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The Debate over Drilling
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  The Bush administration is pressuring Congress to lift a moratorium on offshore oil drilling as a way to allay concerns over fuel costs. Opponents say more drilling would destroy our coastlines and pollute ecosystems, and wouldn't pay off for more than a decade. We'll explore the drilling debate. Guests
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President Bush has repeatedly claimed that new oil refineries are needed to address the gasoline problem, but let's look at the record:
In 1982 when Reagan was in his second year in office and oil was at record highs, the US had 301 refineries according to the US government EIA. In 2001, when Bush took office, the EIA reports that there were 155 refineries. Today after Bush has been in office for seven years, the EIA records 150 refineries. Clearly the oil industry has concluded that fewer refineries, not more, were required, and the industry shutdown and dismantled more than half of them since the peak of 324 in 1980.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/8_na_8o0_nus_ca.htm
Bush and Republicans claim that more of OUR public land must be opened up and more of OUR oil virtually given away so oil companies can reap huge profits on OUR oil. Remember, our government is We the People, so as Woody said, this land is YOUR land and MY land and OUR land.
The oil companies argue that the land they have been leased probably doesn't have oil, as the USGS says. Well, we have two cases that have been researched at length and reported on, tnough not widely discussed that provides some perspective on the transparency of the oil industry.
First, we have the Point Thomson oil leases held for three decadess by now ExxonMobil. That field was identified by the USGS, and placed for leasing in the late 1970s. Exxon won leases on a number of tracts, drilled 7 exploratory wells, and 6 of those wells were certified for production by the Alaska DOI in 1982; Exxon shut in those wells. Over the next three decades, Exxon filed more than two dozen development plans, and then abandoned their own plans. Finally, in response to falling State production, Alaska took steps to revoke those leases held by ExxonMobil, accusing it of "banking the oil reserves" rather than developing the oil. ExxonMobil claims is it actively pursuing plans to develop the field in 2010, but the Alaska DNR commissioner disagrees. Of particular note: the Point Thomson oil leases abut ANWR, so if Point Thomson presents environmental hinderances to development, then the 30 years of no oil production must signal how long ExxonMobil would require to not produce oil in ANWR. A google search will turn up much on this set of leases, but for an official summary, see http://www.dnr.state.ak.us/standard/dsp_media_release.cfm?id=1029&title=...
Another place where the USGS identified oil, and oil in a formation that is not completely under OUR land and thus isn't OUR oil, is the Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota. The geology was identified more than half a century ago, and unversity professors and students studied it and estimated large oil reserves. A USGS geologist studied the field and in paper that were being peer reviewed for professional publication when he died, predicted that oil would be found in a couple of areas. Oil companies acted on his work and found oil in 2001 in Montana, and its development is highest producing new field in the US in decades. Oil companies are aggressively seeking oil in North Dakota based on his USGS research.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation for a sourced discussion.
The USGS has concluded looking at the data, that relatively little additional oil can be added by opening the OCS and ANWR when compared to the undiscovered oil and gas in the Federal land and seas already open to exploration and development. The USGS uses the data from the Federal Minerals Manangement Service, which has published this chart http://www.mms.gov/revaldiv/Chart.htm showing less than 15 billion barrels of oil for the Atlantic and Pacific Federal waters compared to 45 billion for the Gulf of Mexico where many leases were issued during the Clinton administration, including some with zero royalty payments - some oil companies are producing oil from OUR waters and selling OUR oil without paying us a dime in royalties. These tracts of the Gulf of Mexico were leased by the Clinton administration on such favorable terms in order to expand US oil production in anticipation of an oil supply shortfall soon after 2000.
And the exploration did result in new fields being discovered, and reported by the EIA with peaks in 1997 and 2001, reflecting the fruits of those Clinton era leases. See http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/rcrr08nus_1a.htm
I have gone on far too long on this comment, and I could go on longer, but I wanted to point to some of the research that I've done on the question of oil exploration in the US relative to the comments made especially by the Bush admnistration.
I do not see a conspiracy by the oil industry and the Bush administration, but simply economic greed driving a quest for profit. The oil companies are in a bind: every nation but the US and a few other minor oil nations consider their fossil fuels to be a national resource owned by the citizens and these resources are mined to produce the maximum return to the people. In many cases, the oil companies operate as employees of nations, getting paid for the work they do, with the people of the nations reaping all the profits.
