If the economy was firing on all cylinders we’d be using 22 million. Our consumption is projected to increase massivlely over the next 25 years however it’s made up. And new domestic drilling will be a drop in the bucket compared to our overall needs.
[QUOTE=Dick Dastardly]
Our consumption is projected to increase massivlely over the next 25 years however it’s made up.
[/QUOTE]
Do you have a cite for this? AFAIK, US consumption of oil has been pretty flat and I don’t see how it could ‘increase massivlely’ over the next 25 years. Are we expected to have some sort of population boom or something? People can only drive so many cars at once, and unless we are projected to start building cars that are less fuel efficient or something I don’t see how it’s possible.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Don’t alternative energy industries create more jobs - now - than conventional energy industries?
[/QUOTE]
Can you show how alternative energy industries could create more jobs today than conventional energy industries already have? Who would pay for these jobs? If industry, then why aren’t they doing it now? If through government subsidies then what would it cost us to create these jobs? And which alternatives should we, by fiat, decide to pick to pour our money into? Or should we do them all in the hope that by pumping in enough money we’ll eventually break even or make a profit?
-XT
Neither link works for me.
-XT
No, you’re not. The US recession ended in June 2009. Furthermore any jobs that came out of a decision now to begin drilling wouldn’t come on stream for years. Years.
The point of drilling for oil is not to generate jobs, it’s to make the best possible use of that irreplaceable resource.
Because it’s a one-shot resource. Once used it’s gone forever. The burden is on you to prove that now is the ideal time to expend your one shot, not on others to prove it isn’t.
[QUOTE=Askance]
No, you’re not.
[/QUOTE]
That’s true, though if you ask the average American this you aren’t going to get the same answer. But ok…we aren’t officially in a recession right now. So what? Employment lags behind other indicators of a recovery, and currently unemployment is still very high (for us)…still over 9%.
Um…no. I’m not sure how you think this works, but if the resource was opened up then the work to build the infrastructure and start developing the resource could begin fairly rapidly. The OIL would take years to get on stream, but building all the other stuff has to happen first…and it’s not going to be robots that do all that prep work.
The point of drilling is to generate wealth. The fact that it will also generate jobs is a nice benefit as well. As is the fact that it will generate tax income. Out of curiosity, since this would be a moving goal post (I mean, you could ALWAYS say that oil will cost more in the future…until it won’t anymore and the market for it collapses), how would you determine when the right time to drill is??
So what? ALL oil is a ‘one-shot resource’…does that mean we should leave it all in the ground??
Not at all. The burden would be on YOU to prove when this ‘ideal time’ would be. Because, based on what you’ve been saying, it will never happen…which sort of makes my BS detector itch a bit. So…when would this ‘ideal time’ for drilling actually happen? How would we know that it’s the ‘ideal time’ to drill?
You see, IMHO, the ‘ideal time’ to tap a resource is when it’s economically feasible to do so…which means the clock is already ticking. Or course, the other side of that is that it has to be politically feasible as well, which to me means we will never tap the resource…at least not in the current political climate. Same with new nuclear power…the well has been so completely poisoned that it will take something remarkable to get American’s off the dime wrt to either issue.
-XT
As I said, I feel that the economics justify not tapping the ANWR but that’s not my primary reason. The primary reason is, as an American, I’d rather keep a secure American-controlled source of oil available.
As it’s production would be something like half a percent (assuming I’m doing the math in my head correctly…and assuming it actually went directly into the US market), why would it be important that this particular source is American-controlled?? It’s not like it’s going to make us less dependent on foreign oil, and if our supply of foreign oil is suddenly cut off or drastically reduced it won’t make any difference at all…and that’s even assuming it’s in production. As it stands, it would take years to get those fields into production, right?
I guess I can understand a concern for the possible environmental impact of opening that area up, but I don’t get the other reasons being offered up in this thread for not exploiting the resource. It’s one that would bring in billions of dollars in revenue, create jobs and generate taxes. Aside from those environmental concerns (which should and would be addressed with existing regulation and oversight) it looks like a win/win for the US to allow for that exploitation.
Not that I expect this to happen of course. Just like I don’t expect Yucca Mt. to be put back on the front burner (I actually expect the federal government to have to pay various states and industry billions due to promises and contracts broken), nor do I expect new nuclear power plants to be approved much less built any time soon. I expect we’ll go on as we have been, with that oil just sitting there in the ground, with nuclear waste piling up at existing power plants in a dangerous and unsecured fashion, and that smug eco-nutters will pat themselves on the backs for blocking new nuclear plants (and Yucca Mt of course) while we continue to use coal fired power plants and wait in hopeful anticipation for the coming of the magic wind and solar power plants to finally break the 10% of our total energy needs threshold, all the while complaining how Big Power is actually blocking the tech because…well, that’s the way they roll I guess. Who wants to make big money on solar or wind? The money would be clean…or something…
-XT
I agree that the total amount of oil in Alaska is not going to be a game changer. From what I’ve read, the best estimates are there is at best a two year supply of oil in Alaska for normal American usage. So the idea some people have advocated elsewhere of producing Alaskan oil in order to end our dependance on foreign oil wouldn’t work.
