this newspaper. Without it, we'd have trouble building and maintaining the infrastructure of a modern economy. We need oil, but we are not addicted to it. We'd be glad to switch to another source to power human progress. But until the market comes up with something as affordable and efficient, we have little choice but to keep drilling, refining and burning. investors.com