Thoughts on Peak Oil?

[MIEDRN]

I came across a website about peak energy production and how the declining oil reserves are going to affect us.

http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php

It was sobering. I'm not sure that I subscribe to the survivalist theory but preparation sure seems in order along with a few changes in my personal use of energy reserves now.

Your thoughts?

[CREATIVE1]

Great website, sobering truth.

I've always stepped on the earth lightly.  I think it's shortsighted to think that everything will continue as it is today.  As an "action plan," travel NOW if you must, settle in a place with water, good soil, maybe some breeze, and a moderate climate, and try to spread the word.  But--most people don't want to listen.  They want their Hummers, Suburbans, perfect indoor temperature, more electric goodies by the hour.  

[benevolance]

The term peak oil has been bandied about for many decades and there is still an awful lot of oil left...To be fair the doom and gloom people only mention that the easiest of the recoverable oil is in decline....As the price keeps skyrocketing there will be many pockets of oil recovered.

Deep sea oil exploration is now possible due to higher prices...the second largest oil deposit in the world is in Western Canada in the tar sands...Higher prices make it viable to recover huge quantities of this tar sand bitumen oil...also russia has massive oil reserves that as of yet have been mostly untapped...

What should worry Americans is that domestic oil is in trouble. There are a few fields off Alaska that can be developed and maybe a few in the gulf near louisianna in federal protected waters....But the wells in Texas and Oklahoma have been in serious decline for a while now....So are many of the offshore wells in the gulf of Mexico.

So America is looking at more dependance on foreign oil as their own ability to produce diminishes.... What is really sad is that 40% of the oil consumed is by automobiles...The rest is Home heating, Electricity generation and plastics....

Half of the oil used for automobiles can be eliminated through efficiency....Smaller cars.. better mileage.. less power....

Ultimately the only resource that is in no danger of running out is the sun....every 23 seconds enough sunlight hits the earth to power all the world for 2 years! If only we made it a priority to harness this endless supply of clean cheap and abundant energy

Our whole life is structured around oil and the burning of fossil fuels....This will change some in the future as prices continue to skyrocket...

The saudi's have already started to take steps to increase production to help bring the prices down....They fear that oil staying above $80 a barrel would spur investment and research into other ways to generate electricity and to power automobiles...And thus diminish the value of their only resource....They want us to pay a fortune for the oil... but not so much that we will start looking for other ways to power our cars and heat our homes

I hope to God in Heaven that the heavy seawater plant that is being built in france is a success...It promises mega power generation with virtually no pollution....It would make the electric economy a reality....

think of the sun and the process in which it generates energy...That is what they are trying to achieve on a much smaller scale...No nuclear reactive waste dumps... just clean abundant energy...

Which would allow the whole world to have clean energy.. anywhere there is seawater available.....And we could start powering cars and trains on Electricity....Instantly cutting the amount of oil that the world consumes in half...well not instantly....But it would be quick....The oil industry would try to lower the price of oil to keep developing nations from switching to the electric economy...But battery technology is getting very advanced....The Lithium sulphur ion batteries are 6 times more powerful than a standard lithium ion battery and recharge to 90% of their capacity in a couple of minutes...they generate almost no heat and last forever...well not forever... but they last 20 times longer than current batteries...thousands and thousands of cycles of being charged and depleated.

It is coming.... the question is when.... Large scale solar power generation is coming too...If they ever get that 200 MW solar tower built in Australia the world is going to start paying more attention to the benefits of clean cheap solar energy...

Oil is like the dinosaurs that made it....It will have a pretty darned good run....but it will end and give way to other species

[glenn-k]

I agree with nearly all of what you said, Peter.

There is still too much money in the big oil business for other resources to be developed very seriously.  One thing that the peak oil screamers accomplish is that it makes less resistance from the masses to the high oil prices.  I guess high is all relative.  How bad do we want or need it --- what will we pay?

Hopefully other energy sources will be checked out quite well and in production before things get too bad.

[benevolance]

Glenn

Well The world is a huge engine that needs fuel...Economic reforms in India,China and what used to be the Soviet Union...Has seen their thirst for energy grow at unprecedented rates...Which means that the USA is no longer alone in their gorging of the world's resources...

As some of the south American Countries (Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru) Start to industrialize along with some of the Africain countries that possess large quantities of oil and precious minerals...The demand worldwide for oil will take another huge spike...

