Saturday, April 26, 2008

Energy Independence "IS" National Security

How should the next President and Congress address the price of energy? Let market forces take control. Here is an outline how the United States could free ourselves of foreign oil and drive down the costs of energy.

Allow the military to once again refine their own fuel needs. Place strategic state of the art refineries on military bases. These refineries would generate a standard gas, and Diesel/JP5/JP7 to address all the needs of the military, especially the air force. Allow the airlines to own and refine their own Jet-A production facilities like in North Pole Alaska. This will remove the pressure on domestic use.

Allow companies like COSTCO and Sams Club to purchase and build refineries to produce gas for its members utilizing US supplies of Oil, Coal, and Bio fuel (NOT CORN) Just watch the price drop like a rock for everyone.

The Energy Department be tasked to develop clean nuclear plants on both coasts where ready access to seawater is available. These plants would generate electricity and hydrogen in sufficient quantities to supply both coasts for Electric and Hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars.

Eliminate all subsidies for oil companies and redirect these to companies that will develop Solar energy complexes like out in the Mohave desert, and wind generation on a meaningful scale.

The Captain

2 comments:

George said...

Buy a Prius, we are getting 50+ mpg

El Gringo said...

I agree with a lot of these prescriptions, but I'm just not that threatened by all the oil we import from Mexico and Canada, our top sources of foreign oil.

Even after the Zimmerman Telegram I just don't see our neighbors backing America's enemies in the world.

Maybe this is an opportunity to reflect that we could be getting a better deal on Mexican oil if we hadn't forced them to nationalize the fields by letting our oil companies hire thugs to drive locals out of the market, though. Mexico's national oil company doesn't have access to our best deep offshore drilling techniques and it's cutting off their supply.