The Bush administration is seeking to help US oil companies obtain oil at huge discounts to the prices they must pay the Saudi Arabias and Iraqs and Irans of the world, so the oil companies can reap huge profits. And the rush to give the oil companies leases is to prop up their balance sheets, allowing them to show increases in oil and gas reserves instead of declines.
The bottom line is that the US has little oil left and Persian Gulf states, the Saudis, Iranians, and Iraqis have two-thirds of the world's oil and the can produce it at a fraction of the cost oil in the US can be produced.
So, without going in the detailed facts, my question is "Given facts and the self interests of the oil companies and their desire to get OUR (We the People) oil and gas for dirt cheap prices, how can any claims by Bush, Republicans, or big oil be trusted?"
If people want to save oil/gas, they can drive more slowly. We don't have to change the speed limits. Just changing the signs would probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I recently returned from France where fuel is much more expensive than in the US. The speed limit on the major highways was 78 mph!!! The French are wiser than we are because they drive more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Also, people need to change their habits. There was a workman at my house yesterday for an hour and a half. He left his truck running the whole time because his air conditioner was on. The next time he comes here, I will tell him to turn off his truck or leave my property.
Ken Harvey
After listening to this program and the caller comments, it is clear that "denial" is not just a river in Egypt.
All of our off-shore drilling rigs are old. The people who run them are old and the prospect of obtaining new off-shore rigs and the skilled people to run them is not good.
Even if the outer continental shelf on both US coasts was completely open for drilling the eventual production from these platforms would not replace the production we are losing everywhere else and the eventual decline in world oil exports.
The three major oil exporters to the US are Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. The giant Cantarell complex in Mexico has entered a phase of dramatic depletion. Venezuela is past peak oil production. The US reached peak oil production in 1970 and has been an importer of foreign oil ever since.
World oil production has been pretty flat since 2005 at around 85 million bbl. per day. Demand is now greater than 85 milion bbl. per day so guess what? The price of oil is being bid up and up by everyone who needs it.
The US has 2 percent of world oil reserves, 5 percent of the world human population and uses 25 percent of the world's daily oil production or 20 million bbl. per day. I guarantee you that this situation will not go on for much longer.
Reducing demand for oil in the US and elsewhere will have no net positive effect as long as the world human population continues to grow. Exponential human population growth is the driver for the exponential demand for oil.
The days of happy motoring in America are over. We should be happy that gas is only $4/gal. now. It will get higher in the not too distant future.
The dirty secret in all of this is that the growth economics (politics) of the past two centuries is over due to increasing ecological scarcity of stuff like oil.
We are in a great deal of danger because the political (economic) elites in this country seem determined to keep the economic growth game going as long as they can because they are clueless about what to do next.
Economic growth has been the solution to every social problem this country has faced. Without economic growth our republic will collapse.
My advice is to start stocking up on food, learn to garden and prepare for a century of declines. The party is over. We are on our way to the Olduvai gorge at break-neck speed.
I appreciate and agree with Mr. Wessels depiction of the state of oil supply and demand. I respectfully disagree with his suggestions that the economy, and society, will fall off a cliff as oil supplies tighten. As oil becomes more expensive, I think that we'll adapt (humans are the most adaptable of all species) quite effectively. There are so many energy sources available to take oil's place - nuclear, wind, solar, tides - to name a few of the most obvious. Granted, these are currently more expensive (except for nuclear) than oil, but not that much more. I'm willing to place a large bet that before we allow the "party to be over" we'll make the transition to non-petroleum energy sources, while continuing to grow our economy and improve our standard of living. JR
Sensible people feel that there has to be a solution to the problem of oil depletion. They usually tick off a laundry list of potential non-fossil energy sources and think that in the aggregate these can make up for oil, coal and gas depletion. The problem is it takes energy to get energy. Money has nothing to do with it. You can print all the money you want but you can't print energy.
The net energy derived from oil and coal and gas has historically been high on the positive side but is now declining as the stuff gets harder to find and produce. In other words, it is taking more energy to produce, which means the net energy available from these sources is declining. In the case of gas it will drop off quite suddenly.
