oil (Page 10)

An economist says that U.S. policy in the Middle East is driven by baseless fears that an “oil weapon” can cut off our fuel supply.

Roger J. Stern argues that the decades-old belief that petroleum-rich Persian Gulf nations must be appeased to keep oil flowing is imaginary and the threat of deployment of an “oil weapon” is bogus. He contends that untapped oil supplies are abundant, not scarce.

The real security problem, according to Stern, comes from market power. Persian Gulf oil producers collude to command artificially high prices that could never exist in a competitive market, producing excessive OPEC profits.
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Hybrid automobiles can be made even more environmentally friendly by the addition of solar cells. Environmentalist Steven Letendre says, “If the 200 million cars in the United States had 500 watts of solar cells integrated into their body panels, it would represent roughly one-seventh of the total installed generating capacity in the United States.” While it’s doubtful that people will embed solar cells in the bodies of their older cars, new hybrid automobiles could be manufactured this way.
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Whitley and Anne Strieber were shocked to discover recentlythat it cost $40 to fill the gas tank of their small car. Itused to cost half that much. It’s clear that the U.S. needsto stop relying on foreign oil, but how can we do it?

The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has a plan. Together withthe Pentagon, they have issued a plan for making the UnitedStates oil-free. They believe that U.S. business canincrease profits by using modern technologies that do notrely on oil. How to do this? We need to use the oil we douse more efficiently and substitute biofuels, natural gasand wind and solar power for the rest of our oil use.
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We earlier wrote about a research group that has put out apaper, inconjunction with the Pentagon (the world’s largest oilpurchaser), about how the U.S. can become a country that nolonger uses oil?or at least not as much of it. While weworry about the world oil shortage, which is raising oilprices dramatically and forcing us to trade with hostileArab countries, it turns out that the ocean floor is filledwith a fuel that could power the world for decades to come.We know there are abundant amounts of Helium-3, a nearlyperfect fuel, on the moon, but we haven’t yet figured outhow to get up there and mine it. Surely it would be easierto tap our ocean fuel reserves.
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