But having a two year supply of oil could be a very important asset if it happens to be available during the right two years. Suppose for example, the current wave of revolutions continues and expands. Let’s say Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states get caught up in it. Throw in Nigeria and Indonesia and figure Venezuela doesn’t like us anyway. Let’s say they all get together and decide, “Hey, remember 1973 when we cut off America’s oil supply? That was fun! Let’s do it again!”
At that point, the difference between having a two year supply of our own oil and not having it would be huge. In two years we can land troops in Morocco and drive east until we reach India. Which I’m sure the local governments realize and therefore would not start an embargo which might provoke us into doing it.
As for lead time, I figure the “years to get into production” reflects normal routine. I’m assuming that if there was an emergency situation that justified it, it would be possible to start producing oil on a much quicker schedule.
I don’t understand that first question. I don’t know how many jobs have been created in the oil & coal (is natural gas “conventional” energy?) industries. They employ around 690K right now. I’m not sure if that’s all in the US or also overseas.
According to this article Renewable Energy Leads In Job Creation,
Here’s an interesting article about Obama’s press conference. Obama Press Conference Address Oil and Renewable Energy. Obama points out:
I’ve read elsewhere (no cite) that oil companies really don’t have much interest in drilling ANWR anyway. They want the right to, but since we’re not actually experiencing a shortage, there’s no profit in it. In my opinion, if Obama ordered them tomorrow to start extracting all the oil they could from Alaska, they’d say “fuck you, no profit.”
Of note from the same article is the Chamber of Commerce report revealing 351 current projects that are
This represents 1.9 million “right now” jobs we’re missing out on.
1.9 million jobs? That means that those 351 projects would be employing an average of over 5400 people apiece - and that seems kind of unlikely.
A really dumb post. Speculators (gamblers) see a run on the price of a oil because of a potential supply problem. Often the shortage does not occur at all. It was a false alarm. But they think it will happen. They buy oil. Others see oil is getting heated up again. They buy oil. The price goes up. But there was never a shortage at all. But the pump price went up.
Yes indeed that is a good thing. A bunch of very wealthy people and funds just made a pile of money, raised the prices for consumers . That is a good thing. they just transferred a pile of cash from consumers and pushed it to the poor downtrodden investors.
Our prices have gone up a long way. it is stifling the economy and taking money out of the gas and oil users. There has been no fucking shortage. That is not a good thing.
The report is here. It will probably answer your questions.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
But having a two year supply of oil could be a very important asset if it happens to be available during the right two years. Suppose for example, the current wave of revolutions continues and expands. Let’s say Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states get caught up in it. Throw in Nigeria and Indonesia and figure Venezuela doesn’t like us anyway. Let’s say they all get together and decide, “Hey, remember 1973 when we cut off America’s oil supply? That was fun! Let’s do it again!”
[/QUOTE]
The trouble with the ‘two year supply of oil’ thingy is that this is an estimated total amount. Production wise, we can’t possibly take enough out quickly enough to ACTUALLY meet 2 years of use. I don’t have the figures available (and it’s hard to looks stuff up and cut and paste it where I’m at tonight), but my recollection is we could produce something like 1/30th of our needs (assuming every drop came to the US) from these fields alone. If we cut usage by 29/30ths (assuming I’m anywhere in the ballpark) then we might as well pack up and go home…we’re screwed anyway and our society will come to a screeching halt.
Of course, that’s probably not going to happen, as oil is sold on an international market, so if Venezuela decides they won’t sell the US oil then we’ll buy it from someone else…just like the Alaskan oil won’t be for us, necessarily. It will go to whoever buys it and it makes logistics sense to ship it to them.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
This represents 1.9 million “right now” jobs we’re missing out on.
[/QUOTE]
(sorry, I haven’t read your cites yet…they might answer the questions I’m about to ask, and if so, my apologies).
This begs the question though…WHY are we ‘missing out on’ those millions of potential jobs? Why are we ‘missing out’ on all that profit, if it’s there? Why aren’t companies expanding rapidly to gain market share and hire people to fill this demand, if it’s there?
