Department of the Interior Public Comment Period on Off-Shore Leasing

My understanding is that the Interior Department is soliciting public comment, for a sixty day period, starting January 21, on a five-year plan to lease offshore properties for oil and gas exploration. As is the case with most things in big government, I have searched for a web site that would allow me to provide my input, but to no avail. So instead, I wrote ALL of my elected representatives to provide them with my input so that they make sure my comments were placed in the hands of the proper bureaucrat. I suggest that you provide your comments to your elected representatives www.congress.org. My input to the Department of the Interior follows.

Dear Sir or Madam:

To place my comments in context, energy independence is not only a matter of economic prosperity; it is a matter of national defense. It represents a path forward for putting people back to work, while displacing $700B of payments to countries that are not friendly to us. Gross domestic product and per capita energy consumption are directly correlated: as we consume more energy, GDP goes up. The converse is also true.

This said, regardless of the current price of a barrel of oil, the United States should aggressively pursue development of all of its natural energy resources, starting with those that are proven, abundant, and under its direct control or the control of friendly nations. The following technologies should be deployed / developed in the order shown.

· Energy conservation education should be funded.
· We should be drilling for oil and natural gas wherever it is the least expensive to do so and where a high probability of success exists.
· We should be building more nuclear plants, an energy source that reduces greenhouse gases; is a “high density” energy source (viz., produces more power per acre of land than any other); is abundant in America, Canada, and Australia; is renewable if the country were to reprocess fuel; and could be the basis for conversion of coal to oil or supply of electric energy to automobiles.
· Clean coal should be pursued, because the United States has greater reserves of energy in the form of coal than Saudi Arabia has in oil. As noted above, coal and oil shale can be converted to oil through the use of electricity produced by nuclear power plants.
· The natural gas pipeline from Canada should be completed and the use of natural gas as an alternative to gasoline should be developed. Natural gas is also important to the development and deployment of fuel cell technology, which could over time become a significant source of residential energy supply as well as power transportation solutions.
· Monies should be invested in battery storage technology and fuel cells. These technologies are the key to unlocking the commercial potential of alternative energy sources, because they allow energy to be stored and deployed in mobile form.
· Wind power should be developed and deployed in those situations where it economical to do so. At present, this is a “feel good” technology. The energy density of a “wind farm” is .01 Megawatts per acre of land used compared to 2.8 Megawatts per acre of land used by a commercial electric coal plant (this calculation not only takes into consideration the capacity of the energy source but also its availability). Translation: a 2,259 Mw super-critical fossil plant uses 800 acres of land; an equivalent wind farm uses 200,000 acres of land. Even so, it is a proven technology that has more market share than any other alternative energy source, except conventional hydroelectric power. Wind power is followed closely by biomass.
· Other alternative energy sources should be explored based upon an “investment in success” principle rather than some “religious” fanaticism that we need to save the earth. Photovoltaic technologies should continue to be developed, but one should come to grips with the fact we have been investing in this technology for almost 40 years and to date solar represents 498 Mw of summer capacity in the United States out of 998,837 Mw of total deployed capacity. It is also very expensive in terms of dollars per kilowatts installed. A more promising source, in my view, is algae based oil production, which has demonstrated the ability to produce 18,000 to 22,000 gallons of fuel oil per year per acre of non-arable land, compared to the government’s “ethanol” mandate that produces 12 gallons of gasoline per arable acre of land.

Last, I do believe that global warming is occurring; however, I do not believe that man’s presence is contributing in any significant sense to that warming. I believe – based on scientific evidence – that the principal driver behind the warming is solar activity and that this is a naturally occurring, cyclical phenomenon. Spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to counter it will be throwing money down a rat hole. In fact, the wrongheaded belief that man’s carbon based activities are the culprit will exacerbate the problem by moving us toward investing in “green technologies” that are high cost, low energy density. The developmental costs will be borne disproportionately among the “successful” (otherwise known by “the rich” in progressive / socialist circles) so that the “poor” can have access to these energy sources. The end result of this will be another failed government program that has negative economic consequences, especially for the poor, which in turn affects our ability to address more pressing matters.