I guarantee you that when it takes more that 1 bbl of oil energy equivalent to produce 1 bbl of oil it will soon stop.
Energy sources based on incident solar radiation and variable winds produce small net energy positive values. In other words, they will only contribute small energy surpluses over and above the energy it takes to collect and deliver or store it.
Tidal sources are very site specific and not necessarily near the populations that need the energy. Nuclear power faces a declining supply of U-235 unless we are inclined to pursue Plutonium-based systems based on enriching U-238 to U-239. This would be a very deadly gamble.
We have wasted an enormous amount of fossil energy since WW II building suburbs, strip malls, and highways while neglecting trains and other more energy-efficient forms of transportation. The whole auto industry has been nothing but a flywheel on growth.
I'll take that bet JR. There is no way we can run the interstate highway system, big box retailers, jet air travel and a "Disneyland" culture on used French fry oil and solar energy. We are in for some big changes in our vaunted "standard of living" and our sense of American entitlement.
Frankly, I think we will be lucky if we don't starve to death or get killed in WW III. I think the economic (political) elites are addicted to making money and will not stop at war to secure energy resources if it means keeping the economic growth game going a little longer. Just what was invading Iraq all about anyway?
JR, we are in more trouble that we can possibly imagine. Growing the economy and improving our standard of living are not going to happen. We are already declining economically, we have massive foreign trade deficits, we are saddled with a bloated and mostly useless military-industrial complex, and we have astronomical levels of private and public debt. This house of cards is going to fold. The US has entered the final phase of its empire.
Good luck.
I agree that worldwide oil demand has caught up to supply. That is making oil more expensive, which is the way that markets work. Expensive oil leads us Americans to change our living habits, which I also think is a good thing. I also expect that transportation systems will change, living patterns (such as suburban sprawl) will shift, etc. These shifts are already underway, as we've seen from stories in the NY Times (and other media) about suburbanites moving back to the city, growth in mass transit use, car manufacturers unable to sell SUVs and struggling to keep up with demand for compacts, etc. These changes are not calamities, they are market reactions to higher prices for oil.
On the other hand, while oil is getting expensive, it is not going away any time soon.
Oil producing nations can pump oil at today's rate (in fact, a bit higher) for many decades to come. As prices rise, "sloppy" energy users like the US will cut demand significantly. As I mentioned earlier, the US could maintain a western European standard of living using less than half the oil per capita we do today.
As for other energy sources:
Although I hope that we do not increase our current use of coal, the US has at least a 250 year supply, so we could easily supplant more expensive oil with coal.
We could significantly increase nuclear power production. Scientific American published a study two years ago (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-nuclear-option) showing that the world could triple its nuclear power production over the next 50 years and not risk running out of traditional uranium fuel this century (and if we decide to start decommissioning nuclear warheads, we can go a lot longer than that).
It's true that solar power and wind power are relatively "unconcentrated" energy sources. But they are net-positive energy sources, and the supply is limitless (at least until the sun winks out in a few billion years). As oil ticks up to $200 a barrel, solar and wind will become even more attractive energy sources. We do have to improve storage, so as to be better able to use solar and wind generated electricity for personal transportation, but I am confident that will happen. In fact, given the amount of money to be made by solving the storage challenge, it would be extremely difficult to prevent it from happening.
There were similar Malthusian predictions of (apologies to Michael Stipe) the "end of the world as we know it" back in the 1970s. Back then Americans adapted surprisingly quickly to a significant drop in oil supply and run-up in oil prices. There wasn't mass starvation, and WW III didn't break out. Although even this is not a sure thing, I expect that high oil prices are with us for the foreseeable future. I expect that we Americans are going to have to learn to live like Europeans (which I think is not so bad). And I think that after some kvetching, we will change our habits, cut our use of oil significantly, and see new fortunes made by clever (and profit hungry) entrepreneurs who solve problems like improved batteries and alternative energy generation.
It doesn't seem so bleak to me, at all. I guess that it's a matter of whether or not you think the photovoltaic panel is half-full, or half-empty :)
JR, if the market gods were working, the demand for more oil would create new supplies. This is not happening. The increased demand for oil is just raising prices. Even the Saudis, who were once the "swing producers" of oil to the world can barely muster a promise to produce an additional 200K - 300K bbl. more per day, which is far cry from the time when they had several million bbl/day in spare capacity.
