Fuel Freedom Staff

WSJ: Rail companies often keep routes a secret from local officials

/in /by

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story about the “virtual pipelines” that hide in plain sight around the country: trains, sometimes up to a mile long, that carry oil from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota to refineries.

Unlike oil pipelines, like the hotly contested Keystone XL that a Canadian company wants to build from western Canada to Nebraska, no new government hearings or environmental reviews are needed to move oil around the country.

Neither, it seems, is much notice required for local cities and emergency-services agencies. Often, the story states, key information — and even the existence of routes — is withheld by rail companies.

From the WSJ:

Finding the locations of oil-filled trains remains difficult, even in states that don’t consider the information top secret. There are no federal or state rules requiring public notice despite several fiery accidents involving oil trains, including one in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.

The desire for secrecy seems wrongheaded to some experts. “If you don’t share this information, how are people supposed to know what they are supposed to do when another Lac-Mégantic happens?” asked Denise Krepp, a consultant and former senior counsel to the congressional Homeland Security Committee.

She said more firefighting equipment and training was needed urgently. “We are not prepared,” she said.

Arctic Leaf

Are Americans risk-averse?

/in , , /by

The name of the game is “the St. Petersburg Paradox,” and it proved that people are risk-averse, even when they have nothing to lose and a chance to win big from playing a game. It has become a well-established principle in economics and helps explain why people are so reluctant to switch to alternative fuels, even when they stand to gain from the exchange.

The architect of this theory is Daniel Bernoulli, the 18th century Swiss mathematician who is also responsible for Bernoulli’s law, which states that pressure becomes less intense as a fluid travels over one side of a surface at greater speed. It is the basis of airplane flight.

Bernoulli lived in St. Petersburg for a period and became involved in the gambling scene, which was very intense. Like any good mathematician, however, he became more interested in why people bet, rather than the outcome of the game.

He became particularly intrigued by something called the “St. Petersburg Game.” The rules were fairly simple: It involved the simple flip of a coin. If the coin came up tails, the player would receive a dollar (ruble). If the coin came up tails a second time, the player would receive $2, third time $4 and double for each round thereafter. In other words, as long as the coin kept coming up heads, you kept winning. Theoretically, a player could make $500 and on up. The question is, how much would you pay to play this game?

Bernoulli found that even though the average payout was $2, players were very reluctant to buy into the game for more than $2. Their thinking was very short-term and logical. The possibility of a huge payout was of little appeal to them. They were risk-averse.

From this observation, Bernoulli deduced another principle he called the “marginal utility of wealth.” Bernoulli differentiated between “wealth” and “utility.” The utility curve, he said, was concave, and people tended to put more value on the money they lost rather than what they gained. Therefore, they were much less inclined toward risk. Even the possibility of a large payout in an uncertain future is not enough to entice them into the game for a higher price.

What does this have to do with alternative fuels and alternative vehicles? Well, the early adopters are taking big risks. They risk that the new technology may not work out, and they will be stuck with a white elephant. They risk that the fuel savings may not be as great as they are led to believe. The risk that the price of fuels may change drastically – such as the current free fall in oil prices – and any advantage they might have had with the alternative fuel may quickly evaporate. The natural gas tank on a utility truck costs about $5,000, on top of the cost of the normal gas tank. Anyone who as one installed is taking a big risk. Is it worth the extra investment?

The concave marginal utility curve also explains why wealthier people are more inclined to try the alternative vehicles than the average person. They have more room to experiment and are less concerned about losses. Tesla has been deliberately targeting the $75,000 and up market. The first Tesla driven in the United States was bought by Leonardo DiCaprio. Elon Musk is taking a tremendous risk himself by trying to manufacture a $45,000 Tesla that will appeal to a much larger audience.

But risk aversion for the average person is very hard to overcome. Look at another version of the St. Petersburg game: You are allowed to buy into a game where you flip a coin for money. If you win that one flip, you will be awarded $1,000 each year for the rest of your life. Alternately, you may flip the coin every year for $1,000 for that year. Which would you choose?

Experience proves overwhelming that the majority of people prefer to flip every year rather than stake it all on one flip. This proves that people are not risk-takers but would rather have incremental increases rather than an all-or-nothing opportunity. People do not expect extraordinary events to occur to them, but base their decisions on the more normal rate of chance.

Peter Drucker said that in order to replace an existing technology you had to have something that is 10 times as good as what you are trying to do. There are so many impediments – inertia, trying to get known, trying to overcome people’s aversion to risk –that it’s a very difficult task.