To me, the answer might be that there ISN’T a lot of projected profit in those alternative at this time, that most of the jobs would come from subsidies. Because I find it hard to believe that, if there is profit available that companies aren’t jumping on the bandwagon to build even more solar power plants or larger wind farms…especially given the fact that there ARE plenty of government grants and programs encouraging alternative energy.
I don’t really know, to be honest. It’s possible that at the current prices drilling in the untapped areas of ANWR aren’t feasible…or not worth the large capital investment and the ROI is too long, given the volatility of the market (gonzomax’s fine assertions aside). I seriously doubt that if Obama ordered them to start drilling tomorrow (with the obvious assumption that this means all political hurdles would be taken down) that anyone would balk at doing it…it IS worth billions of dollars after all, and if the government ordered them to do it that would probably mean the government would be willing to take on some of the risk in the form of grants or wavers of tax or the like. No one is going to turn their nose up at billions of semi-risk free dollars, I shouldn’t think. 
I’d say that natural gas is indeed considered ‘conventional energy’, yes. That’s over half a million jobs that are working in a field that is mainly just extraction of existing fields (I assume…sorry, haven’t read the cite). Opening up new fields would give you more initial workers (building infrastructure and the like) and increase the numbers of semi-permanent workers by some non-zero amount once the fields were on stream. So, it would give you a few years of boost and then a small increase of permanent labor.
Obviously, so would alternative energy. The difference is that if alternative energy were ready for larger scales then someone would be doing it NOW…after all, profit is profit. So, either the initial capital costs are prohibitive, or the returns aren’t worth the outlay…or some combination of both (my guess is that it’s both plus the fact that the manufacturing scale isn’t there and would be very difficult to build in the short term, so it’s waiting on a gradual build up…plus, the technology just isn’t ready for prime time, yet, and companies are waiting on refinements of technology that will make the initial costs cheaper and the manufacturing easier and more scalable. But that’s just my guess based on what I’ve read in the pasts).
Ok…then why hasn’t it happened? Or why isn’t it happening? I mean, there is plenty of labor laying about idle right now. The government has grants and other instruments available to companies exploring alternative energy. Why aren’t alternative energy companies surging ahead and filling those 3.2 million jobs? If they did that it would solve a lot of our current unemployment problems. The government would be VERY happy if that were the case. People going back to work would be very happy. And if this were all profitable, then the stock holders and CEOs of those companies would be very happy. It sounds like a win/win…which, again, begs the question…why isn’t it happening already?
-XT
It did. They were counting all of the jobs involving in building these projects not the ongoing jobs from running them. So it sounds like a short term employement gain.
It seemed like a one-sided argument to me. All they were talking about was the costs of government regulations. There certainly are costs from government regulations. But there are also costs of non-regulation - the BP spill demonstrated that. (Of course, the Chamber would probably spin that as environmental disasters creating new jobs in the clean-up industry.)
For a large part of the answer, I’d look at those 351 projects that are stalled or cancelled. There are companies with money and subsidies and they’d love to start those projects tomorrow. It’s the regulatory mazes and hurdles and lawsuits and NIMBYs threatening law suits. Obama and Biden have both criticized it, and want to try to streamline some of it that they can. Not sure what to do about the NIMBY lawsuits. I think there was a nuclear project the developers pulled out of because they didn’t like our loan guarantees. Wall Street doesn’t like nuke much.
In my opinion the thing with the oil is there’s just not an incentive for oil companies to add too much US oil to the market. The price will go down. The world knows how much oil we have, or could have access to. We increase production, price goes down. People are still buying gas so why undercut themselves? Obama is asking the oil companies to exploit some of the areas they already own permits for, and it’s not happening. Not quickly at least.
It is possible. There’s the issue of opportunity cost. No company has the resources to seek out every opportunity so they have to choose which ones they’ll go for.
Let’s say, for example, that software companies can make $10,000,000 a year developing video games or $9,000,000 a year developing medical diagnostic programs. A top company that only has the resources to develop one type of software is going to choose video games for economic reasons. But society in general would benefit more from having top software companies working on medical diagnostic programs - perhaps enough to justify offering a $1,500,000 incentive.
Sort of on par with the breaking windows to stimulate the glass industry argument. 
It makes sense that a lot of the jobs would be transitory…building the infrastructure and the plants themselves. Even that, however, would be a nice boost right now, especially considering that it would take several years to build on the scales we would be talking about.
Of course, it’s not happening, so the question would again be…why? Why aren’t companies ramping up right now, taking advantage of a depressed labor market (especially the construction industries, which are particularly hard hit during this recession, and who could probably be had for a fraction of it’s cost today as it was during the boom years)?
-XT
The links show we’re going to have a 450 million population by 2050 and that oil consumption will be 30+ milliom bpd by 2035.