OT – Energy policy. Norway as the example.

[admin]

I never understood the Republican desire to drill-baby-drill.

It’s not like the oil will never be extracted and used. So why not conserve it and use it slowly at a time?

The Republicans want and “all of the above” energy policy of extracting everything we can right now. Then what happens when we run out?

Seems like Norway is a good example to follow:

In an even more stunning act of self-restraint, the Norwegians decided not to spend most of the oil money. Instead, they put it in an oil trust fund that’s now worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The government only spends the interest that the fund generates.

Perhaps most shocking: Norwegian politicians have largely agreed to leave the principal untouched.

“The Norwegian miracle is that … all the parties in parliament agreed on a policy, and they agreed among themselves that they will never use oil policy as a subject during elections,” Al-Kasim says.

So, that’s Norway’s secret: At every step of the way, do the opposite of basic human nature.

Tell powerful oil companies, you can’t get the oil right away. Tell taxpayers, you won’t get the money from the oil right away. And tell campaigning politicians, you know that half a trillion dollars we have just sitting there in our oil fund? You’re not allowed to talk about it.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/06/140110346/how-to-avoid-the-oil-curse

[davelj]

I lived in Norway for about six months back in the mid-90s with my girlfriend at the time who was Norwegian. To generalize, the Norwegians are a very disciplined, thoughtful group. I spoke to a lot of people in Norway about The Petroleum Fund and I never met anyone who thought the government wasn’t doing the right thing by managing the oil revenues for the future through this fund. (I interviewed for a job with the fund – they didn’t hire me.) I think there are several factors that allow for this fund to exist: (1) Norwegians are highly educated – even at the median – and generally think long-term, (2) they haven’t had many government scandals, so they generally trust government more than a lot of other countries, and (3) Norway has a very small, fairly homogenous population where the average person is maybe only two degrees of separation between most everyone else in the country, so there’s a lot of solidarity among the population. Norway feels like a very large family.

Now, contrast these three factors with the U.S. This sort of thing would never fly here. As a people, we’re culturally incapable of supporting it.

[temeculaguy]

Here’s why I hate it when people like to compare boutique countries to the big boys. Norway is cool and has a lot going for it, I’ll give you that. But at under 5 million people, it’s barely twice the size of San Diego. 80% of the population belongs to the same church, 96% speak the same language. I’m sorry, you don’t get any prizes for getting a small group of people who think and act the same to think and act the same.

Maybe if I went to Boston and got everyone to agree the Celtics are good, I’d get your admiration too. Or maybe if I convinced the crowd at a Nascar event that beer and country music was a good thing, I’d win a prize. Of course being in lockstep has it’s downfalls.

And this fouled up, disjointed and uneducated country that we call home has something Norway doesn’t have, diversity. This isn’t a politically correct statement. Our little cauldron of inefficieny is responsible for the need of Norway’s oil. In fact thier daily life would be miserable without ours, not the other way around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(before_1890)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(1890%E2%80%931945)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(1946%E2%80%931991)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(after_1991)

Their snowboards and their ice hockey rink resurfacers (things they should have come up with) courtesy of the misfits. Not to mention the birth control pill, ky jelly and buffalo wings, otherwise known as the ultimate trifecta!

[The-Shoveler]

The Norwegian rain joke
“An American visits Oslo on business. After two weeks, he stops a small boy in the streets and asks: ‘Hey sonny, does it ever stop raining here?’The boy looks at him and replies, ‘I don’t know, sir. I’m only 11.'”
But seriously, I wonder if they would take me back, it’s only been three generations.

[Anonymous]

The most important data concerning our energy policy, and ultimately our national security is all right here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Consumption_statistics

The key point is really simple:

The United States does not have enough oil.

“Drill Baby Drill” is based upon a mathematical fallacy.

We certainly couldn’t do what Norway does. There’s no way we will ever produce a surplus of oil.

[meadandale]

This the first time that I’ve heard you ever argue for not spending money.

Oh wait…you were just talking about the not drilling part weren’t you?

[svelte]

[quote=pri_dk]
The United States does not have enough oil.

“Drill Baby Drill” is based upon a mathematical fallacy.
[/quote]

Drill Baby Drill seems awfully short-sighted for another reason to me.

Eventually, we are going to run out of oil on earth. Though we argue over when that’ll happen, everyone agrees that it will happen. The country with that last bit of oil will have a huge advantage over other countries that have consumpition needs but no more oil reserves.

Why wouldn’t we want to help them deplete their reserves right now, while oil is still relatively cheap, and hold onto ours until the bitter end when the price goes through the roof? If it turns out that is during a wartime, well that’s even more reason to be the last one sitting on oil.

[patb]

[quote=temeculaguy]Here’s why I hate it when people like to compare boutique countries to the big boys. Norway is cool and has a lot going for it, I’ll give you that. But at under 5 million people, it’s barely twice the size of San Diego. 80% of the population belongs to the same church, 96% speak the same language. I’m sorry, you don’t get any prizes for getting a small group of people who think and act the same to think and act the same.

Maybe if I went to Boston and got everyone to agree the Celtics are good, I’d get your admiration too. Or maybe if I convinced the crowd at a Nascar event that beer and country music was a good thing, I’d win a prize. Of course being in lockstep has it’s downfalls.

And this fouled up, disjointed and uneducated country that we call home has something Norway doesn’t have, diversity. This isn’t a politically correct statement. Our little cauldron of inefficieny is responsible for the need of Norway’s oil. In fact thier daily life would be miserable without ours, not the other way around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(before_1890)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(1890%E2%80%931945)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(1946%E2%80%931991)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(after_1991)

Their snowboards and their ice hockey rink resurfacers (things they should have come up with) courtesy of the misfits. Not to mention the birth control pill, ky jelly and buffalo wings, otherwise known as the ultimate trifecta![/quote]

But what have we done lately?