Chavez is seen as a mad man by America...But he was not totally insane when he predicted that oil would approach $100 a barrel

I agree that Oil is too important to too many countries for the electric or the solar economy to get a fair shake....The bulk of america's rich and powerful depend on the oil economy... It would take a world changing event to break this stranglehold it has on our society....Something from the pages of a Sci Fi novel where the hero discovers a way to power the world with a glass of water and shows the world how to do it before MR Oil executes him

That said the Battery end of the electronic industry has taken off and the advancements that they have made already are staggering....They are already a viable option for an Electric car....Taking GM's EV1 and placing in Li-S batteries the car would have a range of about 400 miles...And it would charge very Quickly....10-15 minutes at a rapid charging station

All this talk of hybrids and the myths surrounding them....The Electric car would be possible today if there was a committment by the government and the electric industry to build the infrastructure to make it viable.

The oil and fossil fuel is going to try to hang on as long as possible...There is enough coal to power the world for hundreds of years and they have come up with ways to process the coal underground so all the carbon emissions stay undreground and are not released into the atmosphere...They inject steam into the coal bed and it liquifies the coal seam to release a liquified natural gas...

I imagine that they will keep coming up with more ways to squeeze more oil from declining wells and more ways to make coal viable...As well as turning shale into Diesel....and pig Manure into Diesel.....

None of this will solve the world's problem of huge consumation of cheap energy....The structure of the world will change in the sense that the cost of doing business will be totally dependant upon paying a realistic price for our energy as we exhaust all the sources of dirt cheap energy.

Sad as it seems conservation is still the best option for the environment and the long term growth of the worlds economies...It is possible to reduce the amount of energy produced and consumed by 10% This would meet most of the current goals for reducing the pollution levels....Improve air quality....and lower the price of oil worldwide..allowing what resources we have to last longer giving the world more time to find workable solutions to depleated oil sources.

We are still a couple hundred years from cataclismatic events stemming from the total depletion of oil...But we need look no further than Cuba to see what happens when the dirt cheap oil runs out as the US embargo killed their economy when the Soviet Union Collapsed 20 years ago... Cuba is a country with a high standard of living with highly trained citizens great education and healthcare...And their transportation and business sectors died off almost completely because there was no oil to keep the going.

In Cuba life went on....But it went at a much slower pace...Mass Transit became one of the only ways to get around...Tractor Trailers were converted into double decker buses that held large quantities of people...

We can learn a lot...mainly that in our cities mass transit needs to become more than an option...It needs to become a reality to reduce pollution and the use of fossil fuels. If people feel unsafe have a metal detector on each car...No weapons allowed...Double the amount of police officers that ride on the trains and buses....Do whatever it takes to make people use the mass transit systems.

Other than carpooling all we can do is hope that people start to drive vehicles that use green technology....Hope that people drive cars a little smaller with a little less raw power....If that happened we could double the mileage of our vehicles and make what oil we have last twice as long...

Thankfully in Asia and Europe there is no such thing as the mass produced gas guzzler....most cars in Europe are 1 litre or smaller engines....no american made car has an engine less than 1 litre....

[MIEDRN]

Yep, that's me Creative1!

I've been thinking of trading the Explorer for something more economical for quite a few months. I'll miss the 4 wheel drive with the snows here but to be honest, I never had a problem driving before I had it!

Glen, from what I've read, that is exactly the issue. Peak Oil proponents believe we won't be able to come up with enough alternative energy to prevent the consequences soon enough to be of use.

There are survivalists among them but also educators, economists and scientists who are making changes in their lifestyle.

I'm not sure where I stand with the issue although I believe there will be changes in the future involving economic security.

Just another reason to live as self-sufficient as possible.

[glenn-k]

Better get some snow tires and chains for your new bicycle, miedrn.

[MIEDRN]

~smile~

Nah, I'd rather get my exercise in other ways, thank you! :O)

I'm not sure what kind of car to buy. I'm thinking of keeping this one as a spare, it's white and silver with running boards and I like it! I need something to haul stuff in, right?

[glenn-k]

You sound like Kathy now -- we all need 6 cars for specific purposes ---right.  I should talk -- I have a car and 5 trucks on the hill right now. :-/

[bartholomew]

Good news!!