That’s why many believe that we need the intervention of the states and the federal government to prime the pump for alternative fuels and vehicles. There are just very few people willing to take the risk. California’s program to put 15,000 cars on the road running on methanol in the 1990s was a good example. Should it be duplicated? There is no downside to running on ethanol or methanol, and there are probably some environmental advantages, as well as money to be saved. But the societal benefits – energy independence and freedom from imported oil – are spread out, while the risks remain on one person – the individual who buys the vehicle.

Individuals are risk-averse – there’s no getting around it. It may take some initiative from the government to mitigate those risks and spread them out over a wider range of people. That way they become more tolerable.

Arctic Leaf

Can alternative vehicles still play a role?

/in , , , /by

A couple of Google engineers shocked the world last week by announcing that after working on the RE<C (Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal) Initiative for four years, they had concluded that renewable energy is never going to solve our carbon emissions problem.

In a widely read article in IEEE Spectrum, the prestigious journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Ross Koningstein and David Fork announced that after working at improving renewables on the Google project, they had decided that it wasn’t worth pursuing. Google actually closed down RE<C in 2011, but the authors are just getting around to explaining why.

At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope.

Google’s abandonment of renewable energy raises the immediate question: What about the effort to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles? And here the news is much better.

Although everyone concentrates on coal and power plants, they regularly forget that half our carbon emissions come from vehicles. It’s typical that Google’s RE<C effort didn’t address what to do about our cars. It’s too complicated to try to control the emissions from 200 million point sources.

But what’s never discussed is the fuel that goes into these vehicles. It’s well known that ethanol and methanol cut carbon emissions compared with gasoline. That’s a good chunk of the battle right there. But it doesn’t even take into account the possibility of making both fuels from non-fossil-fuel resources, so that both would be all pluses on our carbon budget.

Ethanol, as currently produced in this country, is synthesized entirely from corn, so there is no fossil-fuel element involved. Ethanol currently takes up 10 percent of all the gasoline sold is this country, but it is currently marketed at 85 percent ethanol in the Midwest, with only a 15 percent element to guarantee starting on cold days.

Methanol is generally synthesized from natural gas, so there is still a fossil-fuel element there, but there is always the possibility of making methanol from non-fossil sources. Municipal waste could easily be converted directly to methanol.

And of course there is always the possibility of synthesizing ethanol and methanol using renewable energy. People always talk about storing wind or solar energy as hydrogen, but methanol would be easier to store than hydrogen since it is a liquid to begin with and not subject to leakage and escape. Methanol can be easily stored in our current infrastructure.

The Chinese are currently building six methanol plants in Texas and Louisiana to take advantage of all the natural gas being produced there. All this methanol is slated to be shipped by tankers back to China, where it will be used to boost China’s own methanol industry — and to run some of the 1 million methanol cars the Chinese have on the road.

Yes, the Chinese are far ahead of us when it comes to using methanol a substitute for oil. But there’s a scenario that will introduce methanol in the American auto industry. With all this methanol on hand in Texas and Louisiana, someone will install a pump on one of the premises for dispensing methanol. Cars at the site will use it. Then someone will say, “Hey, why don’t I use this in my car at home? It’s cheaper.” Before you know it, there will be a contingency to have the EPA decide that methanol can be used in automobile engines the same as ethanol is currently used. And in the end, we will have large quantities of methanol substituting for foreign oil.

Is it a dream? No more unrealistic than the dreams that kept the Google scientists occupied for four years.

Arctic Leaf

Can algae be the next biofuel?

/in , , /by

The lure of the oceans has always had a special appeal for advocates of biofuel. The vast reaches of the deep speak of a promise that unlimited amounts of space will be able to bring forth completely sustainable forms of energy.

“Two-thirds of the globe is covered with water,” says Khanh-Quang Tran, a Norwegian researcher who has published papers on the possibility of growing algae as a biofuel on an industrial basis. “If we used only a tiny portion of that space, we’d have enough to supply ourselves with all the fuel we needed.”

Of particular interest to researchers is one species, laminaria sacceyarina (“sugar kelp”), which grows along the coast of many countries, including Scandinavia. It is the “seaweed” that seems to be a flower but is actually all one undifferentiated cellular structure that takes on various forms in competing for sunlight. As the name implies, it contains lots of sugar – three times as much as the sugar beet. Scandinavian scientists have been especially intent on harvesting this plant for food and fuel use.

“It’s actually regarded as a nuisance, since it grows everywhere and clogs the beaches,” says Fredrik Grondahl, a researcher at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden who heads the Seafarm project. “But it absorbs nitrogen out of the water, effectively as a wastewater treatment plant. It’s regarded as an environmental problem, but it’s actually a valuable resource.”

