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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (579)	7/6/2008 10:01:35 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

If 21 mbpd is 25% of the market, then 84 mbpd is 100%. Off the top of my head, I believe you'll find world crude usage is a little higher than 84M bpd. Try 85-87. US usage is now down to about 20M. Thus the 25% is a bit high. Close though. If we doubled the US fleet mpg, then we'd put 7 mbpd of oil back on the market. That's 8.75% of the world's market, which would have a very large impact on prices indeed. Yes, the math is approximately accurate. Trouble is, it would take years to double our fleet average. Cars now on the road will stay there till they wear out and everyone isn't going to buy a car twice as efficient as the last one they owned. The govt can't snap its fingers and command the vehicle fleet to have double the mileage just like that. Meanwhile Chinese and Indian and other consumption is going up and would likely offset that 7M bpd. China has increased their vehicle fleet from about 5M to 35M vehicles over the past decade and its still rising fast. By the time we've conserved 7M bpd, China etc will be using that much more plus. Well, ANWR would give us 1-2 mbpd and drilling offshore would give us another 1-2 mbpd. Combined that's 2-4 mbpd more oil, which equates to 2-5% of the world's market. That's less than if we focused on increasing the gas mileage of American cars. Is it hard to do? Not really, considering that Europe average 44 mpg for their fleet of cars, versus our 25 mpg average. Its a false assertion to think we have to choose between ANWR and OCS and conservation. Thats a point you guys don't seem to get. You also seem to have a magical faith in the governments power to quickly remake the countries vehicle fleet. You guys also don't recognize our vehicle fleet will get more efficient all by itself as buyers choose more efficient cars. People respond to prices. The reason Europe's cars get better mileage than ours is mostly due to the fact fuel prices have been higher there for many years. You seem to think conservation is a matter of the government commanding it. The US has simply not planned for the diversification of our energy supplies and we're now paying the price. Continuing to remain dependent on oil as our only major energy source is absolute folly. And a lot of our non-diversification is due to green opposition to nuclear power. As you know we haven't been building very many new nuke plants for the past few decades. Also green opposition is now getting coal power plants canceled. If you want a more diverse energy system, don't elect politicians like Harry Reid.