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/15203177.htm

The U.S. Geological Survey in 2004 confirmed the existence of large quantities of quality crude oil and natural gas in the North Cuba Basin just east of Havana. Energy companies from India, Norway, China, Spain and Canada are involved in drilling for oil in Cuba's territorial waters.

The upper range of prospects suggests there may be 9.3 billion barrels of crude and 21.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas recoverable off the Cuban coast. That's three times the natural gas expected to be tapped from the Gulf of Mexico off the coastline of Florida and Alabama, as authorized this week by the U.S. Senate.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/09/06/cnchev06.xml

Chevron strikes oil in 'biggest US find'... Experts believe the ancient rocks that lie more than five miles below the sea bed could hold up to 15bn barrels of crude oil, an amount that would boost the known oil reserves in the US by about 50pc.

If the amount is confirmed, it would make it the most important new find of oil reserves since the discovery of Alaska's North Slope more than a generation ago.

http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=39047

In Alberta, earth-moving equipment is churning away day and night, scooping up mountains of the country's estimated reserves of between 1.7 trillion and 2.5 trillion barrels of oil trapped in oil sands, a complex mixture of sand, water, and clay. Once upon a time, it was too expensive to extract this oil, but at $50 a barrel, it is a bargain, and investors, including oil majors and others, are pouring tons of capital into it. For now, that oil is just a trickle, but in a couple of years, the trickle will become a gush, and things may never be the same for oil producers.

I really don't expect Peak Oil to be an issue at all. As reserves get depleted fuel prices will slowly rise. That will cause oil companies to develop their more inaccessible reserves (like the Chevron deposit and the oil sands) while consumers increasingly switch to other energy sources, such as nuclear. (While there is a lot of resistance to nuclear energy now, that would quickly melt as gas surpassed $5 a gallon or so.) Some people will switch to various renewable sources, but unless there is a radical new technological advance, they will unfortunately be a small minority. This transition will take decades and people will have plenty of time to adjust.

[benevolance]

The oil find is a great news for Cuba....Which until recently has been left in the dark without soviet oil...Chavez recently has started to send some oil to Cuba....For the most part they have done without...

Maybe now they can afford to finish their nuclear power plant which is mostly completed...they ran out of funds to finish it. Oil in Cuba would put the USA in a funny position...On one hand they forbid american companies from doing business of any kind in Cuba....No investments there or travel there from US ports...

But their need for cheap oil is desperate...Can they say no to oil flowing from Cuba going into the USA?

And yes even the hard core peak oil gurus admit that there are a lot of pockets of oil left to be discovered...but they are in remote areas and are hard to recover (expensive)...People forget how easy it was 100 years ago....Sticka straw in the ground and light sweet crude flowed....Oil that needed no or little processing to be useable for industry....Looked like apple juice...

There are still some wells in the middle east where they do not have to drill deep or inject steam or natural gas into the ground to get the oil to flow up out of the ground...but those ultra productive low cost wells are disappearing fast

Drilling down 5,000 feet into bedrock at the bottom of trenches in the pacific ocean is not going to be cheap or easy....Even if they know where the oil is exactly....This is not something that would even be attempted if the price of oil was under $50 a barrel

Hell there is even a lot of oil in Tennessee in the smokey Mountains...Or under them....All they have to do to get to the oil is drill through 5,000 feet of solid rock...They have known about the oil for decades...No possible way it was viable when you could stick a pipe in the ground in the desert and watch the oil flow....

As the north sea oil starts to drop off considerably...Europe will be desperate for oil...They will buy more and more of the Middle east oil....And all of the North african oil... If America does not double their domestic production of oil there will be another huge price spike...and oil is likely to hit $100 a barrel within the next 10 years.

This is why the government currently wants to expand Alaskian oil fields...Set up potential drill sites and look in the  protected waters off california and in the gulf off of louisianna...I read recently that they found a decent sized oil reserve in Utah as well...

Getting all these wells and projects pumping at their maximum output only delays the inevitable for another 20-25 years....These wells will dry up and then what? The wells in Texas and Oklahoma have been pumping for decades and for decades they have been in Decline... It might be that America cannot double their domestic oil production as the existing wells in many areas are now drying up. Could be that best case scenario would have these new sources merely replacing the existing wells and America produces the same amount of oil as they pumped in 1970...

