Word: crude
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...drilling off the Florida and California coasts and then in much of Alaska. With oil, as with textiles, domestic production peaked because others began producing the same stuff cheaper, while we contrived to make our production more expensive. Today Alaska contains 18 billion bbl. of off-limits crude. We've embargoed at least an additional 30 billion bbl. beneath our coastal waters. And we could fuel many of our heavy trucks and delivery vehicles for a decade with the 20 billion bbl. worth of natural gas we've placed off limits in federal Rocky Mountain lands...
...worth of those frozen hydrocarbons off the shores of Alaska, the continental coasts and under the Rockies. There's little doubt they too can be extracted economically. If we try, we'll certainly find cheap ways to transform North America's 1 trillion bbl. worth of coal into crude as well. General Patton's Third Army completed its roll across Europe on coal liquefied with German technology...
...electronic valve controls, and you would be up another 17%. Even redesigning side mirrors to cut wind resistance would help. If automakers improved the fuel economy of SUVs and pickup trucks by 35%, the U.S. would save 1 million bbl. of oil a day, curbing its dependence on foreign crude. Greener SUVs would also free cash for home improvements and consumer spending, boosting the economy...
...good news is that as the price of crude has headed steadily upward, technological innovation has driven down the cost of alternative energy sources. Wind farms cover hillsides near Palm Springs and Altamont Pass in California and are springing up in the breezy Midwest and on the Atlantic Coast too. Solar cells can churn out electricity at around 25¢ to 35¢ per kilowatt-hour, falling but still a multiple of the cost of energy from coal-fired power plants. Canada is extracting oil from the tar sands of Alberta for an amazingly efficient price...
Another problem is refinery capacity. Even an unlimited supply of crude is useless if it can't be refined into gasoline, heating oil and other fuels. And for the past 20 years, says Gheit, the refining industry has been losing money--or has barely made it: "[The industry was] closing refineries because they weren't profitable." That set up a situation in which a hurricane like Katrina or Rita or last year's Ivan could trigger a shortage by putting even a few of the remaining U.S.-based refineries out of business for a few weeks. Yet the industry...