Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Venezuala to Exxon - No Oil For You

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/12/venezuela.oil.ap/index.html

I am really suprised their wasn't more about this in the news today.

Posted by Shutter Flutters at 11:04 PM

1 comment:

Mike In SATX said...

After listening to Hugo Chavez's rhetoric with Exxon/Mobil, I say it's time to shut Venezuela (and the rest of OPEC)up and bring the price of oil back down to where it really belongs, about $35-$50 or less per barrel. The US is the largest importer of Venezuelan oil, and Venezuela is the the 4th largest exporter of oil to the US (by volume).

If I were President Bush, I would immediately draft and sign an executive order to do the following:

1. Uncap and start pumping every oil well in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas that was capped as part of the "Strategic Oil Reserve";

2. Allow for immediate drilling in ANWR, Colorado and Idaho, while instructing oil companies to exercise good stewardship of natural resources (Yes, the technology exists, we don't live in the '70's any more...);

3. Allow for immediate drilling of the new oil reserves on the Gulf Coast. If it's good enough for Cuba and Mexico to drill there, it's good enough for us;

4. Allow oil compnanies to modernize their existing refineries and build new, more technologically advanced refineries. If we don't have the processing capability, all that oil does us no good.

That's the short-term (20-30 years) solution to our oil problems. Let's start using that strategic oil reserve!

Now, before you all go ballistic and say there's no long-term solution, here's the rest of my "proposal":

1. Allow for the design, construction and operation of 20-30 nuclear power plants. Make all of these new power plants the SAME design, so parts and equipment are cheaper, technicians can quickly move from one plant to the next without having to relearn everything they were taught, and the cost of nuclear power will dramatically decrease per KWH;

2. Authorize funding for joint ventures with universities, private industry and government agencies (like the DoD, DoE, etc) to find ways to exploit new, PRACTICAL energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, and fuel cell (this one's great, because it allows people to use the same internal combustion engines they already have in their vehicles, but with ZERO emissions! The byproduct of internal combustion of hydrogen and oxygen is...you guessed it...WATER!!!)

I realize some people are afraid of nuclear technology, because all they think about is either nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, or a "China Syndrome" type nuclear meltdown. A couple of words on this:

1. A nuclear power plant only uses THREE to FOUR percent uranium, per fuel rod. This is not weapons-grade uranium by any standard. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to at least 20 percent.

2. Nuclear power is actually a lot safer than fossil-fuel burning plants. The early mistakes problems with nuclear power (TMI, Chernobyl) have helped our scientists learn much about what NOT to do. Most of people's fears about a nuclear meltdown are unfounded, and fueled by movies like "The China Syndrome".

And, at some point, our scientists WILL figure out the process of nuclear FUSION (current nuclear power plants use the process of FISSION), then we will have power plants that, like fuel-cell cars, will have ZERO emissions and ZERO toxic waste. And, we SHOULD (theoretically speaking) be able to "burn" all those fuel rods in the fusion reactors and do away with that radioactive waste problem.

Your comments?

February 15, 2008 at 6:41 AM

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