Ok, so now in the aftermath of Katrina, let's consider a few things about our nation's energy policy.
First, we must begin with a few facts:
- We have a large amount of natural gas, and a smaller but significant amount of oil, in the gulf of mexico off the coast of Florida. For political reasons this remains untapped - while every other state bordering the gulf has drilling occurring offshore.
- We have an enormous amount of oil in the form of shale in our nation's west, all untapped, and all proven. Indeed, the proven shale reserves exceed the entirety of the proven reserves in the Middle East!
Now, one must ask, are we crazy - or crazy like a fox?
We're crazy if we simply don't drill and recover because we are NIMBY idiots (Not In My Back Yard.) But we are crazy like a fox if we intend to deplete the Middle East's oil FIRST, keeping ours in reserve, and then refusing to sell ours outside the United States when the rest of the global supply tightens to the point that the remainder of the globe's demand exceeds available global (ex-US) supply!
I'm not sure which form of crazy we are.
But what I do know about this is:
- At $40bbl, shale becomes economically recoverable. At lower prices, it is not. The processes to actually recover and refine this oil were developed during the shocks of the 1970s, but never put into practice, because it quickly became uneconomic. If oil is destined to remain at or above $40bbl from the Middle East, Russia and South America, then we should be recovering the oil from shale for domestic use only immediately.
- The natural gas and oil off the coast of Florida must be recovered. This is simply a matter of energy independance and redundancy of supply. As was seen with Katrina, a disaster in one area of the gulf presently screws the entirety of the eastern US's fuel supply. We cannot allow this to happen again, and the only way to prevent it is through diversification.
- Likewise, we must diversify refinery location. The NIMBY folks must be told where to shove it. We must be able to meet our refining needs in this nation domestically, so that we are not forced to import finished petroleum products from elsewhere. We CAN - and we MUST. We have not built a new refinery in the United States in 25 years, and have closed several around the nation. We need to build a dozen new, high-capacity refineries tomorrow, strategically located so as to intercept supply routes. We must also build additional deep-water transfer ports for crude, so that we have excess capacity - the loss of one geographic area's refining and terminal capacity must not in the future lead to the shortages and price spikes that we saw with Katrina.
Now this prescription is certain to offend many. Especially those who live on the coast of Florida, I suspect. But before one takes a cheap shot at me for these suggestions, let me remind you that I personally live on the coast of Florida, and in an area which has known, proven offshore natural gas deposits.
I support drilling for them.
For the sake of America, you should too.