The big question will be this: Can a weed that grows so prolifically in the sea be domesticated so that it can grow in large quantities under controlled conditions?

Sweden and Norway seem to have taken the lead on this project, mainly because of their long coastlines, where the algae grows intensely in a cold climate. The Seafarm project involves  growing underwater algae farms on ropes. The team collects excess algae from the Baltic Sea and cultivates it as food and fuel. One technique is called the “sporophyte factory farm.” The algae spores are sown onto ropes. They sink and grow in the sea. In about six months, they have grown onto the ropes and are harvested and processed on land covering two hectares. From there it can be converted to eco-friendly food, medicine, plastics and energy fuels such as methanol. The city of Trelleborg, where the farm is located, estimates that 2.8 million liters of fuel can be extracted from its algae resources.

Kahnh-Quang Tran of Norway has been following another line of research. He mixes a slurry of kelp biomass and water and heats it rapidly to 350 degrees Centigrade. Tran says the fast hydrothermal liquefaction gives him a product that is 79 percent bio-oil. A similar experiment on the U.K. was only able to produce 19 percent oil, but Tran claims that the rapid heating improves the process tremendously. “What we are trying to do it mimic the natural process that produces oil,” he said. “Whereas it takes geological time in nature to produce oil, we can do it in a matter of minutes.”

Tran is now looking for partners who can help him move up to an industrial scale.

Another plan developed in France and the Netherlands is to line highways with algae pools in the hope that they will immediately absorb the carbon exhaust that comes from automobiles. This will remove CO2 from the atmosphere and recycle the fuel as well. An experimental installation was demonstrated at the summer garden festival at Genève Villes et Champs this year.

Another country that is experimenting with algae is Australia. This October, the Muradel Corporation opened a $101. 7 million demonstration plant in Whyalla designed to produce 30,000 liters of green crude every year. The company is employing its Greeen2Black technology, designed to produce a continuous stream of environmentally sustainable crude equivalent.

Muradel CEO and University of Adelaide Associate Professor David Lewis said if the demonstration plant were successfully scaled to a commercial plant, it would produce 500,000 barrels of refinable green crude a year by 2019 – enough petrol and diesel to fuel 30,000 vehicles for a year. The planned 1,000-hectare commercial plant would create at least 100 new skilled jobs in the Whyalla region.

“This is world-leading technology which can be scaled up exponentially to help steer our fossil fuel-dependent economy toward a more sustainable future,” Lewis said.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about algae. “It will take anywhere from 5 to 15 years to produce on a scale that would be meaningful to the nation’s every needs,” says Jim Rekoske, general manager of Honeywell’s UOP division. He likened it to trying to maintain the water balance in a fish tank.

“You have to have just the right temperature and the right amount of carbon dioxide to get these growth spurts,” he said. Algae farms are also very susceptible to invasive species and have to be monitored constantly. Still, an acre of algae can ideally produce 15,000 gallons of biofuel per year, as opposed to only 420 gallons per acre from corn ethanol. “We could replace all the diesel we consume now on half of 1 percent of our current farmland,” says Douglas Henston, CEO of Solix Biosystems of Fort Collins, Colo. Solix is supplying the military with biofuels at a whopping $33 per gallon.

So, will algae make the same progress in the United State that it seems to be making in Sweden and Norway? American researchers may take up the challenge as well. The long coastal lines are not there to tempt us, but research breakthroughs may finally make algae biofuels more practical and economically viable everywhere.

Landon Hall

New Yorkers, brave the rain and check out PUMP

/in , , /by

It’s Monday night, and it’s cold and raining. But if you live in Queens, how about some enlightened discussion about oil addiction to warm your soul?

The Sierra Club’s New York City group is screening the Fuel Foundation-produced documentary PUMP tonight at 7 p.m. at the Alley Pond Environmental Center, 228-06 Northern Boulevard in Douglaston. Check the center’s site for driving and public-transportation directions.

The club is asking for donations: $3 for members of Sierra Club or Ashley Pond, $5 for non-members. Refreshments will be served.

Thelma Fellows, who chairs the outreach committee for NYC Sierra Club, says she saw PUMP when it was playing in Times Square in September. Its core message — that allowing replacement fuels like ethanol and methanol to compete with gasoline at the pump would save consumers money, create jobs, strengthen the nation and improve health and the environment — resonated.

“This opens people up to the idea that we don’t have to be so beholden to OPEC,” she said.