Some people will re-arrange their lives in order to deal with higher energy costs. Those with money and the means will do so, but it is too late to re-direct our entire pattern of land use and development that has existed since the end of WW II. The massive mis-allocation of resources used to create the land devouring and energy wasting suburban edifice is more than can be addressed by having some rich people move back into the cities and buy newer, more fuel efficient cars. People living in the southeast US and the southwest US are the ones who seriously need to think about moving as these areas are going to become unlivable.
There will be oil available for decades to come. But there will be a lot less of it and demand for it will be even greater. By 2030, which is just over 20 years from now, world oil production will decline to 40M bbl/day from its current 85M bbl/day, yet the human population is expected to be about 8 billion. Something is going to give here.
The Japanese and Europeans are much more energy efficient than Americans and there is a reason for this. Japan has no domestic oil production to speak of and is totally dependent on an endless line of oil tankers making their way to the islands. And except for coal in places like Poland and Germany, Europeans are connected to oil and gas pipelines from Russia, which itself has recently peaked in oil production.
With virtually no domestic oil resources, the Japanese and Europeans have been forced to be very efficient in their use of oil. They both have world-class rail systems too, which is totally lacking in the US because a long time ago it was decided that what was good for General Motors was good for the country...Yahoo! is now worth more than GM.
JR, don't be misled by the "250 years of coal" nonsense. You always have to ask at what growth rate? The hard Eastern coal in the US is mostly gone, except for some "mountaintop removal" of coal in places like West Virginia. Western coal is softer and dirtier and is strip-mined by monster machines that use a tremendous amount of electricity.
Electricity in the US is generated by coal (40%), gas (20%), nuclear (20%), with the rest coming from oil, hydro, geothermal and a tiny bit of solar (1%). Gas is in the shortest supply and will drop off first. Oil is getting too expensive to burn to generate electricity, which is also going to cause enormous problems with home heating in New England which is mostly done by oil.
Any increase in the growth of coal use for either electric power generation or coal-to-liquid fuels is going to reduce "the 250 years of coal" to a much lower number. From the estimates I've seen it looks like we have no more than about 75 years worth of coal...not the 250 years that is frequently mentioned in the main stream media.
In Japan and France nuclear power works because their governments are in complete control of the fuel cycle and plant operation. In the US we have an unworkable mix of private plant operation, except for the TVA, and government control of the fuel cycle. It is inefficient and cannot make timely decisions. It takes 5 - 10 years to build a nuclear powered electric generating plant of 1000MW size.
Nuclear power plants also require a lot of concrete and steel, both of which China is sucking up in unbelievable quantities. We would be competing with the Chinese for cement and steel which will make any new nuclear plant more expensive than people are willing to admit. And to this day, we have no "cradle to grave" process for dealing with the fuel cycle. I sort of doubt that many more nuclear plants beyond the 104 plants that exist today will be built and a lot of the current operating plants are nearing the end of their design lifetime for safe operation.
JR, solar does not get cheaper as oil gets more expensive. All of the stuff that goes into making a solar PV device or solar hot water or air collector needs oil, coal and electricity to make it. Since solar energy harvesting devices are not reproducing themselves using the surplus net energy they impound and harvest, the manufacturing processes must be subsidized by other fuels...oil, coal and electricity. Without inexpensive fossil energy sources, which is mostly over with now, you don't get to have "more attractive" solar energy alternatives. Confidence has nothing to do with it and making money even less.
The oil shortages of the 1970s were political. OPEC punished the west for supporting Israel. We've now reached a peak in world oil production which is due to geological/ecological scarcity of the resource base itself. Oil will be in moderate to rapid depletion until we die. As I mentioned, by 2030 we will have half the oil production we do today.
As for starvation...remember that it currently takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of food in this country. The agro-industrial farming system will collapse in this country due to shortages of natural gas for fertilizers and diesel to run tractors and over the road trucks and electricity to pump irrigation water. We are going to need a lot more people working in farming soon using methods not based on cheap fossil fuels or we will starve. No oil = no food, no food = no people.
