Over at Flopping Aces, the team has a nice summary of the current energy (Gasoline) situation. I cannot find fault with any of their points. If this country had taken action at any point in the last 8-10 years we would not be in our current situation. I have been saying this to anyone that will listen for the last 4 or 5 years.
Face it, there are a lot of new approaches to the way that we use petroleum, and petroleum products. It is a finite resource, and a lot of treasure is being spent to find alternatives. It will take a significant amount of time for those alternatives to be commercially viable, meet government safety standards, and then have the infrastructure built to service them. Take hydrogen as an example. Huge potential, tough to make commercially viable. Right now it takes more energy to produce Hydrogen than it produces (at lot like ethanol). Once the technology to use Hydrogen is incorporated into available vehicles, it has to be produced. New “refineries” will be necessary to produce the fuel. Then all the gasoline terminals will need to either be switched over to Hydrogen or new terminals constructed. Tanker trucks will need to be designed and produced to distribute the fuel from the terminals to the newly designed and built fuel stations. Then consumers will need to be trained to use the fueling stations. Alternatively you could look at liquid hydrogen pipelines from the production facility to storage to retail fueling stations. I don’t know about you but, I would be a bit aprehensive of a hydrogen pipeline running beneath the streets in my neighborhood, although as a culture we seem to be pretty comfortable with NG pipelines so maybe I am over reacting.
In any case go read this post at flopping aces. Here is a quick taste…
A study by the Rand Corporation estimates the sedimentary rock in the corner where Utah borders Colorado and Wyoming holds about 800 billion barrels. That’s three times the size of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves.
Go read the rest.