Considering that demand continues to grow for oil and there is no conservation of any kind... This still leaves the US in trouble when it comes to finding oil and generating cheap abundant energy

[PeakEngineer]

No matter how you slice it, whether this year or 30 years in the future, we will eventually start on the downslope of energy consumption.  Making your house more efficient and turning to local consumption are something we need to do for the environment in any case, regardless of when the peak in oil production occurs.  I'm not terribly optimistic about achieving complete solutions in time, but those who proclaim the end of the world are certainly on the fringes of the Peak Oil community.  I'm interested in finding solutions to pollution, global warming, and Peak Oil problems (see my blog at http://peakoildesign.blogspot.com) by developing engineering tools to build sustainable communities and homes.  I'm very impressed with depth of discussion on this site -- I'll be looking for help here in future as I design and build my own house.

[glenn-k]

Welcome to the forum.  Looking forward to hearing more from you.

[bartholomew]

Welcome PeakEngineer. Personally I'm way more concerned about too much oil, and the resultant environmental problems, than I am about too little. When you referred to the "downslope of energy consumption", did you specifically mean oil consumption? Because I can't imagine anything that would cause people to use significantly less energy (short of a war or disease that wipes out much of the population). If I remember right, it was James Hamilton who pointed out that higher automobile efficiency has done nothing to reduce fuel usage. People have "adjusted" to the better milage by driving more, since the better milage makes driving cheaper, and end up burning more fuel overall.

[PeakEngineer]

Thanks bartholomew, this looks like a great site.  I by no means want to de-emphasize the fact that too much oil is a bad thing -- I'm an environmentalist first.  "Peak Oil" refers to peak of oil production, and due to geologic factors roughly coincides with using half of the available oil.  From an environmental standpoint, this is fabulous -- it means the rate we pump greenhouse gases into the air is guaranteed to gradually diminish.  From a societal and humanitarian standpoint, this is disaster -- cheap oil is the basis of our food production, our economy, our mobility, and our livelihoods.  As less oil is produced, prices will rise on all goods.  There are, of course, alternative energy sources.  Unfortunately, no combination of current technologies -- including wind, solar, ethanol, coal, natural gas -- can replace the oil infrastructure on a global scale.  This is due to a combination of cost, energy density, and infrastructure.  (If you can get past the alarmist-sounding name and first paragraph, http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net is very eloquent in presenting the evidence.)

The good news is everything our society needs to do to adjust for having less cheap energy available is everything we need to do in order to protect our environment.  It requires consuming less and conserving more.  I have to admit I got pretty depressed the more I learned about the realities of our consumption habits (especially as an American), but I came to realize that planning for the possibility of near-term Peak Oil wasn't crazy nor harmful.  

Everyone on this forum clearly has the skills to take reasonable steps to protect themselves and their loved ones from a potential future of hardship.  I don't think anyone reading this should be scared, but it's in your best interest to take a critical eye to the arguments on both sides of the energy debate.

[CREATIVE1]

My question is, why did my 1988 Acura Legend coupe get well over 30 miles per gallon with a screaming six cylinder engine--and zeroes across the board in pollution stats when Florida inspected vehicles--and we're doing WORSE now?  

[MIEDRN]

Instinctively I was aware that we couldn't continue using our reserves without consequences but I also didn't realize the implications for every part of our lives.

I've only become aware in the last week or so and I'll admit I was alarmed enough to think about the future and change a few plans.

My incentive is purely selfish at this point. I'm convinced there will be financial difficulty in the near future. Michigan has already lost so many jobs that our unemployment rate is among the highest in the nation.

Suffice it to say that I have a new understanding of the movement toward self-sufficiency.

The internet has literally changed the way we live but I don't think I fully appreciated  just how much until the last few months. Without this site leading me to others, I wouldn't be as fully informed.

Am I going to be a survivalist? No. But I will make changes such as going solar, lessening my impact in as many ways as I can while doing my best to ensure a secure future.

It's not only the idea of oil peaking that has me concerned but when I look at the total picture, it has been life changing.

The future isn't as secure as I thought, regardless of the cause. Where could I place the blame anyway? If it isn't oil peaking, it will be other issues.

