Friday Oct 6, 2017
USA Energy Independence at Hand
Jimmy Carter created the Energy Department to achieve US energy independence. The only thing achieved was mass employment for Washington bureaucrats who produce no energy. In researching the department, one discovers that the Energy Group operates numerous ‘research laboratories.’ In 2014 it employed just over 12,000 Federal Employees and spent some $27 billion.
Some forty years later all that is changing thanks to fracking. Us crude exports were a record 1.984 million barrel a day mbd in September. That is up 500,000 bpd from the previous week’s record level.
These levels have surpassed the record set in May of 1.3mbd. To put that in perspective, Kuwait ships more than two million barrels of oil a day. While the US is still a net importer of oil, most of the imports are now from Canada.
US Crude is priced some $6-7 dollars less than Brent. This is enough to offset the cost of shipping to Europe and Asia.
President Trump might take note that the second largest market for US oil exports is China. Its purchases are up nine fold over last year averaging 180,000 barrels a day. King Salman is huddling with Vlad Putin as I write hoping to get his oil price back to $60. No wonder, US energy independence is now a near given.
How big is fracking? Put another way, there is a color photograph of fracking equipment located in Mentone, Texas in today’s Wall Street Journal. A few weeks back the WSJ featured a photograph taken in Kermit, Texas. When Mentone and Kermit rate color photographs in the WSJ, fracking is a very big deal.
As I write Friday morning it appears West Texas crude will finish the week over $50. Share prices of energy and service companies continue to surge. Again, we believe the low has occurred in the crude price at $44.
Electric Cars
The computer business has always labored under the ‘expect too much too soon’ assumption. I learned FORTRAN in the late 1960s at UT Austin, but one could solve problems, even then, faster on a mechanical calculator than on a computer. Colleges are using e-Books. That is fine for fiction, but not so much for an accounting text where one needs to access the sample problems the homework problem and the time value tables all back and forth.
Which brings me to the current topic of electric cars. At this point, trying to build a two-ton totally electric car to compete with a two ton internal combustion engine car is nonsense. If we want to drive from San Antonio to El Paso an electric car is totally impractical. Even the Chevy Bolt range of 230 miles would have us down for the day in San Angelo and then in Van Horn, just to recharge the battery overnight.
But, if sanity prevailed (when did that ever happen with environmentalists?) we would select the right tool for the right job. Drive by any public university or city park and observe maintenance personnel in Deere Gators or Kawasaki Mules utilizing all manner of small, efficient vehicles powered by electric or small internal combustion engines. Sure this is great for the government, so why not for the rest of us? If we have bicycle lanes, why not let electric golf cart sized vehicles share them as well? I have advocated this for years.
A golf course is about 6,500-7,000 yards long. That is about four miles. A standard electric golf cart can make this distance on a single charge. An electric vehicle could easily be used for short distance urban errands. Fed Ex got permission to deliver Christmas packages in our neighborhood via a gasoline powered golf cart and small trailer. What about the rest of us? A light weight vehicle equipped with turn signals and brake lights would work just fine for such local grocery and drug store errands. Such vehicles require far less materials to construct, and would emit zero pollution if electric and very little using perhaps a fuel-injected 650 cc internal combustion engine.
The realization of electric vehicles here and now does not lack for technology. All we need is for local, state, and federal government to extend to us the same privileges they allow themselves. I am still waiting for that to happen,
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