JR, we're talking about more than the need to change a few wasteful habits . We're talking the need to end the massive resource and energy waste of a market-based, consumer-driven, growth economy. We are going to have to pay people not to consume and to think of something they can do that will help us get through this collapse. The economic elite is already prepared to start wars to secure the resources necessary for economic growth...not much different than Japan and Germany in the 1930s. If this does happen then all bets are off with regard to our continued tenure on this planet.
Tim, I have really enjoyed our online debate. That said, I am skeptical of some of the predictions and points that you make. I also would like to clarify a couple of points that I made that you may have misunderstood.
1. Can you cite sources for your prediction of world oil production falling to 40 billion bbls per year by 2030? I have not seen any well-supported estimates that produce such a number.
2. Although any peaking estimate is imprecise at best, I agree that oil production is peaking now or in the near future. Demand will keep pace, and prices will continue to rise over the next decades. As prices rise, per capita demand will fall. Here in the US that fall will be quick and significant. You and I seem to agree that US energy consumption is very "sloppy", which means that demand is quite elastic. Americans can readily cut their oil consumption in half, in the next 10 years, and I think they will (granted, while bitching and moaning). The average American car gets 22.5 MPG today. This could be doubled with little to no impact on our standard of living, simply by trading in all of those Ford F150s and Chevy Trailblazers for Honda Civics. In fact, this is exactly what is happening now. Demand for SUVs and pickup trucks has fallen 25-30% in one year, and the Honda Civic has supplanted the F150 as the most popular car in America. Not only that, but ridership of mass transit has risen 5-10% in the last 6 months and prices for houses in suburbs far from urban centers have fallen far faster than real estate in and near cities. This isn't happening because we care about global warming, or are worried about suburban sprawl. It's happening because oil is expensive and we don't want to spend so much. Americans are learning that they can cut their oil consumption in half, or even more, and still live quite comfortably. Halving US oil consumption would lessen world oil demand by 10 billion barrels a year. I expect that other developed nations will similarly cut the fat out of their consumption as oil prices rise. Which means that as oil production starts to tail off in the coming decades, demand from developed nations will tail off as well.
3. I did not say that expensive oil made solar cheaper, I said it made it more attractive. Solar kilowatts today are 2-4 times more expensive than fossil fuel kilowatts, but that differential is shrinking (it used to be 5-10X). Yes, the oil to make solar PV cells costs more now than it did a year ago, but that's not slowing production. PV cell production is getting more efficient, and production methods (such as rolled roofing PV panels) are cutting the costs of PV cell production. If your suggestion that it's becoming too expensive to build PV cells was born out in the market, production would be falling. Instead, demand for and production of PV cells is growing rapidly. As the price of oil rises, I think we will develop and install extensive solar power plants. Not just solar PV, but solar concentrators (which are more economically feasible today, see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan).
4. Wind is already competitive with fossil fuels, and we will similarly see massive wind plant investments (check out pickensplan.org, for just one of many examples) in the next decade. Wind and solar technologies mesh well with plug-in hybrids automobiles, which will likely be the most common car type in the US by 2018.
5. The US uses millions of tons of cement and steel per year. We will not be dissuaded (or prevented) from building cement-and-steel nuclear power plants because China also consumes significant amounts of cement and steel. China's consumption of steel has not kept us from building millions of cars and tens of thousands of buildings each year, for which the amount of cement and steel dwarfs that required for a nuclear plant. Nuclear power has its challenges, such as waste recycling and the concerns of an emotional public. Waste recycling will be solved (France produces just 10% of the non-reusable nuclear waste that we do in the US), and public concerns will lessen as oil gets more expensive.
6. I also think you underestimate the power of capitalism - greed, to be blunt. Greed (not altruism for polar bears) is leading us to cut consumption of gas & oil, and greed will lead us to quickly develop the many feasible energy alternatives which were unprofitable when oil was so cheap. We do like our profits. Solar, wind and plug-in hybrids are now or soon will be profitable, because oil is expensive. In addition, we are loathe to give up our standard of living. There is a tremendous amount of money to be made in developing alternatives to fossil fuels that will allow Americans to live well. Many people are going to get rich delivering these alternatives to us.
