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Opposites
Attract
April
30, 2010
In
the news this week are two totally opposite stories with only two things
in common, energy and the ocean.
The
first story, as we all know, is the aftermath of the sinking of the
Deepwater Horizon, the offshore drilling platform owned by
Transocean and leased to BP, formally British Petroleum who recently
changed their name to Beyond Petroleum. 11 workers are still missing
and we all know what the outcome of that will be. Right now, a major
oil slick in lapping the coast of Louisiana and is threatening to do
severe environmental damage to the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to
Florida.
Now,
people on the side of offshore drilling claim that this is an
isolated incident, it isn't.
According
to www.oilrigdisasters.uk.com,
the top nine deadliest oil rig disasters have claimed 749 lives. The
top 10 most expensive disasters have cost $3.7 billion. There is no
way to calculate the environmental impact that these disasters have
caused.
Lets
move on.
On
the lighter side of the news, the Obama administration has approved
Americas very first offshore wind farm off the coast of
Massachusetts. Dubbed the Cape Wind Project, the 130 wind turbines
will generate 430 megawatts of electricity with no emissions of any
kind and no chance of explosion or major environmental impact. The
projected cost of the project is roughly $900 million. That sounds
like allot of money, and it is, but it really isn't when you compare
it to a coal plant or a nuclear energy plant. A new coal fired power
plant costs over $4 billion to build, and a new nuclear power plant
costs upwards of $10 billion and takes as much as 10 years to build.
The Deepwater Horizon cost $350 million to build in 2001.
Currently
we pump roughly 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from the 4000 oil
drilling platforms in US waters. We produce domestically 5 million
barrels a day and import 20 million. We consume over 25 million barrels
of oil per day. Based on these numbers, in order to get off of
foreign oil completely, we would have to build roughly 6 times as
many oil source locations in the US. Its simply not possible. If we
replace much of that oil with bio fuels and dramatically reduce
consumption, that number can be reduced significantly. It can be
done.
Take
this information as you will, but for me, I can confidently say I
rest my case.
Mr.
Green
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