My focus on oil in this blog might lead one to believe that I do not support alternative energy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any process that produces energy in a responsible and environmentally benign manner should be pursued with enthusiasm. My point is, we know oil. We know where it is, how to get it safely, how to refine it, and there is a distribution system in place that gets it to the market quickly and efficiently. If an alternative source that replaces the current oil based economy arises, it will not be for decades. So, while we pursue other energy sources, our main focus should be getting more oil from within our own shores.

The price of oil should further create an incentive for the private sector to develop more energy sources. Contrary to flowery speeches by politicians and environmentalists who want to end our relationship with oil and instead conserve and use “renewable resources”, people have been working on just that for a long, long time. Billions of dollars are being spent on the search for an oil replacement. But depending on that research to replace oil anytime soon presents a few problems:

1.  The reason an alternative energy source has not gone into full replacement production is that they are all either too expensive or woefully inefficient.

2.  Even if an alternative source is found, it will take many billions of dollars and many years to establish an infrastructure to distribute the alternative. Think of building all of the existing gas stations around the country overnight. It’s not going to happen.

3.  Many renewable resources have their own set of environmental problems. You will find all the usual suspects who cry for an alternative to oil also decrying the earth-ending impacts of each of the so-called alternatives:

Wind power kills birds, especially raptors. Environmental agencies and activists groups routinely oppose construction of windmills because of potential bird kills. They are also unsightly in the view of people who have to look at entire hillsides covered with windmills. Just ask Ted Kennedy and his family who oppose one windmill on Martha’s Vineyard because it’s ugly.

Hydro power means damming up streams to force water into turbines to create electricity. Every time an existing hydroelectric dam is up for its 50 year federal license renewal, a cabal of environmental groups come out of the woodwork to lobby for its denial. They want the dam to be removed so the stream can be returned to is natural state. Forget about building a new hydro dam.

Solar power requires many acres of photoelectric panels to capture the sun’s rays. Environmental groups oppose this because the panels shade the desert floor, affecting the natural habitat for the desert tortoise and sensitive desert plants. A solar plant also require significant support facilities and human activity that changes the land use from open space into an industrial purpose. Permitting such a facility takes many years and millions of dollars of mitigation or replacement habitat and management.

Using solar power on individual homes is not cost efficient. The solar panels that go on the roofs of homes are expensive, and they corrode easily. Maintenance costs can be prohibitive. It takes at least 10 years to make the investment back (given current energy rates), and they will likely need to be replaced by then.

Geothermal power can be used in areas where there are volcanic forces near the surface. Its overall contribution is very limited. It also has its detractors. Environmental groups oppose them because they require ancillary development in delicate areas, and they can deplete the water table, causing adjacent thermal fissures to go dry. Injection plants can also create instability in geohazardous areas typical of geothermal fields.

Nuclear energy has been extinct in recent decades due to a raft of Hollywood leftest movies acting out doomsday scenarios of the earth’s destruction should one melt down. Three Mile Island was the last straw. Even though no serious radiation leak occurred and it was an expensive accident to clean up, it was quickly contained and cleaned up. That’s because that was how it was designed. Accidents will happen. The test is what happens then? With Three Mile Island, no health hazard resulted. The Soviet Union on the other hand, that bastion of liberal, Marxist thought, totally destroyed a city for the next thousand years due to their incompetence. Marxism has little regard for the health of its workers, and there is no economic incentive to be the best. So we in the U.S. are to be held to their standards, and are not allowed to build any more plants.

Then there is the issue of storing nuclear waste generated by power plants. There is a perfectly fine, state-of-the-art facility to store nuclear waste in a safe and efficient manner in the Nevada Desert. Yucca Mountain is available, but unusable because liberals in congress will not allow it to be used. The Marxist majority leader of the Senate, who happens to be the Senator from Nevada, says, the Nevada desert will not be the dumping ground for the rest of the nation. He makes this statement irrespective of the fact that the “dump” is underground, safe, provides lots of jobs, provides the state with royalty revenue from other states that store their “product”, and is hundreds of miles from the nearest significant settlement. In other words, it’s in the middle of nowhere. Thanks, Senator.

There are other, boutique methods of energy development: ocean wave generators, various bio fuels, hydrogen fuel cells, advanced electrical storage, etc., but even the potential of any of these becoming mainstream is 20 to 30 years away, if ever.

So, this brings us back to oil. If there is a better energy source, I’d like to hear about it. Meanwhile, we need to drill here, now.