Another Destructive Myth Exposed

The Oil Addiction Myth

Posted By William Yeatman On December 12, 2008 @ 9:32 am
Every day some pundit, politician, activist, business leader, or academic claims that America’s “oil addiction” endangers U.S. national security and, indeed, the habitability of our planet. Champions of this message now include defense intellectuals, who have joined forces with global warming campaigners to demand new taxes or regulations on fossil energy use.

How refreshing, therefore, to find that not everybody in the Pentagon buys this message! A new report by the Joint Forces Command (The Joint Operating Environment 2008: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force [1], November 25, 2008) presents a very different perspective.

In a nutshell, the JFC report argues that the performance of the global economy will be the most important factor affecting international stability and national security in the coming decades, and that sustained economic growth will require accelerating oil production both domestically and worldwide.

One point the JFC makes repeatedly is that globalization fosters expectations that only a strong global economy can meet. By dashing expectations, a weak global economy sets the stage for violence within and among nations:

Serious violence, resulting from economic trends, has almost invariably arisen where economic and political systems have failed to meet rising expectations … Thus, the real danger in a globalized world, where even the poorest have access to pictures and media portrayals of the developed world, lies in a reversal or halt to global prosperity. Such a possibility would lead individuals and nations to scramble for a greater share of shrinking wealth and resources, as occurred in the 1930s with the rise of Nazi Germany in Europe and Japan’s “co-prosperity sphere” in Asia. [Page 15]

The JFC also clearly affirms the dependence of U.S. military power on the health of the U.S. and global economies:

A central component of America’s global military posture is its massive economic power. This power is predicated on a financially-viable, globally connected domestic economy. Should this central feature of American power be weakened, it is highly likely that military capabilities will be diminished or otherwise degraded as a result. [Page 16]

JFC then argues that maintaining U.S. and global economic growth critically depend on increasing oil production:

To meet even the conservative growth rates posited above [2.5% growth for the developed world and 4.5% for developing countries], global energy production would need to rise by 1.3% per year. By the 2030s, demand would be nearly 50% greater than today. To meet that demand, even assuming more effective conservation measures, the world would need to add roughly the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s current energy production every seven years. [Page 16]

The JFC indicates that our real oil problem is largely self-inflicted:

New sources (Caspian Sea, Brazil, Colombia, and new portions of Alaska and the Continental Shelf) could offset declining production in mature fields over the course of the next quarter century. But without drilling in currently excluded areas, they will add little additional capacity. [Page 16]

To avoid a disastrous energy crunch, together with the economic consequences that would make even modest growth unlikely, the developed world needs to invest heavily in oil production. There appears to be little propensity to consider such investments. [Page 17]

The JFC cautions that biofuels cannot replace oil on the scale required to sustain global prosperity but could endanger global food security:

Production could increase to approximately 3 MBD-equivalent, but starting from a small base, biofuels are unlikely to contribute more than 1% of global energy requirements by the 2030s. Moreover, even that modest achievement could curtail the supply of foodstuffs to the world’s growing population, which would add other national security challenges to an already full menu. [Page 16]

Finally, the JFC is skeptical about the scientific bona fides of claims linking energy use to an impending climate catastrophe:

The impact of global warming and its potential to cause natural disasters and other harmful phenomena such as rising sea levels has become a prominent—and controversial—national and international concern. Some argue that there will be more and greater storms and natural disasters, others that there will be fewer. In many respects, scientific conclusions about the cause and potential effects of global warming are contradictory. [Page 21]

So much good sense in one document! It restores belief in the phrase “military intelligence.”



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Article printed from GlobalWarming.org: http://www.globalwarming.org

URL to article: http://www.globalwarming.org/2008/12/12/the-oil-addiction-myth/

URLs in this post:

[1] The Joint Operating Environment 2008: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force: http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2008/JOE2008.pdf

Offshore Drilling For Oil and Gas: A Good Thing In Many Ways

There are many myths perpetuated by the mainstream media, and lacking any other information, the public generally accepts what we hear on the nightly news, and read in most popular publications. The following essay about offshore drilling dispels several of these myths.

First, I admit I have always assumed offshore drilling and production platforms were pretty "dirty" affairs, with unavoidable oil and gas leaks, and other pollutants finding their way into the ocean. According to this article, Louisiana, with 3,200 production platforms, has never had a major oil spill. It seems the major oil spills come from the shipment of oil in tankers, not from the production of oil.

Then there is the issue of the benefits to the marine fisheries by the "artificial reef" environments created by these oil and gas production platforms. Apparently the fish and fishermen love them! Who would have thought it? Not our ever-vigilant "environmentalists apparently. The article makes a strong case for opening up other offshore areas of the United States for oil and gas exploration and production.
Peter

The Environmental Benefits of Offshore Drilling
Humberto Fontova
Monday, June 02, 2008
source
Louisiana produces almost 30 per cent of America's commercial fisheries. Only Alaska (ten times the size of the Bayou state) produces slightly more. So obviously, Louisiana's coastal waters are immensely rich and prolific in seafood.