She added that she hopes to show the film elsewhere in New York, including Manhattan and outer boroughs like Staten Island.

PUMP also is playing in Boulder, Colo., and St. Johnsbury, Vt., this week. For theaters and showtimes, visit PUMPTheMovie.com.

To see what critics thought of PUMP, directed by Josh and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, check out this post. Read viewer-contributed reviews at Rotten Tomatoes.

If you’d like to show the film at your home, college or group, contact Fuel Freedom’s Gina Schumann at [email protected].

Fuel Freedom Staff

SEMA in review: Ingenuity rules, but fuel choice still missing

/1 Comment/in , , /by

Our friend John Brackett, one of the stars of the Fuel Freedom-produced PUMP, attended the giant SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) expo in Las Vegas last week.

What he found was the usual mind-blowing parade: thousands upon thousands of amazing, tricked-out vehicles. And of course ingenious technology, the product of some of the most intelligent minds who are in the business of making after-market car components.

What he found lacking, though, was fuel choice.

Here’s his report:

SEMA Exhibitors have solutions ready:

Fuel component manufacturers made it clear that dealing with ethanol and methanol fuels would be easy on their end. Companies that alter a car’s software said it’d be no problem running several fuels with their devices or programs. The car makers have put fuel choice into vehicles for a century with tens of millions already on the road. Every vehicle sold since the Oil Embargo[hyperlink to wiki Oil Embargo] should have had fuel choice. For the last quarter century, we’ve been able to update a car’s software to adjust to different fuels with no additional parts. There is no reason we can’t run on performance fuels right now.

American “Enginuity” is alive:

No two vehicles looked the same, and everyone had a different interpretation of their ideal driving experience. Even with such ingenuity, what 98.6 percent of the vehicles had in common was no fuel choice. I saw V8 engines installed in series, radial airplane engines, super-turbocharged cars, an ice cream-making Kia Soul, a wagon that unfolds into a beer stand, and a 3D-printed car. With so many options, what is holding us back from fuel choice?

Dollars per horsepower matters:

One could easily double, if not sextuple, the cost of a vehicle with some of the solutions at SEMA. Yet those solutions wouldn’t be displayed if there weren’t a demand. These companies spend millions of dollars to develop some very unique solutions for the aftermarket vehicle enthusiasts. Dollar for dollar, using ethanol or methanol over gasoline gives one a more powerful and exciting driving experience. On a naturally aspirated vehicle, adding 5-10 percent horsepower with an aftermarket intake and exhaust system will cost darn near $1,000. Why not choose a fuel that gives you that same power gain and costs 25-40 percent less to drive on?

Now watch Bracket’s video, and see how many incredible vehicles you can name:

Fuel Freedom Staff

Is Bakken crude more volatile than other kinds of oil?

/in /by

The Wall Street Journal takes note of an issue that’s growing in importance: Whether crude from the Bakken oil-shale formation is more volatile, and explosive, than other kinds of crude oil that comes out of the ground.

The geological makeup of the oil is crucial to regulators who are in the process of deciding whether to impose additional restrictions on companies that transport Bakken crude by railways.

The WSJ story begins:

Regulators set to decide on crude-by-rail shipping rules are relying on testing methods that may understate the explosive risk of the crude, according to a growing chorus of industry and Canadian officials.

The tests’ accuracy is central to addressing the safety of growing crude-by-rail shipments across the continent: whether Bakken crude contains potentially dangerous levels of dissolved gases. Several trains carrying Bakken crude have exploded after derailing, including a fiery accident last year that killed 47 people in a small town in Quebec.

The North Dakota Industrial Commission is expected to decide Thursday whether to impose new rules on transporting oil on railroads. A study by the state’s Petroleum Council concluded that Bakken crude was no more volatile than other light crudes found in Texas and other fields. But the testing that went into that report might have allowed flammable gases, called light ends, to escape before the samples were collected and processed.

The U.S. Department of Transportation also has proposed new safety rules for oil by rail, including phasing out the aging tanker cars (called DOT 111) used to transport the oil within two years.

Arctic Leaf

Can a carbon tax capture oil’s emissions?

/in , , /by

One of the knottiest problems for people who want to reduce carbon emissions with cap-and-trade and command-and-control regulation is that it is impossible to include motor vehicles in these schemes.

The Obama administration is now concentrating on coal plants and other stationary sources. This affects coal and possibly gas plants, but the oil industry gets off scot-free. And cars and other moving sources constitute almost half the carbon we’re putting into the atmosphere.

