More Good News

Being a liberal Democrat must be really tough these days. As a Party member you are required to see gloom and doom everywhere. Iraq’s a disaster. The environment is a mess. Global warming is killing the Earth’s biosphere. Racism and chauvinism are rampant. The economy is in trouble. We’re running out of oil.

Au contraire, mes cheres! In “An Earth Day to Rejoice” (5/1/05) I exploded the myth of environmental gloom. In “Hollywood Warming” (2/11), “Mike Crichton Rocks” (2/12), and “Global Warming Debate” (2/15) I debunked the hysteria about global warming. Now let’s take a look at oil and energy.

Following are excerpts from a debate between Peter W. Huber, co-author of "The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy," and Paul Roberts, author of " The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World."

Roberts recites the liberal dogma: “We're definitely headed for a shortage of cheap energy. Despite the assurances of OPEC, oil is getting harder to find. Today's high prices aren't short-term. Optimists insist that rising energy prices will bring on alternatives, like hydrogen or solar. But these technologies are decades from being economically viable — and won't be without a fundamental shift in the way we reward, and punish, energy decisions.”

Huber responds with facts: “Humanity currently consumes almost 70 BBOEs (billion barrels of oil or equivalents) every year, about half of it oil, half other stuff. That's hardly a drop out of the planetary bucket. The U.S. has 1,000 BBOEs of coal in the ground, and even more uranium. Tar sands in Alberta, Canada, and Venezuela hold more than 3,000 BBOEs. We already know how to tap these vast resources, and our technology keeps improving. If we choose, we can economically dig, dam, pump and purify all the energy we like.”

Roberts falls back on environmental concerns: “Tar sands and heavy oil are plentiful, but they're larded with carbon. While we can remove the carbon in a laboratory, doing so on a global scale would require a system bigger than the world's steel and iron industries combined. Can the market build this system? Yes, but only if we provide the right incentive, making carbon a cost rather than a freebie.”

Huber: “Paul, you don't foresee shortage. You want to create it — with a new carbon tax. Congress won't touch your carbon tax because most Americans hate the idea. Meanwhile, Canada and Venezuela are already producing a million barrels a day of tar-sand oil, for under $15 a barrel, and they can expand production indefinitely. They will. And efficiency, sad to say, just doesn't curb consumption. Per unit of energy used, we produce twice as much gross domestic product today as we did in 1950s — and consume three times as much energy.”

Roberts: “No serious player says efficiency is the solution. But suppose we combined the tax with a serious research and development push for technology that lets us de-carbonize — and thus rehabilitate — coal?”

Huber: “Anti-nuclear greens did far more for coal than Congress ever did. Since 1980, we've boosted nuclear output enough to displace 200 million tons of coal a year. It would have been 600 million tons if we'd finished building the plants in the pipeline. China now leads the world in developing next-generation pebble-bed reactors.”

Roberts: “Yes, nukes have been demonized by the left, which refuses to acknowledge advances in reactor design. Yes, given future electricity demand, no option should be ignored, especially a zero-emission one like nuclear.”

Huber: “The next energy economy is electricity. Electricity has met more than 80% of the growth in U.S. energy demand since 1980. It now fuels more than 60% of our GDP. Even with modest battery packs, hybrid cars will soon power shorter trips off the grid too. Expensive oil hasn't tanked the economy because power plants don't burn it. Only two fuels can supply limitless, cheap power today: coal and uranium. We've got lots of both.”

“We consume about 7 billion barrels of oil a year and 11 BBOEs of coal, gas, uranium and hydroelectric power. More than 80% of the total comes from North America. The U.S., Canada and Mexico provide about 60% of our oil. Electrification is shifting demand to the not-oil side of the ledger, where coal and uranium supplies are essentially unlimited. Oil markets are unstable because unstable governments control the cheapest oil — but Alberta's tar contains far more oil than Arabia's sand.”

It seems that the energy question is not all gloom and doom after all. In fact, “we’re running into oil, rather than out of it.” Since 1971, over 1.5 Trillion barrels of oil have been added to our known oil reserves while 0.8 Trillion barrels have been consumed. (The Economist, “The bottomless beer mug,” 4/30/05) Technological advances have increased recovery rates from oil fields from 20% in the 1980’s to 35% today, and we’re still leaving 65% in the ground. Technology has also improved the success rate of oil discovery from 18% twenty five years ago to 67% today.

The only threats to an energy plentiful future: Discontinue research and technology and let the environmental extremists (Democrats) dictate our energy policy.