Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Outsourcing Petroleum Production

The Congressional Research Service has tabulated the totals and acknowledges that the United States currently has the world's largest known fossil fuel reserves in terms of total oil equivalent—almost three times as much as Saudi Arabia.

Look at the world and see how much of our problems are caused by our energy demands and here the government is telling us we have enough at home to sustain us, on the natural gas side for perhaps 200 years. Yet we continue to outsource it. We will not drill in the Gulf but will subsidize Petrobras from Brazil to do so. This is an outsourcing that influences our safety and the world's security. It makes us draw from the international supply when we have our own. It means that all the emerging nations, with their growing thirst for energy, have to compete with us for oil, when we could just develop our own. It would bring productive work with productive spin-offs to the United States.

It's better for the world if we do not? Emerging nations use cheap energy and increasing emerging nations will use increasing amounts. And they will compete with us for it. How is that good for them or us? Worse, how will the world react when the inevitable conflict erupts in the Middle East and the oil reserves are inaccessible? How will the Earth suffer when nuclear powers will not accept a return to the steam age?

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