[benevolance]

Well Gas prices since the mid 70's dropped and stayed very low for 30 years...So the mini brief economy car fad that took hold in the late 60's early 70's went away....We are as guilty as the automakers...We all wanted more power more size more bling bling...(for the most part as consumers)

And that is why my 1971 Dodge Half ton gives better mileage than my Mom In laws 2002 Jeep Liberty Which does not have 4 wheel drive and has an overdrive transmission

Virtually no real improvements in overall economy have been made....Individually tons of improvements have been made in Valve design, carburation, injection...Ignition...We have come up with ways to reduce wind drag... weight and friction...

Yet vehicles are still gas guzzlers...Because we drive 350 HP 5,000 pound SUV and V-10 quad cab pick up trucks

Take a economy car like the Ford Tempo, The Dodge K car and the Chevy Cavalier from 20 years ago....Replace the doors, trunklid, hood, bumpers, fenders with light weight carbon fiber panels....Make the cars more aerodynamic...Upgrade the fuel injection from throttle body to tuned port...Make minor improvements to exhaust design, ignition...Reduce the size of the engine by 20% (which is okay if it is lighter with more efficiency it will be about the same in terms of speed and acceleration...

The cavalier and the Tempo gave almost the exact same mileage per gallon way back in 86...The Tempo gave 33 mpg on the highway and the Cavalier 32...The Aries gave 35. I remember adding another throttle plate to a K car I had in High School and getting an additional 2-3 miles to the gallon...It cost me $7 bucks to buy the throttle plate and ten minutes to install...

None of these cars were particularily aerodynamic...None of them had advanced fuel injection or efficient ignition systems...None of them had advanced valve design for efficiency...It would be no problem to shave  several hundred pounds off each of these cars. And weight savings is a double edged sword..If you make the motor more efficient and trim the weight then a slightly smaller motor will do the same amount of work in the car....Which means more fuel savings.

These were mind you all mass produced reliable and affordable cars...Funny how a few simple changes would make any of these cars capable of 45 mpg easily....This is not some test tube pipe dream of a scientist for someday...But simple technology applied to something we have mass produced by the millions...

And yet the only cars that get this kind of mileage are the Pruis Hybrids and they cost 30,000....Where as a 45 mpg tempo or Cavalier would cost half of that...

I spent a lot of time thinking about efficiency in the past and designing cars...Why I do not know....My wife and friends laughed at me...I still say take a basic simple and pleasing little car like the Tempo or Cavalier and lighten it up...Improve the ignition and fuel injection...Allow it to breathe better with improved valves and exhaust and all of a sudden you have a car that gives 45 mpg without any super expensive new fangled gadgets gimmicks or promotions...

45 mpg and it would be so cheap everyone could afford one....

Imagine if the best selling car in America got 45 MPG or better!!!!!!
Imagine if all the top auto makers in America had their individual best selling vehicles all give 45 MPG or better!!!

This would extend what oil we have years and years...

Just think about this little factoid...GM and Ford have the hubrid SUV's...they have variable valve timing and they actually shut down cylinders when not needed....Imagine if the chevy cobalt had variable valve timing and only worked as hard as it had to...

Instead Ford replaced the Tempo with the Focus and a well equipped focus manual trans gives 37 MPG...A well equipped Cobalt(replaced cavalier) manual gives 34 mpg...And a well equipped Neon(replaced K cars) with a manual trans gives 36 MPG

So why are the cars no better on Fuel 20 years later?...They all have more powerful engines...They are larger with more options...

The Cavalier before they stopped making them with a 5 speed actually got to the 40 miles to the gallon mark...The new Neons smallest engine has 132 horsepower...Which is 30+ more than the K car it replaced

The consumer has not truly demanded more fuel economy in North America...In Europe where Gasoline has been 6-7 dollars a gallon for a decade...Cars give 40-50 miles to the gallon or they will not sell...And 40% of the cars there are Diesels..Which are 20-40% more efficient on fuel than gasoline due to direct injection

[jraabe]

Welcome to the forum PeakEngineer:

No matter how green, how earth friendly, how low impact you want you energy footprint to be, the basics are the same:
• Build smaller
• Take advantage of the natural (free) energy of the climate and site (passive solar, natural cooling, etc)
• Keep it simple using local materials and proven building techniques

Projecting the future is great fun but unlikely to be right. (Remember all those "home of the future" clips you saw thirty years ago?)

Look at PeakEngineers blog and the article "Eat your Roof".