These same coastal waters contain 3,200 of the roughly 3,700 offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. From these, Louisiana also produces 25 per cent of America's domestic oil, and no major oil spill has ever soiled its coast. So for those interested in evidence over hysterics, by simply looking bayou-ward, a lesson in the “environmental perils” of offshore oil drilling presents itself very clearly.

Fashionable Florida, on the other hand, which zealously prohibits offshore oil drilling, had its gorgeous "Emerald Coast" panhandle beaches soiled by an ugly oil spill in 1976. This spill, as almost all oil spills, resulted from the transportation of oil – not from the extraction of oil. Assuming such as Hugo Chavez deign to keep selling us oil, we'll need increasingly more and we'll need to keep transporting it stateside – typically to refineries in Louisiana and Texas.

This path takes those tankers (as the one in 1976) smack in front of Florida's panhandle beaches. Recall the Valdez, the Cadiz, the Argo Merchant. These were all tanker spills. The production of oil is relatively clean and safe. Again, it's the transportation that presents the greatest risk. And even these spills (though hyped hysterically as environmental catastrophes) always play out as minor blips, those pictures of oil-soaked seagulls notwithstanding. To the horror and anguish of professional greenies, Alaska's Prince William Sound recovered completely. More birds get fried by landing on power lines and smashed to pulp against picture windows in one week than perished from three decades of oil spills.

For fear of oil spills, as of 2008, the U.S. Federal government and various states ban drilling in thousands upon thousands of square miles off the U.S. Coast. These areas, primarily on the Outer Continental Shelf, hold an estimated 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This leaves America 's energy needs increasingly at the mercy of foreign autocrats, despots and maniacs. All the while worldwide demand for oil ratchets ever and ever upward.
"Environmentalists" wake up in the middle of the night sweating and whimpering about offshore oil platforms only because they've never seen what's under them. This proliferation of marine life around the platforms turned on its head every "environmental expert" opinion of its day.
The original plan, mandated by federal environmental "experts" back in the late '40s, was to remove the big, ugly, polluting, environmentally hazardous contraptions as soon as they stopped producing. Fine, said the oil companies.

About 15 years ago some wells played out off Louisiana and the oil companies tried to comply. Their ears are still ringing from the clamor fishermen put up. Turns out those platforms are going nowhere, and by popular demand of those with a bigger stake in the marine environment than any "environmentalist."

Every "environmental" superstition against these structures was turned on its head. Marine life had EXPLODED around these huge artificial reefs: A study by LSU's Sea Grant college shows that 85 percent of Louisiana fishing trips involve fishing around these platforms. The same study shows 50 times more marine life around an oil production platform than in the surrounding Gulf bottoms.

An environmental study (by apparently honest scientists) revealed that urban runoff and treated sewage dump 12 times the amount of petroleum into the Gulf than those thousands of oil production platforms. And oil seeping naturally through the ocean floor into the Gulf, where it dissipates over time, accounts for 7 times the amount spilled by rigs and pipelines in any given year.

The Flower Garden coral reefs lie off the Louisiana-Texas border. Unlike any of the Florida Keys reefs, they're surrounded by dozens of offshore oil platforms.
These have been pumping away for the past 50 years. Yet according to G.P. Schmahl, a Federal biologist who worked for decades in both places, "The Flower Gardens are much healthier, more pristine than anything in the Florida Keys. It was a surprise to me," he admits. "And I think it's a surprise to most people."

"A key measure of the health of a reef is the amount of area taken up by coral," according to a report by Steve Gittings, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's science coordinator for marine sanctuaries. "Louisiana's Flower Garden boasts nearly 50 percent coral cover. In the Florida Keys it can run as little as 5 percent."

Mark Ferrulo, a Florida "environmental activist" uses the very example of Louisiana for his anti-offshore drilling campaign, calling Louisiana's coast "the nation's toilet."
Florida's fishing fleet must love fishing in toilets, and her restaurants serving what's in them. Most of the red snapper you eat in Florida restaurants are caught around Louisiana's oil platforms. We see the Florida-registered boats tied up to them constantly. Sometimes us locals can barely squeeze in.

In 1986 Louisiana started the Rigs to Reef program, a cooperative effort by oil companies, the feds and the state. This program literally pays the oil companies to keep the platforms in the Gulf. Now some platforms are simply cut off at the bottom and toppled over as artificial reefs; over 60 have been toppled thus far.

A few years back, Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries officials were invited to Australia to help them with a similar program. Think about it: here's Australia, the nation with the Great Barrier Reef, the world's biggest natural reef, the world's top dive destination – they're asking help from “the nation's toilet” about developing exciting dive sites by using the very structures that epitomize (in greenie eyes) environmental disaster.

America desperately needs more domestic oil. In the process of producing it, we'd also get dynamite fishing, dynamite diving, and a cheaper tab for broiled red snapper with shrimp topping.

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