[patb]

[quote=pri_dk]

The key point is really simple:

The United States does not have enough oil.

“Drill Baby Drill” is based upon a mathematical fallacy.

We certainly couldn’t do what Norway does. There’s no way we will ever produce a surplus of oil.[/quote]

So is republican tax policy.

[Anonymous]

[quote=svelte]Why wouldn’t we want to help them deplete their reserves right now, while oil is still relatively cheap, and hold onto ours until the bitter end when the price goes through the roof? If it turns out that is during a wartime, well that’s even more reason to be the last one sitting on oil.[/quote]

Interesting strategy, but the numbers don’t allow it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves

US Total: 19,120,000,000
World Total: 1,392,461,050,000

Count the commas.

99% of the world’s oil is NOT in the United States.

Now, do we consume more than 1% of it?

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=us&v=91

Easily 20 times that much.

What we do with our own oil supply is insignificant in the big picture.

The reason it is an issue at all is that there are a small percentage that of the US population that can still profit nicely from domestic oil production.

Anyone who is in the oil production business can make plenty of money over the next few decades by drilling in Alaska, off the coast of California, etc. None of this will put a dent in the problem of our oil imbalance, but it will make money for the few that are in the right business.

So these folks make campaign contributions and hire lobbyists and write checks to talk radio pundits and hire PR firms who dress up the issue in patriotic terms and left/right politics:

“Those hippie environmentalists and big government liberals are preventing us from being energy independent!”

And many fall for it, because they fail to comprehend the most basic mathematical facts.

We could suck every drop of oil out of every corner of the US and it won’t make any difference at all.

It is mathematically impossible for the US to be anywhere close to “independent” from oil imports.

[svelte]

[quote=pri_dk][quote=svelte]Why wouldn’t we want to help them deplete their reserves right now, while oil is still relatively cheap, and hold onto ours until the bitter end when the price goes through the roof? If it turns out that is during a wartime, well that’s even more reason to be the last one sitting on oil.[/quote]

Interesting strategy, but the numbers don’t allow it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves

US Total: 19,120,000,000
World Total: 1,392,461,050,000

Count the commas.
[/quote]

Maybe we couldn’t sell it to other countries, but it would certainly help us maintain a strategic position.

We could mitigate blackmail from other countries by supplying all of the US oil needs for 100 days (we use 18M barrels/day), or we could use it to supply just the US military for 15 years. That should go quite aways towards protecting our future!

[briansd1]

[quote=svelte]

Maybe we couldn’t sell it to other countries, but it would certainly help us maintain a strategic position.

We could mitigate blackmail from other countries by supplying all of the US oil needs for 100 days (we use 18M barrels/day), or we could use it to supply just the US military for 15 years. That should go quite aways towards protecting our future![/quote]

That’s what I was thinking svelte.

It’s not like the oil the ground is lost and will never be exploited.

So why not leave it there as reserve and drill only when we really need to.

Let’s look at land as a finite resource just like oil. The Irvine Company is not going to release all their land so that everyone can build a cheap house. They release their inventory of land slowly as the demand builds and prices rise.

I believe that we have a lot of wasteful “spending” of oil. Why do we have those large 5-liter cars driving around? That is extremely wasteful of a finite resource. We could be driving 1.5 liter cars and not feel any decline in standard of living.

[scaredyclassic]

I caanot stand all the empty pick up trucks being driven around by 20 year old douchrbags. One I saw yesterday had a no fat chicks sticker above a silly bitches trucks are for guys sticker.

Wonder how that’ll go over when stopped by female cop.

We dont need to drill we need to get this idiot a small economical car by taxing gas to 10.00 a liter. Just for him. A douchebag tax.

[temeculaguy]

I took that wikipedia link and found something interesting. Near the bottom there was mention about oil shale and another link, I don’t know much about it so I started to read it. Current methods of turning it into fuel are messy, costly and environmentally unfriendly. Apparently other countries do it but we don’t. But it does work. Then I read further, turns out, we are the middle east of oil shale, with over 62% of the world’s supply and that amount is 3 times the world’s oil supply. Oddly enough, it is located primarily on government owned land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale

It’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that the technology will change before oil runs out. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d be curious about the current situation. The worlds oil reserves are about 1.3 trillion barrels. The world’s shale can currently yield about 3 trillion barrels. 62% of that is in the U.S. and 70% of that is on government land. So the government owns the equivalent of about 1.5 trillion barrels, more than all of the combined known liquid petroleum in the world.

Naw, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. I’m sure they will never figure out a way to cleanly convert it into fuel because 191 years of our entire oil needs sitting in Utah and Colorado, there’s really not much money in that.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=temeculaguy]
Naw, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. I’m sure they will never figure out a way to cleanly convert it into fuel because 191 years of our entire oil needs sitting in Utah and Colorado, there’s really not much money in that.[/quote]

TG: And you haven’t considered US supplies of natural gas: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124104549891270585.html

I sat in on a security briefing that focused on US energy, power and food defense last month. Extremely interesting stuff, and I was pleasantly surprised at how the US Gov’t actually has a pretty good handle on this. Handling int’l security and terrorism, not so much.

What made this briefing even more interesting, was the juxtaposition of US resources versus other countries or trading blocs (like the Eurozone). The briefing team looked at China, Japan, Australasia, the subcontinent, the Mideast, etc and statistically ran down which of the various countries or regions was most versus least prepared. Fascinating stuff.

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