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Where is the outrage that this administration actively works to destroy the middle class and raise inflation at the grocery store and gas pump where they are not measured in official inflation figure? Where is the outrage that this war President encourages more energy dependancy instead of less?
Anything from the Heritage Foundation should be viewed suspiciously. They're a propaganda mill not a research organization.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lifelongMOgal
Where is the outrage that this war President encourages more energy dependancy instead of less?
The reality is that U.S. oil dependency is declining. The assertion that oil dependency is increasing is undercut by the fact that it is not. The U.S. was more dependent on foreign oil in 2005, when President Bush was in the White House, than now when President Obama is in the White House. Where was your outrage in 2005?
U.S. oil import dependence is an issue perhaps as hotly debated as it is loosely defined. As discussed in a This Week in Petroleum article published in 2008, there is more than one way of measuring it. Different methods of calculation yield different results. But whichever way it is defined, U.S. dependence on imported oil has dramatically declined since peaking in 2005, continuing a trend that was beginning to emerge the last time This Week In Petroleum examined the issue. By the broadest measure, U.S. dependence on imported oil fell below the 50 percent mark last year for the first time since 1997. To put it succinctly, discrepancies in the way dependence is assessed arise because oil, for the most part, is imported as crude oil, but is consumed as refined products, of which crude oil is the main but not the only input - hence the need to clarify whether dependence is assessed at the output/consumption level or at the input level, and in the latter case what range of inputs is included as a basis for comparison. Two of the most common and straightforward definitions measure dependence as the ratio of total net oil imports (including crude and products) to total product consumption, or much more narrowly as the ratio of net imported crude oil to net crude oil inputs to refineries.
By the broadest standard (Measurement A in Table 1), U.S. dependence on imported oil fell from 60.3 percent in 2005 to 49.3 percent in 2010. If processing gains obtained from imported crudes are counted as imports (Measurement B), then dependence falls from a high of 63.6 percent in 2005 to 52.8 percent last year. A much narrower measure that looks at crude oil imports into the United States as a percentage of total refinery crude inputs (Measurement C) excludes ethanol, biodiesel, and natural gas liquids (NGLs) as sources of petroleum products that are almost entirely domestic in origin and also does not reflect the substantial recent growth in U.S. petroleum product exports. By that measure, import dependence was 62 percent last year, still significantly below its 2008 peak of 66.6 percent.
There is no single explanation for the decline in U.S. oil import dependence since 2005. Rather, the trend results from a variety of factors. Chief among those is a significant contraction in consumption. U.S. oil product deliveries declined by 1.7 million barrels per day (bbl/d) to 19.1 bbl/d in 2010, from 20.8 million bbl/d in 2005. This decline partly reflects the downturn in the underlying economy after the financial crisis of 2008. Not surprisingly, demand has bounced back somewhat from a low of 18.8 million bbl/d in 2009, when the U.S. economy bottomed out. But the downward trend in consumption started two years before the 2008 crisis and reflects factors such as changes in efficiency and consumer behavior as well as patterns of economic growth.
Shifts in supply patterns, including increases in domestic biofuels production, NGL output and refinery gain, also played an important role in moderating import dependence. U.S. ethanol net inputs grew from 230,000 bbl/d in 2005 to 779,000 bbl/d in 2010, helping to displace traditional hydrocarbon fuels and so reducing petroleum import needs. Strong gains in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and the Bakken formation brought decades of contraction in domestic oil production to a sudden halt, and even led to a rebound. U.S. crude oil output increased by an estimated 334,000 bbl/d between 2005 and 2010, further eroding the need for imported crude oil.
Incremental refinery gains provide a smaller, but non-negligible, source of domestic supply growth. As U.S. refineries become increasingly complex, the amount of light products they are able to extract from crude oil keeps rising. Between 2005 and 2010, the volumetric increase in product output compared to crude oil input -- the "processing gain" -- rose by 75,000 bbl/d. The effect on U.S. oil dependence measurements depends on whether that entire gain, or only the portion of the gain that is specifically derived from domestic crude, is treated as domestic supply. Because oil is a global market, domestic supply and demand factors are only part of the story. Another component of reduced U.S. oil import dependence is the growth in export demand for U.S. refined products. Increased demand beyond the U.S. borders has lifted U.S. product exports to 2.3 million bbl/d in 2010 from 1.1 million bbl/d in 2005. Nowhere have U.S. product exports increased more than in the Americas, including Mexico, Canada, Central and South America and the Caribbean, thanks to economic and population growth and inadequate refining capacity in those countries. As a result, U.S. net imports (imports minus exports) of petroleum products plummeted in 2010 to their lowest level seen in the data history that begins in 1973.
The recent rise of U.S. product exports explains why a measure of U.S. import dependence based exclusively on refinery input, such as Measurement C in Figure 1, shows significantly higher dependence, and a slower decline in dependence, than broader measures based on total consumption. In other words, rising product export demand has caused U.S. net imports of products to decline much faster than net imports of crude oil.
The past, as the saying goes, is no guarantee of future performance. The EIA expects that the moderating trend in U.S. oil-import dependence to go on in the next decade. But the mix of factors responsible for it looks likely to evolve. In particular, EIA projects that continued improvements in energy efficiency, driven in part by tighter fuel economy standards, will prove increasingly important in moderating future demand growth, offsetting the upward impact of economic recovery.
