We Need More Oil - How do we get it?

Talk about a national energy plan with a conservative and it begins, and almost ends, with "drill for more oil". There is lots of oil off the coast of Florida but the environmentalists won't let us drill for it. The fact that Republican Senator Mel Martinez is opposed to drilling for oil off the coast of Florida is rarely mentioned (ironically, Martinez is all in favor of drilling for oil in ANWR).

Yeah, but the Chinese are drilling for oil (for Cuba) almost within sight of the Florida keys say our conservative friends at Heartland!

China Drilling Near Florida

The presence of Chinese oil rigs, there by agreement with Cuba, within view of the Florida coastline has irked state residents. Cuba has announced it will expand those operations.

"I saw all kinds of wells with Chinese writing on them just south of the Keys," Leonard Gropper, a Marathon, Florida retiree, told the June 20 Orlando Sun-Sentinel.

Old Lenny better get his eyes checked. It's just not true that China is drilling for oil within sight of Florida. Ask Sen. Martinez:

The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

Ok, fine then. What about those 16 billion barrels of oil in ANWR. Sixteen billion barrels according to whose estimate - well anwr.org for one, the group that supports drilling for oil in ANWR. The problem is that estimating the amount of oil in ANWR is not so simple. There is technically recoverable oil and there is economically recoverable oil - it depends on the price of oil. A certain amount of oil is easily recoverable but then it becomes more and more expensive to recover the oil. Obviously, at todays oil prices it becomes very economically feasable to recover more oil (hmmmm, that makes one think of several conspiracy theories).



You can find a discussion of this issue here.

Ok, our conservative friends argue, but no matter what we will always need oil, global climate change or not.

Fine. How about genetically engineering bacteria that take the greenhouse gas CO2 out of the atmosphere and convert it into fuel? So-called 4th generation biofuels (we laugh at your sugar-based ethanol production) Yeah it can be done. In fact it could be done before any oil from ANWR would ever be available to us. Imagine that, a bacteria that produces unlimited fuel and solves the greenhouse gas problem at the same time. Theoretically, you could ferment your own fuel at your home.

Dr. Craig Venter (the guy who mapped the human genome) is one scientist behind this research.

Venter is trying to tackle the problem from another angle, using “biofuels by design.” He says his own startup, Synthetic Genomics, could deliver in as little as 18 months a biofuel that turns carbon dioxide into octane.

He also during the talk delivered his usual verbal jabs aimed at the traditional industries that he hopes to disrupt. He quipped that in a meeting with oil executives he told them if they don’t want to invest to solve the problem they helped create, then he would be perfectly happy developing the solution without them. That’s classic Venter.

Just how interested are oil companies in funding Venter's research or for that matter any alternative energy research that doesn't include finding more oil?