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Romney's energy claim

RJKarl

RJKarl

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His claim that North America could be energy self-sufficient by 2020 ranks up there with the best of Joe Izuzu.

How stupid does he think the American public is? Obama should eviscerate him during the debates on this.

We use 20% of the world's oil. We have only 3% of the world's reserves. Even if you play his game of semantics to add Mexico and Canada to the mix, it would be impossible.

What makes this even a more cynical lie is he doesn't include dramatically increasing CAFE standards or making every new vehicle in the US a hybrid by then as a part of the plan.

Wake Forest men's basketball has a better chance of going undefeated and winning the national championship this season than Romney's insane goal.
 
I don't really understand what energy self-sufficient or energy independence is supposed to mean. If someone could clarify that would be helpful. Are we trying to create some kind of closed system where the raw materials and refinement take place exclusively in the United States? How would we price it?
 
I assume it would all be on the global market, but we would just buy from North America. It seems like that would drive up the price of the North American product.
 
If we are totally self-sufficient, it would behoove us to lower the price. This would help our businesses a lot while weakening the economic impact of the Middle East.
 
The best way to be energy independent would be with renewable energy as there is not a world market for that. To make an equally absurd claim as Romney's, we should be fossil fuel free by 2020.
 
This is actually not that far from happening. It probably won't happen, and probably wouldn't if Romney is elected either, but it's not completely crazy.

In 2001, the US imported about 45% of its oil. That's down from about 60% importation in 2005. For that, you can thank North Dakota and Montana, for the most part. The country's economic ineptitude during the Obama administration has a secondary role. Fortunately most of the drilling is happening on private land...if it wasn't, we'd still be waiting for that oil.

Close to 40% of the imported amount already comes from North America, most via Canada and Mexico. Virgin Islands and Trinidad have refineries as well, and that could technically be considered North America as well. So right now, as Romney speaks, about 3/4 (a shade less) of our oil already comes from North America.

It's reasonable to expect Bakken production to increase between now and 2020, and so the share of oil that will be imported will decrease slightly. So you're probably looking at replacing about 20% of the total consumption by 2020, or about the level of the Gulf imports. It's not likely, but with a concerted effort toward CNG, it's certainly not impossible (CNG right now is about half the cost of gasoline at energy equivalent). Even at that, having all supply come from the Western Hemisphere...now that would be quite achievable (Venezuela accounts for 11% of imports at present).
 
The better question is not can we do it, but why would we want to do this? Why does it matter? What does it even mean? In a globalized economy I don't see the overwhelming benefits of this.
 
IMO the biggest benefit would be if the car companies made more CNG vehicles. Then you'd see more CNG stations and people using it. Even if the price went up 50% it would still be a buck a gallon improvement on petroleum.

We could stop pretending like we give a shit about the Middle East. Leave the shit to the Euros like it was before the 50s. Of course, as long as the government is in the pockets of big oil, we'd probably still fight for them and if there came a conflict between China and Europe over resources there. But if that didn't happen, that would save a lot of money spent on military operations there.

Oil also costs money (and oil) to transport. Bringing it a shorter distance should result in less money spent on it.

It also promotes domestic industry. A lot of the Canadian supply is refined in the US.

Finally there's the obvious strategic benefit. Gets much harder (read: nearly impossible) to cut off oil supplies if it's all in North America, unless you think someone's invading Canada sometime soon. Oil was a major strategic consideration in WWII and was a factor both in the US becoming involved in it and in the end of conflict in the European theater.
 
It's totally unrealistic to think American car companies can convert or build enough plants to produce enough CNG cars in the next eight years to make any impact on oil usage.

Hell, they would have to design and test them first. This would take years. It should be done, but it's impossible to be done in the time frame you and Romney are discussing.

We could immediately make laws (like we did the 70s about catalytic convertors) which state 100% of new cars produced in the US have to be hybrid or CNG. Of course the GOP would oppose this.
 
It could be done. It just probably won't.

There are already CNG cars being produced by major companies.

The problem with CNG right now is the same as hybrids...it's not cost effective and the added cost of a car takes years to pay down with fuel savings. But that won't last forever. Once the storage expense issue is resolved, I expect CNG will be, at a minimum, cost competitive with hybrids. There's no difference in cost aside from that.

It'll probably be a long time before I own either one, because I usually buy older used cars on the cheap. As long as the engine's good, I'm not really bothered by not having the shiny new toy.
 
Beats a space colony by 2020. So he's got that going for him. . .
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
The better question is not can we do it, but why would we want to do this? Why does it matter? What does it even mean? In a globalized economy I don't see the overwhelming benefits of this.
Click to expand...

National security. It doesn't do much good to have a dominant war machine if we can't fuel it up.
 
Romney's goals are as realistic as my winning seven gold medals in the next Winter Olympics.
 
RJKarl said:
Romney's goals are as realistic as my winning seven gold medals in the next Winter Olympics.
Click to expand...

So, you think Obama's plan to develop bio-fuels is the solution. No drilling, no fracking. Right? What would your plan be to deal with China's increasing consumption of energy?
 
Once again you listen to your masters' talking points not the truth. Obama freed tens of millions of square miles for drilling oil. NEVER in US history has more fracking been done than during the past four years.

We are producing more oil than ever and importing less than any time in the past quarter century.

Just ONCE I'd like you to use FACTS not your baseless talking points.
 
some monte stats i saw last week:

"Global investment in renewable power and fuels has increased six-fold since 2004 and totalled $US257 billion in 2011. The uptake of renewable energy is happening faster than most experts had expected, and the costs are also dropping faster. Over the past four years the cost of photovoltaic solar cells dropped by 75%, and by 45% in just the last year."

http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-commission-global-climate-action-gathers-momentum-8943
 
RJKarl said:
Once again you listen to your masters' talking points not the truth. Obama freed tens of millions of square miles for drilling oil. NEVER in US history has more fracking been done than during the past four years.

We are producing more oil than ever and importing less than any time in the past quarter century.

Just ONCE I'd like you to use FACTS not your baseless talking points.
Click to expand...

You are talking about pre-existing contracts. The Bureau of Land Management says you are full of it: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/num...ases-have-decreased-under-obama-data-blm-show

Facts indeed.
 
Like that claim that Obama would create 6m new jobs or whatever the hell it was. Candidates say stupid shit, always.
 
Boom, but the GOP opposed that...it's a market we could have controlled, but then the Koch Brothers, EXXON/Mobil and Bush allies would lose.

The GOP hates science and real progress. Of course that's where the future is.
 
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