In sum, I believe that the rise in price of oil will result in free market solutions that will (with some grumbling) allow us to shift our energy consumption, maintain or improve our standard of living, and reduce our impact on the environment. My biggest fear isn't that oil will become more expensive in the next 10 years, but that oil prices will fall back to 2006 levels (because of a drop in demand or a spike in production), and we'll go back to parking our Tahoes in front of our suburban McMansions...JR
I confused days and years in my projections of cuts in US consumption. If Americans cut their consumption in half as prices rise over the next 10-20 years, they will reduce global demand by 10 million barrels per day (not 10 billion per year). 10 million barrels per day works out to 3.65 billion barrels per year...jr
JR...the conversation has been enjoyable.
With regard to oil depletion rates in your previous comments, The Wall Street Journal (1/17/08) published interviews from a group of oil specialists who estimated that oil production from existing (producing) fields will decline from 4.5 to 8.0 percent per year. This works out to a decline of 37 to 56 percent in the next then years or a decline of between 27 to 41 million bbl per day. The German-based Energy Watch Group expects oil production to fall to 39 million bbl per day by 2030. Peak-oil deniers like CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) have a more optimistic prediction, but CERA is now considered to have lost a lot of credibility.
I agree that there is some on-going demand destruction for oil based transportation fuels. But once everyone has eliminated unnecessary travel or car-pooled their way to work there is still a lot of driving people will need to do.
It takes about 20 years to turn over the stock of motor vehicles. Any new vehicles built today will be built with more expensive energy and materials and will cost more not less than what people have come to expect to pay. Vehicles will be smaller, with smaller engines and there will be more hybrids and diesels but the energy it takes to make all of them will cost more and this will be factored into the selling price. The problem is not to figure out how to keep all the cars running in America. It can't be done.
I've been observing solar energy developments since the 1970s and we never seem to get to "nirvana" when it comes to price per kilowatt. I'm not opposed to putting some of our remaining energy resources and materials into producing solar electric, hot-water or hot air collection devices. We just should not kid ourselves that solar electric is going be "cheaper" than base load generated electricity. Domestic hot water heating and space heating are much less sophisticated technologies for the most part and will probably work out to be more affordable than solar electric. But like motor vehicles, these devices will be built with more expensive materials and more expensive energy.
Yeah, I've seen T. Boone on TV promoting his energy plan. There are some really good wind energy sites in the country but wind is unsuitable for base load electricity generation. The net energy potential from wind does look better than solar. Right now you can't buy a commercial wind machine without waiting through a 2-year backlog of orders.
In the absence of an economic collapse, there will be a useful fraction of our electrical energy generated by solar and wind energy converters but they will need to be built from the remaining supplies of fossil energy. I'm not saying don't do it. I am saying it is not a direct trade-off with the way electricity is currently generated. People will have less electricity available to them. Not necessarily a bad thing either.
If access to cement and steel is based on a bidding for those resources, guess who has the cash on-hand to make the deal...not US. China is also buying oil resources or otherwise taking them off the market through long term contracts. We will be left bidding for whatever is available in the market with dollars no one will want. Nuclear power has it challenges...that's putting it mildly. Good luck on that one.
Capitalism and that other great former ism are both are doomed by peak-oil and ecological scarcity. The Soviet Union just happened to go first. We are not far behind in our own collapse. And in the case of the FSU, at least they still had plentiful energy resources with which to "re-invent" themselves. We have no wealth of energy resources and the market will offer us nothing but pain and suffering and death.
JR, I would not worry about oil prices falling enough to bring back the "good old days." They aren't making any more of this stuff at the rate we are using it.
Tim Wessels
The US comprises 5% of the world's population and uses 25% of its oil. Just because we are faced with slightly higher gas & oil prices (still much lower than in Europe and Japan) is no reason to abandon the limits we wisely placed on drilling in sensitive wilderness and offshore areas. Western Europeans consume less than half the petroleum per capita that we do, and they have equal or higher standards of living (and as a result, the Euro is much stronger than the dollar). It's not just oil imports that have hurt us economically, strategically and environmentally, it's unrestrained oil consumption. It will be a bit painful over the next few years for us to cut our oil consumption, but we know deep down that that's what we need to do. Instead of drilling willy-nilly we should focus on reducing our petroleum consumption by (at least) half. Doing so will generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and many new technologies. It will improve our global economic competitiveness. It will cut imports significantly. And, it will benefit the environment for our children and their children. Certainly we have the drive and the imagination to develop an energy policy that's more than "drill, pump and import". JR