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Administration backs off Bush’s vow to reduce Mideast oil imports
Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder Newspapers via SJ Mercury-News
One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.
What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that’s where the greatest oil supplies are.
The president’s State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that “America is addicted to oil” and his call to “break this addiction.”
Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing “more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”
He pledged to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”
Not exactly, though, it turns out.
“This was purely an example,” Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.
He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.
(1 February 2006)
Much talk, mostly low key, about energy independence
Simon Romero, NY Times
Industry experts say that if President Bush wants to make a push to reduce the country’s oil consumption, there are some solutions at hand. But with names like carbon composites and new metal alloys, they may seem banal and do not create much buzz.
Perhaps the most significant step the nation could take in reducing oil dependence is to change the way cars are produced, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy research organization that has consulted for the Department of Defense.
…Conservation of oil has not been a priority for the administration, which has avoided pressuring Detroit to produce fewer sport utility vehicles and more energy-efficient cars.
In fact, overall federal funding for research and development in energy efficiency has declined 14 percent since 2002, adjusted for inflation.
…While President Bush did propose more use of alternative fuels, what he left unsaid was that producing such “renewable” fuels, like hydrogen or ethanol from corn, requires large amounts of petroleum. As if to remind Americans of oil’s paramount importance in the economy, Barry Russell, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said, “many alternative fuel options depend on petroleum or natural gas for their effective development.”
Still, some of the president’s proposals advance the discussion of what the United States needs to do to become less dependent on oil. Ethanol, for instance, could be made from materials in addition to corn, like switch grass, a kind of grass that grows abundantly on the prairies of the Plains.
…The administration has also declined to consider tax increases on gasoline, perhaps fearful of angering American motorists. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2004 that a new gasoline tax of 46 cents a gallon, up from today’s federal gasoline tax of 18 cents a gallon, would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 percent over the next 14 years.
(2 Februuary 2006)
Bush hits the road to take a green message to his nation of oil addicts
Julian Borger , Guardian
· President promises more investment in clean fuels
· Cautious environment lobby welcomes pledge
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President George Bush yesterday began a three-day tour on a new-found mission to break his country’s addiction to oil, but some American environmentalists worried that the initiative could be too little, too late. Speaking in Nashville, Tennessee, Mr Bush repeated many of the themes from Tuesday night’s state of the union address, and in particular his plan to reduce dependence on Middle East oil by 75% by 2025.
The proposal, in an otherwise unremarkable speech, was welcomed as a positive step by American environmentalists. But some pointed to the fine print underlying the proposal and warned that it might not prove to be as far-reaching as it appeared. Particular scrutiny was applied to the relatively detailed pledge to make “cellulosic ethanol” – derived from agricultural waste such as woodchips, switch grass (a tall marsh plant) and stalks from grain crops – a competitive and practical car fuel within six years.
(2 February 2006)
US ex-energy chief Richardson cool to Bush ideas
Bernie Woodall, Reuters
“Lofty goals but a weak plan of action,” Richardson, a Democrat who is now New Mexico’s governor, said in a telephone interview with Reuters about Bush’s comments in his Tuesday State of the Union address.
“Look at the stats,” Richardson said. “The Bush administration has been asleep at the switch. We have gone from 54 percent dependence on foreign oil to 65 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration” (EIA), the analytical and statistics arm of the Department of Energy.
… “His proposals amount to more research by the Department of Energy and as a former secretary, (I say) his solution is virtually meaningless.”
“The president needs to use the bully pulpit to lean on Americans to conserve energy and the oil companies to use their profits for energy diversification,” Richardson said.
“Oil companies like Exxon have $37 billion in record profits yet their investment in renewable technology and increased refinery capacity and domestic drilling have been minuscule,” Richardson said.
(1 February 2006)
Thanks to peakoil.com for this and many other article idea.
US energy secy outlines plan to lower dependence on oil
Maya Jackson Randall, Schlumberger
WASHINGTON – To meet the goal of reducing U.S. dependence on Middle East oil, the Bush administration plans to propose a fiscal year 2007 budget that includes increased funding for research on clean coal, ethanol and renewable energy, U.S Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Wednesday.
(1 February 2006)
George Bush and Peak Oil
He’s done more to raise the exposure of energy in one hour than all the peak blogs
Jon S., Peak Energy (Seattle)
…as much as I feel the United States President to be an illegitimate ignoramus blunderhead, he has managed to raise the exposure of energy more in one hour than all the peak blogs did in the last year.
…While many of the projects outlined by the Prez King are ridiculous, an atmosphere where it is OK to start thinking about alternative energy is a huge positive in the United States.
(2 February 2006)
A defense of President Bush’s remarks on energy from an unexpected source.
Bush’s plan to wean US off imported oil: ambitious enough?
Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor
Right direction, say energy gurus. But some puzzle over R&D that won’t cut oil demand.
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… the plan for a 22 percent boost in federal energy research also left many experts scratching their heads. How would solar, wind, “clean, safe nuclear,” and “clean coal” research cut US oil imports?
“The president’s initiative ties an oil savings target to a basket of energy solutions for homes and businesses, which have nothing to do with our oil problem,” Gal Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, an energy security think tank in Washington, said in an e-mail.
Since the 1970s oil crises, he wrote, utilities have cut back so much on oil use that today they use a minuscule amount of oil to generate electricity. And while US coal reserves are abundant, and coal-gasification technology could lead to reduced carbon-dioxide pollution, the impact on oil imports would be virtually nil, Mr. Luft added.
To others, that goal is the right direction, but far less ambitious overall in terms of cutting oil dependence than is legislation currently pending in Congress.
With US oil imports from the Persian Gulf expected to rise to about 5 million barrels a day by 2025, the bottom line is that the president is proposing that the country cut its imports from the region by 3.75 million barrels. A bipartisan proposal in Congress – the “Vehicle and Fuel Choices for American Security Act” – advocates a 7-million-barrel cut over 20 years, nearly double Bush’s proposal and eliminating the need for any Middle Eastern oil.
(1 February 2006)
