New Oil Boom Reshapes Global Oil World

Russ Steele

This is bad new for APPLE’s Peak Oil  mavens and good news for America. Low and behold this story is by the left wing National Public Radio. Here are some of the details.

“Two years ago, America was importing about two thirds of its oil. Today, according to the Energy Information Administration, it imports less than half. And by 2017, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts the US could be poised to pass Saudi Arabia and overtake Russia as the world’s largest oil producer.”

 There is more:

 Amy Myers Jaffe of Rice University says in the next decade, new oil in the US, Canada and South America could change the center of gravity of the entire global energy supply.

“Some are now saying, in five or 10 years’ time, we’re a major oil-producing region, where our production is going up,” she says. 

The US, Jaffe says, could have 2 trillion barrels of oil waiting to be drilled. South America could hold another 2 trillion. And Canada? 2.4 trillion. That’s compared to just 1.2 trillion in the Middle East and north Africa.

Jaffe says those new oil reserves, combined with growing turmoil in the Middle East, will “absolutely propel more and more investment into the energy resources in the Americas.”

Russia is already feeling the growth of American energy, Jaffe says. As the U.S. produces more of its own natural gas, Europe is free to purchase liquefied natural gas the US is no longer buying.

“They’re buying less natural gas from Russia,” Jaffe says. “So Russia would only supply 10 percent of European natural gas demand by 2030. That means the Russians are no longer powerful.”

I recommend reading the whole article HERE. Then ask yourself what are the domestic implications? With plentiful oil and cheap gas, do we really need to spend billions on subsides to develop alternative energy to get us off foreign oil, with all this oil in our own back yard.  What will Russia and Saudi Arabia do? They could be subsidizing US environmentalist groups to put a stop to this boom, including environmentalist efforts to demonize “fracking” which is the key technology to this boom.

EPA Update: An agency our of control — its time to go!

Russ Steele

Last night at the Tea Party Forum there was lots of agreement and some disagreements. One of the questions was what agencies should be removed to help reduce our growing national debt. This was one of the areas of disagreement. Paul Emory was for keeping environmental agencies to protect the earth. George thought the EPA should be the first agency to go.

It was up to the audience to decide which view they supported. Here is an update to help you make up your mind.

DailyCaller: The EPA is asking taxpayers to fund up to 230,000 new government workers to process all the extra paperwork, at an estimated cost of $21 billion. That cost does not include the economic impact of the regulations themselves.

“Hiring the 230,000 full-time employees necessary to produce the 1.4 billion work hours required to address the actual increase in permitting functions would result in an increase in Title V administration costs of $21 billion per year,” the EPA wrote in the court brief.

In a report released Wednesday EPA Inspector General found that the EPA failed to follow the Data Quality Act and its own peer review process when it issued the determination that greenhouse gases cause harm to “pubic health and welfare.”

“I appreciate the inspector general conducting a thorough investigation into the Obama-EPA’s handling of the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases,” Senator Inhofe said. “This report confirms that the endangerment finding, the very foundation of President Obama’s job-destroying regulatory agenda, was rushed, biased, and flawed. It calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.

According to Inhofe, Jackson has failed in her 2009 vow to commit the Agency to high transparency standards. The senator will instruct the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to hold hearings to investigate the EPA’s failings.

 Please note that the costs above do not take into account the cost to business of filling out all the paper work that the EPA needs of hire staff to process. Since EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has admitted before the Environmental and Public Works] committee, these regulations will have no affect on the climate,  I suggest  that we just put these unenforceable regulations in file 13 and forget the whole mess. They EPA will not need more staff and business will save $300 to $400 billion a year not complying to regulation that will not have any impact on the climate.

I am voting with George, the EPA has out lived it’s usefulness.

H/T to regular readers that brought this issue to my attention.

