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Guest Post: Gulf Spill Puts US Energy Bill On Slippery Slope
Submitted by www.oilprice.com
Gulf Spill Puts US Energy Bill on Slippery Slope
With energy, Senate Democrats find themselves between a rock and two hard places. Nonetheless, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., have introduced their climate and energy bill.
Its timing is awful. Its fate is uncertain. Yet its sponsors felt it had to be done now.
While the Gulf of Mexico is being damaged by a runaway well, spewing millions of gallons of oil-like bile from hell, any energy bill has the chance that it will be amended to become an anti-energy bill and will fail when hoped-for Republican support evaporates.
At present there is fairly wide industry support for the Kerry-Lieberman bill, particularly from the electric utility industry. Leaders of the industry and its affiliated groups, like the Nuclear Energy Institute, were in on the writing of the bill. Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, and Jim Rogers, president of Duke Energy, stood shoulder to shoulder with Kerry and Lieberman when they announced their bill.
The three pressure sources driving the bill are:
• The November elections and the desire of endangered Democrats to show that they have done something about climate change and have tackled long-term energy problems.
• The Environmental Protection Agency plans to start regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant next year, if Congress does not act.
• The environmental disaster in the Gulf, and its effect on public attitudes to energy development and energy companies.
The bill differs from the House bill, passed last June, which emphasized cap-and-trade to control carbon emissions; although both bills introduce carbon restriction by sector over time, and could be reconciled in a House-Senate conference committee, according to Chris Holly of The Energy Daily.
The carbon-reducing provisions in the Senate bill not only rely on pollution credits but also a wide range of incentives, including carbon capture, enhanced subsidies for nuclear and alternative energy.
The bill’s original intent was also to give a boost to offshore drilling, thus pleasing Republicans and the oil industry. But the Gulf disaster has changed that. The bill as introduced now contains language that will allow states to prohibit drilling off their shores—a potential killer of nearly all new leasing and exploration. And drilling is pushed 75 miles out to sea.
Just weeks ago, the bill looked as though it could pass the Senate with support from at least one Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the original authors. But Graham withdrew when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said he would put immigration reform ahead of the energy bill.
While Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader in the Senate, has come out against the bill, Graham still likes it but believes its chances of passage are slight. Kerry still believes Graham would vote with the bill, giving the Democrats that essential 60th vote, if the Democrats all stick together, which is unlikely with the bill’s nuclear and offshore leasing provisions.
A more likely result is that the bill will open old debates about big energy, like oil and nuclear, and pit it against alternative energy, mostly wind.
Comment on the bill has come slowly, as interest groups calculate the political alignment and realignment that the bill will bring about.
Offshore drilling gets more politically toxic as each day of failure to contain the situation in the Gulf passes. Nuclear gets more dubious as cost calculations rise. With or without legislation, the smart money is turning to natural gas for electrical generation and interstate trucking. At present, gas is cheap and plentiful.
There is a lot of money—$2 billion—in the bill for carbon-capture and sequestration, but this is ill-defined; and the idea of pumping millions and millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the earth remains a legal nightmare and a hard sell to some environmentalists. Clean coal, it seems, can never be pristine.
Here, then, is a bill for all seasons. Actually, more of a manifesto: an election manifesto.
Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Gulf-Spill-Puts-US-Energy-Bill...
By Llewellyn King in Washington DC for OilPrice.com who offer detailed analysis on Crude oil, Natural Gas, Geopolitics, Gold and most other Commodities. They also provide free political and economic intelligence to help investors gain a greater understanding of world events and the impact they have on certain regions and sectors. Visit: http://www.oilprice.com
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"With energy, Senate Democrats find themselves between a rock and two hard places. Nonetheless, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., have introduced their climate and energy bill."
Hey. He forgot that it's proper to call them
"The Honorable Senator John Kerry and the Honorable Senator Joseph Lieberman."
HOW TO STOP THE SPILL
You have to get a remote controlled needle or pencil sized rod with a wire attached
The control system is much like the drillers now use that can cause a drill head to turn a right angle underground and proceed horizontally in a layer of gas or oil
The rod has to be small so it can get through the turbulence at the mouth of the well
Once it gets into the rock shaft made by the original well drilling operation the turbulence will be less
Then, oince 50' into the rock shaft, the rod extends 4 or so horizontal thin pins into the side of the rock shaft -- thin so they do not get carried away --- these pins drill into the rock shaft so the pencil is now secure 50 deep into the shaft -- which has the oil gushing
Now along the line at the end of the pencil rod a mandrel is inserted --- the mandrel is about 4 inches in diameter-- and pulled via a pully at the pencil rod into the rock shaft
Once 50' into the rock shaft, the mandrel is inflated stopping the oil flow
rockefellers' boy in the white house will pull it through.
You sir, are astute.
The progress of Johann Gottlieb Fichte marches on even today.
The three pressure sources driving the bill are:
The November elections and the desire of endangered Democrats to show that they have done something about climate change...
Yeah that's pretty much the number one concern on the average Americans' mind right now: what new bogus, rent-seeking scheme can the federal government craft for itself and how can I help?
Karl Rove must be shaking in his skivies in the face of that political genius.
How about: What the fuck are you government whores planning on doing to prevent the number one concern in my life from becoming potatoes?
Freshly appointed Presidential Oil Spill Commission Chair, William K Reilly is a big time Cap 'n Trade dude and gainfully employed at senior levels by ConocoPhillips, DuPont, TPG etc.
Because this whole thing is so outragous I can't resist re-posting what I wrote on GW's story from the 22nd....
