Obama's Senate Tax Plan Will Outspend the 2009 Stimulus: $858 Billion in New Spending

A veritable Christmas tree for programs which would die in the free market without federal help, like ethanol, commuter trains, and wind and solar energy.

Conservative Republicans should help the Socialists like Senator Sanders filibuster it.

The story is here.

I-90 Will Be Closed Tomorrow Across South Dakota

A 200 ton lump of coal is headed for Mt. Rushmore for some reason.

Natural Gas Reserves in US Increase 35%, The Most in Forty Years

And supplies in other countries, also from shale fields, are on the increase and are making energy, economic and political independence more certain for many more nations than ever before:

Last year, the “Potential Gas Committee,” a group of specialists linked to the Colorado School of Mines, reported the biggest increase in US natural-gas reserves in its 44-year history, from 1,532 trillion cubic feet (TCF) in 2006 to 2,074 TCF in 2008.

Since the US used approximately 23 TCF in 2008 at a unit cost in excess of $9.00, the vast new reserves point to prices closer to $6.00 going forward and decades of supply. Americans should get serious about committing to compressed natural gas powered automobiles instead of gimmicks like electric and hybrid electric cars in order to bridge the gap to a cleaner energy future.

Read the fascinating details from Peter Foster for The Financial Post here.

BLACKOUT NATION

More "year of the black:" black president, Chicago Blackhawks, black beaches, and now blackouts.


Thom Patterson reports for CNN.com on the growing problem of electricity blackouts because of an aging electrical grid, now an estimated $1.5 trillion problem, at which the current administration has thrown roughly $4 billion, a drop in the bucket:

Experts on the nation's electricity system point to a frighteningly steep increase in non-disaster-related outages affecting at least 50,000 consumers.

During the past two decades, such blackouts have increased 124 percent -- up from 41 blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota.

In the most recently analyzed data available, utilities reported 36 such outages in 2006 alone.


Read Patterson's worthwhile article here. 

OBAMA'S LAZY CLEAN AIR AND ENERGY POLICIES

The Associated Press is reporting today "President Barack Obama wants federal workers to cut down on business travel and commuting by car as he seeks to reduce heat-trapping emissions produced by the federal government." Remarkably, the report indicates "the federal government is the largest energy consumer in the US economy," which does make sense when you consider that with 2.7 million employees, it's also the biggest employer. By using mass transit, Obama thinks emissions like CO2 can be reduced by federal commuters by 13% in the next ten years, which doesn't make much sense. The federal vehicle fleet comes to about 600,000 vehicles, so that leaves a minimum of 2.1 million federal workers who aren't all going to be fitting on the Washington Metro, the expansion plans for which involve only a million daily riders by 2030. The rest will have to take . . . the bus?

More to the point about clean air, is Obama so uninformed that he doesn't know that CO2 emissions from CNG (compressed natural gas) vehicles are nearly 40% fewer than from  conventionally powered ones? Does he realize that barely 1% of the federal fleet uses CNG (just 6,472 vehicles)? Does he know that 8-11 million vehicles worldwide use CNG, but that in the US there are only 150,000 doing so, most of which are buses? Does he know that huge deposits of shale gas in this country have been discovered in just the last few years, giving us 45 years of energy independence, if we want it? Does he know that Honda Motor Company already has quite a long history of successful production of its CNG powered Civic, sold now in several states besides California?

Has he ever looked at this map of the existing infrastructure for the US natural gas pipeline network and pondered its potential?

Every passing day proves that Obama is a man without a grip on reality, and with very little imagination.

MAKING AFGHANISTAN SAFE FOR THE OPIUM TRADE

Not that long ago, going to war meant destroying the enemy's ability to make it on you.

That quaint idea has been replaced by the asshats' better idea of "winning hearts and minds."

In Afghanistan we're trying to do that with electricity, which the Taliban in turn steals in areas it controls and "sells" to the locals, who use it to power irrigation pumps which help the opium poppies grow. Like good organized criminals, the Taliban then also skims the drug trade pipeline to Iran to fund its insurgency.

The electricity skimming operation nets the Taliban about $4 million annually, according to this report in The Wall Street Journal. But the drug skimming must net them far more. The United Nations estimates the export value of Afghanistan's opium production at $4 billion annually, only a quarter of which may actually go to the growers.

You'd think "shoot 'em all, let God sort 'em out" would be the appropriate response to this situation, if it were a real war. But then you would be wrong. Instead, America is making Afghanistan safe for the Taliban gangsters and for the world's primary source of heroin.

So far the Kajaki hydroelectric power plant in the south has gotten $100 million in upgrades from the US. $400 million more is being requested for 2011, some of which will go to fund electricity generation also in the southern city of Kandahar.

In a real war the dams and power plants would be targets. That we can't even imagine the necessity of destroying them explains why there's not going to be a victory in Afghanistan for the US.

HOW TO PLUG THE OIL LEAK IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

H/T Theo

Obama Allocates A Drop In The Bucket For A Critical $100 Billion Problem

So says Alex Kingsbury, here:

But while it may have been a technical wonder at the time of construction, the nation's power grid has become dangerously antiquated over the past few decades. If technology in the home is racing ahead at broadband speed, the power grid is stuck back in the days of rotary-dial phones. According to industry statistics, the dog food industry spends more on research and development than the electrical sector does. Aging technology means more frequent blackouts, a greater vulnerability to computer hackers, and, perhaps most insidious, colossal inefficiency. As part of the economic stimulus package, the Obama administration has pledged $3.4 billion toward "smart grid" technology—the next generation of infrastructure, meant to stabilize the grid in the event of a failure, incorporate green technology, and vastly improve efficiency. But those billions are a drop in the bucket toward bringing the entire national grid into the 21st century, which could take decades and cost upwards of $100 billion, some experts estimate.

Meanwhile the nearly $800 billion stimulus package gets spent preserving government sector votes, I mean jobs.

The Energy Balance of Power is Shifting

From Investor's Business Daily:

If estimates hold up, energy experts say the shale gas that underlies large parts of the United States will be able [to] meet our country's needs for the next 100 years. The Department of Energy expects shale gas to account for 50% of natural gas production by 2020 if not sooner.

What's more, the same drilling techniques for shale gas are now being used in several European countries, including France and Poland, to extract their own supplies. Both China and India have huge shale-gas resources. Geologists say shale gas is so plentiful in some parts of the world that it could meet global needs for several centuries.

Read more here.

The Oil Shortage

A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.

Well, there's a very simple answer: Nobody bothered to check the oil.

We just didn't know we were getting low.

The reason for that is purely geographical.

Our OIL is located in: Alaska, California, Coastal Florida, Coastal Louisiana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Our DIPSTICKS are located in: DC.

Any questions?

No?

Didn't think so.

h/t cg

My Favorite Blown Prediction of 2009

As reported at Bloomberg on July 16, 2009:

Crude oil will collapse to $20 a barrel this year as the recession takes a deeper toll on fuel demand, according to academic and former U.S. government adviser Philip Verleger.

A crude surplus of 100 million barrels will accumulate by the end of the year, straining global storage capacity and sending prices to a seven-year low, said Verleger, who correctly predicted in 2007 that prices were set to exceed $100. Supply is outpacing demand by about 1 million barrels a day, he said.

“The economic situation is not getting better,” Verleger, 64, a professor at the University of Calgary and head of consultant PKVerleger LLC, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “Global refinery runs are going to be much lower in the fall. If the recession continues and it’s a warm winter, it’s going to be devastating.”

Tonight's price is $83 and change per barrel.

Who knows? Maybe he was just early.