Let me see if I got this right we need jobs in NC, so GV hires a Colorado firm to develop web pages

Russ Steele

Out for breakfast this morning at the Sugar Shack in the SPD Market, while our trailer was being worked on a Plaza Tire, I happened to pick up a copy of The Union and saw this story:Marketing Grass Valley = next step in tourism effort

Grass Valley has spent about $50,000 so far to develop content — written information, photographs, videos and event schedules — at its website, www.GoGrassValley.com

Now, city leaders plan to ask private industry to partner with the city in a $25,000 campaign to encourage people to visit the website, City Administrator Dan Holler said Monday.

First off my smart phone could not find www.gograssvalley.com or just gograssvalley.com, nor could my computer at home. I guess the $50,000 web site does not exist yet.

Second, I was reminded that the County just spent over $90,000 thousand dollars developing gonevadacounty.com which was to be the definitive tourism site for all of Nevada County. Which raises the question, why is Grass Valley, developing a competing site in these tight money times.  Why not expand the County Site? Why have a competing site, there is ample room at the County Tourism site HERE.

Thirdly, why is Grass Valley using a Colorado firm [Colorado-based consultant Charles Bobo's Intentional Marketing]  to develop this competing website?  There are some excellent web development firms in Nevada County.

Finally, just how may tourism web sites does Nevada County need, both Chambers have web sites?  Cities have tourism web sites. The County has a tourism website. Are we just confusing people, spreading resources that puts every local tourism site farther down the search page on Google and Bing?

Are there other connections that we do not know about that would qualify a Colorado firms over a Nevada County web development company? Is Charles Bobo related to someone local?

Perhaps some one on the City Council, or City Staff can answer these questions?

Utility Rate Payers are going to PAY for “Green” Stupidity (Update)

Russ Steele

The Sac Bee has the story HERE:

Gov. Jerry Brown will sign legislation this morning authorizing the state to raise $200 million more from utility rate-payers to subsidize the installation of photovoltaic solar panels on homes and small businesses, and also extending the Public Utility Commission’s authority to collect $83 million annually from ratepayers for similar projects.

The bills are supported by the green-energy industry but opposed by the California Chamber of Commerce, which said the increased cost would burden businesses.

What is it that Democrats do not understand about the failed renewable energy business models that depends on subsidies to survive.  Taking money from you and I and then giving it to renewable energy companies that are going to charge us more for our energy use is not sustainable.  They eventually run our of subsidies and we are seeing in the news every day. But, California is doubling down.

The Governor and Legislature are ignoring the fact these subsidies scraped from our utility bills will raise the cost of doing business in California.  More business will be looking for the exit. Soon the only company that can make money on California will be the U-Haul Company, moving people to less expensive states.

Update (09-24-11)  This is how these funds have been spend in the past. Green Vehicles has gone bankrupt, no one would buy their three wheeled electric vehicles.

“Green Vehicles was one of a handful of companies statewide to win a California Energy Commission grant for developing 

“green” vehicle technologies, securing $2 million to reimburse expenses as the business grew. But with severe cash-flow problems, the state ultimately paid Green Vehicles less than $200,000.

The government is not very good at picking winners and losers. More details here.

H/T to a regular reader for this update tip.

US falls to 5th in global competitiveness – Obama should be pleased.

Russ Steele

Obama was clear, he wanted the United States to be a nation among peers, not to be exceptional. We are on our way down the ladder of exceptionalism. According to a World Economic Forum survey, the US is now 5th in the global economy competitiveness. The US was No.1 in 2008.

 The U.S. has tumbled further down a global ranking of the world’s most competitive economies, landing at fifth place because of its huge deficits and declining public faith in government, a global economic group said Wednesday.

The announcement by the World Economic Forum was the latest bad news for the Obama administration, which has been struggling to boost the sinking U.S. economy and lower an unemployment rate of more than 9 percent.

Switzerland held onto the top spot for the third consecutive year in the annual ranking by the Geneva-based forum, which is best known for its exclusive meeting of luminaries in Davos, Switzerland, each January. 

Singapore moved up to second place, bumping Sweden down to third. Finland moved up to fourth place, from seventh last year. The U.S. was in fourth place last year, after falling from No. 1 in 2008.

 More details here.   Is it 2012 yet?