Mark and I are working on a couple of variations of dogtrot cottages. Perhaps we should do a green roofed version of these 16' wide buildings.

[benevolance]

John we agree 100%

Take time tested building techniques and use what is available..I was talking about mass produced cars and you were talking about houses but it is the same thing really...

We do not need to re-invent the wheel to make a difference.

[phalynx]

If we aren't going to use they oil, what are we going to do with it?  I can't think of ANYTHING more natural than oil.  It's made of old life.  It's there, we can use it, there is no reason not to use it.  It's part of a path, to the next step.  When oil runs out (probably well over 100 years) we'll aready be at the next step.  It's odd that we still use steam boilers today(although much less than 200 years ago) and yet, there is so much out there that is better.  Human's are pretty good.  You have to admit, oil comes out of the ground all over the world all by itself and causes pollution.  Volcanos errupt all the time.  Hurricanes strike havoc on the coasts.  Tornados tear up the middle of the US.  And yet, humans are the ones who want to make it better.  We do what no one else does, improve, not evolve.  Oil leaks, we clean it up.  Tornado strikes, we rebuild, better.  Hurricanes come, we prepare better.  

We shouldn't look for doom and gloom in anything.  We should just look for the next opportunity to improve.

[Amanda_931]

I'm sure there are things that dead dinosaurs can do better than anything else.  I'm not at all sure that one of them is ferrying each of us in our very own 12 mpg trucks (hey I bought lumber and took trash to the dump today) around the world.  

[phalynx]

Old life is what oil is.  There should be no question about it.  But, it isn't a dad dinosaur.  It's mostly plantlife.  The funny part is, it's under ground......  Plants don't really grow underground.  Odd that it got there millions of years ago before humans walked the Earth.  I guess there are worse things than us..

[benevolance]

Phlanx,

Well the change in the climate is causing more Hurricanes and Tornados...It is melting the ice caps...Causing coral reef to die...All because of us!

We are the greatest threat to the planet....Nothing else is even a distant second.

We can hope that there is viable Solar or  Fission Technology to produce massive amounts of power pollution free in 100 years....But we are dragging our heels...We know oil and coal are the devil...Yet we use them..Our consumption of the dirtiest of fossil fuels is increasing not decreasing...

One of the things we should be worried about when talking to peak oil and the eventual decline of oil flowing out of the ground each year is that globally we are using more and more each year....It is not growing at a rate comparable with the economy or population either.... Oil consumption/Production capability is one area that may truly be malthusian.

It has started to get expensive...This is just the tip of the iceberg once some of the largest oil fields in the world start to decline in Libya, Iraq and Saudi Arabia...

Remember what happens when there is a war in the middle east or a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico...We see oil spike to $80 a barrel and Gasoline goes to $3.50  on average a gallon in America... If one of the top three oil producers in the world starts to see any kind of decline in their oil production we are going to see those kinds of prices at the best of times not the worst...This is in my opinion about 5 years away...And anytime there is a disaster or conflict near a pipeline we will be paying $5.00 a gallon for fuel....Europe will be paying $10-12 a gallon

[benevolance]

Of Course if the World conserved, used mass transit and really made an effort to use efficient vehicles...The price of oil would go down today...and stay down for years until production dropped  then it would start approaching what we are paying today...$2.50 a gallon....It would be a long time before we got to see retarded prices if the gasoline companies knew that people were going to drive less ...Car companies would not build SUV's if they knew the consumers only wanted cars that gave 50 miles to the gallon or better

And when the price of Gasoline went up more people would start buying electric cars

Coal might be dirty.. but they are coming up with ingenius ways to harvest it and burn it clean...With low emissions and no sulphur.... There is enough Coal to power the world for 400 years....

I would not mind if they started to just build power plants now across the country to prepare for Electric cars... Getting 20% of the people to use Electric cars and get the rest of the people to burn half as much fuel in efficient vehicles would mean that Demand for oil would drop severly...The price could stabilize for the Plastic and automotive industry...We could make huge advances in cleaning up the air we breathe....

Heck not buying 20 million barrels of oil a day from the rest of the world at $70 a barrel might allow the USA to balance the books and stave off bankruptcy....

The USA goes trillions of dollars in Debt each year just to buy the oil it needs to run on....

We need to keep looking for another way to power our cars.. but in the meantime we need to seriously cut back what we use.