Real "Energy Independence"?

Politicians (typically congressmen and women) routinely cite "Energy Independence" as a laudable national goal. What exactly this glossy slogan means is another issue altogether. Most policymakers would argue that deriving all sources of energy consumption from domestic production is virtually impossible in today's globalized economic system. Renewable energy is highly touted, but for the foreseeable future, ethanol, biodeisel, wind turbines, solar panels and the like will cover a growing, but minimal level of our national energy needs.

Enter Western North America: specifically, Colorado, Utah and northern Alberta. Colorado and Utah have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates combined. Northern Alberta, similarly, holds more oil than all of the Arabian peninsula. The challenging part is mining and extracting the oil, as it not the slippery liquid kind, but the gooey, pasty or rocky variety. But the technology is evolving rapidly. Some estimates say the oil deposit in Colorado and Utah alone could supply U.S. energy needs for another century. Combined with the energy resources of our friendly neighbor to the north, a $20 per-barrel oil market could be just as likely in the coming decades as doomsday "peak oil" predictions. The geopolitical ramifications are, of course, enormous if Chevron, Shell and others pull off an inexpensive and efficient method of mining, extracting and refining the new black gold.

Remember the Middle East, and how we used to spend a great deal of time securing pipelines, production facilities and oil refineries there? Back in the good old days of the early 21st century?

BC


Hmmm...
Scroll a little further down in that linked article for the cons: "the techniques will drain water supplies, scar the landscape and require so much power the skies will be choked with smoke from coal-fed generators."
Yikes. I'm with the Western Colorado Congress on this one -- let's invest that money in research for renewable energy instead. I'm also with former Governor Lamm:"It doesn't excite me because I think they're about to indelibly change our state."
Nope. Not good. Not good at all.
EC