***This is the greatest rent-seeking ploy ever devised: securitize the fucking air, force private businesses to buy the credits and then facilitate their trading in the capital markets...what could possibly go wrong?
Oh but wait, it gets better. Franklin Raines, the former CEO who drove Fannie Mae into the ditch, "invented" a system to trade these carbon credits (which is great because how else would the whole buying and selling thing work?) and then he successfully patented it the day the Dems took control of Congress in '06 (ta-da!). Fannie Mae now jointly owns the patent and there is likely a plan to re-birth that bankrupt government shit-show into some kind of money-grubbing carbon gatekeeper.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Fannie-Mae-owns-patent...
REAL Reality TV:
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/ho...
TinFoil: Can't get Cap-n-tax passed? having problems getting an energy bill pushed through? no problem.. actually, cause one that supports your cause and "problem solved!"
It's time we had some straight talk on climate change...
1) Climate change threatens the survival of the human species.
2) It's imminent. Most of us will see problems in our lifetime, and for sure our children will experience problems.
3) It's already too late to prevent some serious problems no matter what we do, but it might still be possible to avoid a total disaster.
4) Despite all the talk, CO2 is going up in every country of the world.
5) CO2 must go down - not just stabilize at current level.
6) The only way to reduce CO2 is to reduce our material standard of living and/or reduce our population.
Straight talk my ***
1) Wrong - It endangers it far less now than in any time in the past. I don't think Cavemen had winches, and helicopters to pull people out of cave-ins. The world has been colder and hotter.
If anything, the cap n trade legislation is 1000x the killer than the threat.
2)It's imminent? Yeah weather has been crazy since the Earth coalesced. Only idiotic people unaware of reality don't realize this, and thus now it is somehow different. Katrina was not the biggest Hurricane ever. People will get killed by weather, in the future less than in the past. Why less? again we have technology that stops the effects of weather. Strong houses = no fly away during tornadoes and hurricanes.
3) Wrong. Since the Earth's temperature constantly changes, also since it coalesced, you can bet your right nut the weather will be no more or less a disaster than in the past.
4) C02 is going up. Toxicity level is about ten thousand times higher, or more. Meaning given our current rate we will suffocate if we don't stop this in a few tens of thousands of years. That is, if it all stays in the atmosphere and doesn't bond with other stuff, like the seabed.
5) So says the magical formulas that have been fudged, and like AIG are are interpreted as well as a blind man reading the NYSE ticker. Then idiots with an agenda hype it all up. Congratulations the sky is falling. Except look around, it isn't. Don't blame me if you didn't see hurricanes before Katrina, or just noticed big earthquakes after sumatra, etc, etc. No one wants toxic levels of CO2, but it isn't going to happen. Let's focus on real pollution like dumping of chemicals into streams and crap, not this other fake bs. Kind of makes environmentalists look bad when they buy into the bullcrap and ignore the real pollution.
6) Again, there is no problem, thus no need for drastic measures. We can fit 1 trillion people on this planet, easily. Only idiots think we need to depopulate.
When it comes to energy, it's all about three words
ENERGY FLUX DENSITY
What is fusion? What are the rest.
It's like a mule versus the starship Enterprise. Literally. Which do you want to spend a couple of trillion on? Crappy wind power? More drilling for oil? Or fusion?
Simple fusion.
With nuclear power to bridge the gap.
None of the other mainstream ideas, wind, solar, biomass, biofuels come close. What's the net energy of biodeisel or many square miles of solar panels versus fusion? Again a drop compared to an ocean.
Only the banksters and those they FOOLED want cap and trade. Because cap and trade is just another derivatives scheme.
My fellow dems, quit looking like the republicans did supporting bush. Yes, you do look THAT stupid.
Simple fusion
Whats so simple about it?
Larouche is just another international think-tank scam peddling subscriptions to the Starship Enterprise cult. I guess his idea is shipping 4 billion slaves to the moon to mine the fuel for his "simple" fusion reactors that to date do not work with any fuel cycle.
Everything jmc8888 said plus the following:
1) One good sized volcano going off releases more CO2 than all the US 'gas-guzzlers' and more in a year.
2) You want more desertification? Cut CO2. Crops like the stuff and need it to grow.
Government is inept: they want to have cake and to eat it as well.
Better a simple $5 per gallon gas tax and be done with it (for this year. Next year is $6 then $8 then $12). A large gas tax would cut to the energy waste problem at the center of our economic calamity.
>>>>
WAH! Nobody wants a high gas tax! Guess what? 'Gas taxes are inflationary!'
Please Lord, let us have a little bit of inflation.
Oil prices over $80 crash the economy anyway! A couple of years ago it was $147 to crash the economy. What does that mean? It means the economy flops over, deader than a doornail at ever- shrinking crude oil prices.
Wait 'til the economy crashes @ $20 oil; @ $5 oil crashing there is no more 'economy' and people forget how to spell it. This is what wasting a trillion barrels of oil does, it prices the remainder into something besides economic viability. A gas tax, a tax on automobiles, a tax on horsepower, a national driving license (that is as hard to get as a pilot's license), rationing, eliminating parking, etc. cutting energy 'use' in half and maybe there is chance to avoid the deflationary end- game. Where $5 oil causes the economy to crash.
Oops! Cannot do that! The pitiful helpless giant government is too busy pandering. Whoo boy! Wait until people stop driving because they don't have any money and can't get any in return for their lovely daughters ....
Natural progression, control over:
Gold-->Oil-->Life itself (Water and Biotech)
and you inherit the earth.
The goldbugs around here are going in the wrong direction.
Can we follow cap'n trade with Cap'n Crunch. How about a Lie-and-steal bill.
+1
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