Crude Oil Price Instability: It’s 1979 All Over Again

Crude oil prices are back where they were eight weeks ago. Over the past two months, oil prices climbed from $122 dollars per barrel to $145 dollars, and they’re back at $122 dollars again. Price instability of this magnitude hasn’t been seen since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and instability in the Middle East appears to be a factor this time as well.

According to the Statistical Review of World Energy from British Petroleum, the Middle East holds 61 percent of the world’s remaining proven oil reserves.

The video newscast containing this story is here.

T. Boone Pickens Wants Wind to Pump Water

Legendary oil billionaire T.Boone Pickens is in the news lately as he promotes his plan to make America independent from foreign oil. The “Pickens Plan” calls for a vast network of wind turbines to be installed in a corridor stretching from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota. Generating all that electricity from wind would free-up the natural gas currently being used to generate electricity, allowing us to use it to run our cars, according to the plan.

Critics say Pickens’ energy plan is providing cover for another plan being developed by the oil barren: Pickens is hoping to pump billions of gallons of water from an aquifer beneath the Texas Panhandle and ship it to Dallas and other major cities as drinking water. The power line corridors for his wind project, to be created by seizing private property through eminent domain, would also serve the $1.5 billion water project. Other critics of his plan question the wisdom of switching our driving addiction from oil dependence to natural gas. The production of natural gas in the U.S. has been declining since 1971.

The video newscast containing this story is here.

Santa Feans Call for a National Public Power Grid

A group in Santa Fe convened last Friday as part of a grassroots effort to provide input to the Democratic party platform. The meeting was organized by local volunteers for Barack Obama as part of a nationwide initiative by the Obama campaign to solicit planks for the party’s Energy and Environment platform. Among the recommendations sent to democratic party leaders from Santa Fe was a call to make the U.S electric power grid public, and then use it as the centerpiece of an economic revival plan.

The group also called for a feed-in tariff law at the federal level to reward independent producers of electricity from renewable sources, and it rejected the so-called “revenue decoupling” programs that guarantee utility revenue streams even as customers reduce their purchases of electricity.

Under a law passed this year, electricity customers in New Mexico began paying a surcharge on their monthly electric bills to make up for declining revenues resulting from energy efficiency.

The video newscast containing this story is here.

Clarifying Al Gore's Position on Nuclear Power

Several readers have asked me to clarify Gore's position on nuclear power in his new 10-year carbon-free electricity plan. (I really wish you folks would post comments instead of sending me emails!)

Gore announced his plan July 17th at Constitution Hall, and like other politicians, Gore selects his words carefully. In fact, his 3200-word speech doesn't include the word "nuclear" at all. Katie Couric at CBS interviewed Gore after his speech, but let him off easy on his answer about nuclear power. Gore said, “We have a lot of nuclear plants in the U.S., and … I'm not anti-nuclear. I'm a little skeptical that's it's gonna play a much bigger role than it does now. I think it'll continue to play a role.” Hmmm. Way to go, Katie.

The group “We Can Solve It”, founded by Gore, reports that his plan includes a mix of energy sources, including “existing nuclear”.  That’s vague but also misleading, appearing to mean existing “power plants” rather than the existing “percentage of the electricity mix”, which is around 20 percent.

Fortunately some reporters from Associated Press questioned him in more detail. World Nuclear News reported, “He later admitted, however, to the Associated Press that his plan relies on nuclear power for the 20% of US electricity it currently produces.” Even that statement could be misinterpreted, but the Arizona Star reported it solidly:  “Gore told the AP his plan counts on nuclear power plants still providing about a fifth of the nation's electricity…”.

So I maintain that in order for nuclear to still be contributing one fifth of the nation’s electricity ten years from now, we will need to build a lot of new nuclear power plants. According to the EIA, we need to add about 120 gigawatts of new generation over the next ten years to meet projected growth and to replace retiring power plants. (The nuclear fleet alone is 26-years old, on average.) So if nuclear is still going to make up one fifth of the mix, an estimated 24 gigawatts of that new generation will need to be nuclear.

If all this is too much of a bummer, check out Harvey Wasserman’s great post today at CommonDreams telling how unlikely the nuclear revival is.