By the way there is a good reason core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, is used to base monetary policy, instead of headline inflation because food and energy are highly volatile, and basing policy on headline inflation would lead to overreaction to temporary shocks. You can see that point here:
Also by the way, this isn't anything new and has been the case for decades. It just seems that certain people have been asleep and suddenly awoke to blame Obama for everything that they don't like -- even it's been standard practice under previous Administrations.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lifelongMOgal
Where is the outrage that this administration actively works to destroy the middle class and raise inflation at the grocery store and gas pump where they are not measured in official inflation figure? Where is the outrage that this war President encourages more energy dependancy instead of less?
If Obama lets them drill, then gas prices will go down a lot and that restaurant can reopen because people will be able to afford to eat out more.
Because a few barrels of oil will be like magic pixie dust that fixes everything.
I'm with you. What America should do is use up all our own energy reserves now, as fast as it can possibly be drilled. Then when we run out, we can buy it from someone else. Instead of saving it, for when they run out.
And, years later the dollar will probably be worth a lot more than it is now, making that future oil cost real cheap in comparison. After all, things get cheaper over time and the dollar gains value over time, making this a wise decision for America.
the left isn't going to be outraged because they have ALWAYS been against energy independence.
who always stops the drilling? (usually in the name of "environmentalism")
who always stop natural gas development? (usually in the name of "environmentalism")
who always stops coal production or nuclear expansion? (usually in the name of "environmentalism")
they DON'T WANT americans to be energy independent.
and now the newly macho left is pushing for more wars and more foreign oil usage, at a staggering clip. (with no mention of "environmentalism") it's a funny world, isn't it?
the left isn't going to be outraged because they have ALWAYS been against energy independence.
who always stops the drilling? (usually in the name of "environmentalism")
who always stop natural gas development? (usually in the name of "environmentalism")
who always stops coal production or nuclear expansion? (usually in the name of "environmentalism")
they DON'T WANT americans to be energy independent.
and now the newly macho left is pushing for more wars and more foreign oil usage, at a staggering clip. (with no mention of "environmentalism") it's a funny world, isn't it?
Your conclusion is ridiculous. First, to conclude that because some people want to solve the energy issue in a responsible way, through conservation and higher efficiency does not translate into "the left isn't going to be outraged because they have ALWAYS been against energy independence." No, they want to solve it in a way that doesn't destroy the environment and in a way that works.
Second, there are smart people that understand that it is impossible to solve an energy problem from the supply side. It's just arithmetic. There are two pieces that you all should read.
One is "The Mirage of a Growing Fuel Supply", By Dr. Evar D. Nering.
The other is "Flush With Energy", By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, which describes how Denmark solved its energy problem.
From Nering:
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In my classes, I described the following hypothetical situation. We have a 100-year supply of a resource, say oil -- that is, the oil would last 100 years if it were consumed at its current rate. But the oil is consumed at a rate that grows by 5 percent each year. How long would it last under these circumstances? This is an easy calculation; the answer is about 36 years.
Oh, but let's say we underestimated the supply, and we actually have a 1,000-year supply. At the same annual 5 percent growth rate in use, how long will this last? The answer is about 79 years.
Then let us say we make a striking discovery of more oil yet -- a bonanza -- and we now have a 10,000-year supply. At our same rate of growing use, how long would it last? Answer: 125 years.
Estimates vary for how long currently known oil reserves will last, though they are usually considerably less than 100 years. But the point of this analysis is that it really doesn't matter what the estimates are. There is no way that a supply-side attack on America's energy problem can work.
From Friedman:
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Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)
What was the trick? To be sure, Denmark is much smaller than us and was lucky to discover some oil in the North Sea. But despite that, Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent.
And did Danes suffer from their government shaping the market with energy taxes to stimulate innovations in clean power? In one word, said Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister of climate and energy: “No.” It just forced them to innovate more — like the way Danes recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they incinerate their trash in central stations to provide home heating. (There are virtually no landfills here.)
There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had “a positive impact on job creation,” added Hedegaard. “For example, the wind industry — it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world come from Denmark.” In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.
“It is one of our fastest-growing export areas,” said Hedegaard. It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, “we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.”
Regarding nuclear, nuclear could not exist without the government indemnifying nuclear plants and risk. No insurance company will insure a nuclear power plant. One only needs to look to Japan to recognize the hazard and devastation that is the nuclear risk.
Also "environmentalism" isn't a dirty word. It simply means that we should be concerned not to devastate the environment in the long-term to reap short-term gains.
As I stated earlier in this thread, U.S. Oil Import Dependence is declining due to policies such as raising mileage standards. We really don't need to rape the environment so 100 pound housewives can drive huge SUVs to the supermarket.
Where is the outrage that this administration actively works to destroy the middle class and raise inflation at the grocery store and gas pump where they are not measured in official inflation figure? Where is the outrage that this war President encourages more energy dependancy instead of less?
Were you outraged at Bush administration for its moratorium on oil drilling in 2007-2008? Or, was there any?
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