| |
 |
 |
Monday, November 13, 2006
649 Wyoming and energy myths
It could be argued that nothing defines Wyoming more these days than energy.
Carrying the slogan: “the energy breadbasket of the Western Hemisphere,” you could assume that anything to do with energy would be of importance to our state’s citizens.
The genesis of this column was a series of comments from West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, some of which I quoted in this space two months ago.
He had come to Wyoming and met with Gov. Dave Freudenthal about how the coal-producing states could solve our nation’s insatiable desire for imported energy. After all, we know that the Arab countries are holding this country hostage because of all the oil we import.
Right? Or is this a myth? More on that later.
Earlier this year, President George W. Bush talked about how our country is “addicted to oil” and he and Vice-President Dick Cheney pledged to come up with a way to stop our insidious dependence on “imported oil.”
After all, OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) could thrust our country into chaos at almost any time, could they not? Surely they control a vast majority of the energy used in this country. They are led by that sneaky Arab oil broker Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani. As we all know he cannot be trusted. Or is this another myth?
And finally, what do we use this imported energy for in this country? Fully 67 percent of the oil imported is used for transportation, meaning cars, trucks, trains and airplanes.
Energy fuels like Wyoming’s coal take up the bulk of the slack when it comes to providing energy for lighting, heating and industrial uses. Although there have been experiments with Air Force jets using diesel fuel that comes from coal, just two percent of the coal-generated energy is actually used for transportation.
I am tempted to add that surely it must be a fact that the way our country will get away from its dependence of evil imported oil will be from increased coal generation, which would great for Wyoming’s economy.
It’s hard to resist throwing out another “fact” for readers to consider. Is it not true that without our Arab friends, we could hardly function as a country? Thus, based on a number of conspiracy theories, our government must cozy up with the Arabs? Right? Or is that a myth, too?
And finally, that might have been a good reason to invade Iraq since that country reportedly harbors the second largest oil reserves in the world. If you were going to invade a country, this would make sense for oil reasons. Right? Or is this a myth, too?
I found the following facts very interesting when it comes to energy needs for this country.
What countries do you think are the three largest petroleum producing countries, when it comes to barrels headed to the USA?
In first place is our trusting neighbor to the north, Canada. How many people would believe that? Look it up. According to the U. S. Government Energy Information Administration, Canada sends us more than 2 million barrels of petroleum products per day.
Hmm. Well, some Arab country surely is in second place. Nope. Our great friend from the South, Mexico, comes in second, with 1,709,000 barrels imported to our country per day.
In third place? Well, not so friendly, but still not Arab. Venezuela, despite that country’s outspoken anti-American president Hugo Chavez, is in third place with 1,467,000 barrels per day.
Finally in fourth place is Saudi Arabia with 1.3 million daily barrels.
I n fifth place is a poor African country, Nigeria, with 1 million daily barrels. The next five countries in the top ten are Algeria, Angola, Iraq, Russia and the Virgin Islands. Algeria and Angola are in Africa. We control Iraq. Russia is in both Europe and Asia, and the Virgin Islands belong to America, after all.
So, the top ten countries that we are importing petroleum products from – just Saudi Arabia is the only country we either do not control or are good friends with or which is located in the stormy Mideast.
The next four countries are Brazil, Norway, Netherlands and Ecuador, by the way.
Although I consider myself well informed, this information just blew me away. For some reason, I always assumed we were importing vast amounts of petroleum from the stormy Mideast and, as a result, we all need to roll up our sleeves and solve this problem domestically.
But with Canada and Mexico, alone, providing a third of all the petroleum we import, I guess we do not have a crisis about some nutty country’s leaders turning off the spigot, leaving us high and dry.
And from Wyoming’s perspective, it might mean that there might not be as much pressure in Washington, D. C. to have our coal mines solve the country’s imported petroleum crisis as we all may have thought.
|
|
 |
|
|
