The Albuquerque Journal Editorial Page is on a rant about drilling for domestic oil. Today they have many letters to the editor published by oil company toadies. The Journal itself has editorialized on their belief that opening the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge would do some good. Even though there are tens of millions of acres already leased but not drilled. John Trever, their creative and funny cartoonist is also on the band wagon for more domestic drilling. It makes me think that Yates Petroleum has bought a controlling interest in the paper.
I would direct the editorial writers to the web page opened by Texas Oilman turned renewable energy proponent Boone Pickens. He is a guy from the oil industry that really gets it and is looking further than the next quarter's bottom line. He is looking towards the good of the country.
I urge everyone to check this page out. Especially my good friends at the Journal Editorial Page.
1 comment:
The major problem with the 'Pickens Plan' is that to shift our use of natural gas from power generation to transportation, we have to write off all of the gas power plants. That's a huge sunk cost.
The nice thing about electricity is that it is fungible, and sources can be substituted. Wind has a huge place as a source of electricity and we can accomplish approximately the same savings (and the same reduction in dependence on foreign oil) by switching our use of energy for transportation from gasoline to electricity.
Example: If we shift to plug-in electric vehicles (and plug-in hybrids), then the same gas power plants are now powering our transportation.
In the long run, there is still an infrastructure write-off, but in this case it is mainly the gasoline filling station network.
I suspect that Pickens' plan is motivated both by his investment in wind and probably other investments in gas infrastructure (pipelines, not powerplants).
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