The idea that keeps popping up, which would deal with these difficulties and perhaps make climate issues less partisan, is a flat tax on carbon products. The tax would fall on coal, gas and oil and be collected at the mine or wellhead. $20 per ton is the number most often mentioned. Coal would pay the largest share, oil second-most and natural gas the least, since they differ in carbon content. But everything else is equal across the board. It doesn’t matter what people do with the fuel once they’ve claimed it. If you conserve energy, you burn less fuel, if you switch from high-carbon coal to natural gas. And if you discover a true alternative that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels, you pay nothing.

In theory, it’s an ideal solution. Adele Morris of the Brookings Institution has calculated that a modest carbon tax of $20 per ton would allow us to lower the corporate tax to 25 percent, just below the world average, and still leave $199 billion for deficit reduction over the 10 years. Most important, though, is that a carbon tax would capture non-stationary sources, which is the Achilles’ heel of cap-and-trade. When it comes to mobile sources of carbon, regulators just throw up their hands. “You can’t measure emissions from individual vehicles,” they say. But a carbon tax captures everyone, including cars and trucks, which are impossible to monitor as individual vehicles. In the end, it is a much better system than that now being pursued by the EPA.

So what would this mean for alternative vehicles?

Corn ethanol would be a big winner. It is not derived from fossil fuels, and it’s already in 10 percent of gasoline that is dispensed at the pump. Morris estimates that a tax of $20 per ton on carbon would mean a 4-to-5 cents per gallon increase in gasoline. E85 now undersells gasoline in the Midwest by that same amount, and a carbon tax would make it even more attractive. Other parts of the country might start taking notes as well, since E85 can be sold anywhere; it just hasn’t caught on yet.

Methanol would not have the same advantages, since it is currently made from natural gas. But gas has only about two-thirds of the carbon content of oil, and a carbon tax would work in its favor. In addition, methanol can be derived from other sources: It’s the simplest alcohol and can be distilled from municipal waste, forest wastes and any number of the other sources that now go unused.

CNG and LNG do not stand up quite as well. Both would have to pay the carbon tax but would enjoy a small advantage over diesel, became the carbon content of gas is lower. Still, they would see their own price go up, because they are fossil fuels.

Electric cars, on the other hand, would be the big winner. Their cost advantage would widen, and they would have a leg up on gasoline and diesel. Of course, electricity must come from somewhere. It is now generated largely from coal and natural gas, and prices would rise. But the tax would encourage a shift from coal to gas, or non-fossil sources, and prices would eventually come down again. Morris calculates that revenues from the tax will eventually taper off from $160 billion to $60 billion by 2030 because of adjustments in the economy.

The carbon tax has a long and curious history. Conservatives often claim credit for it under Milton Friedman’s dictum, “I you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less of something, tax it.” The Heritage Foundation actually backed a carbon tax in the early days, when the Obama administration was trying to impose cap-and-trade on the entire economy. But other factions of the conservative movement became convinced that the Democrats would just spend the money on renewable energy projects, so Heritage backed away.

Now the ball is being carried by a group of moderates who have a reputation for viewing things with a level head. The Brookings Institution has been at the forefront, arguing that a carbon tax promises to save billions. “By providing simple, transparent, but powerful market-based incentives to reduce damaging greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, this levy could supersede the array of costly regulatory command-and-control approaches and expensive subsidies aimed at reducing dependence on fossil fuels and promoting clean energy,” writes Morris for Resources for the Future, another non-partisan group. Environmental Defense Fund, another moderate group that takes sensible positions, has said a carbon tax would bring everyone “simplicity and happiness.”

The carbon tax does have its problems. It comes down particularly heavy on the poor, who pay a much larger portion of their income for things that require oil and gas. Morris suggests putting 20 percent of the tax aside and earmarking it for the poor. This undoes some of the benefits of the tax and, in practice, is very difficult to do, and it creates a new distribution problem. It also hurts the middle class and especially Middle America.

Carbon taxes have been tried in other countries, with mixed results. Australia tried to impose a blanket tax a few years ago, but by the time it stopped awarding special exemptions and dispensations, the program was such a mess that oil refineries and others were making out better than before. The tax fell particularly heavily on farmers, whose operations, it turns out, are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. On the other hand, a tax in the United States might push more of agriculture into ethanol, since E85 is already widely available in the Midwest and would substitute nicely for gasoline.

Special pleading by individual parties is always the problem. France tried a carbon tax a few years ago, but by the time they were through, the law was so loaded down with exceptions and exemptions that it was practically meaningless. Sweden, on the other hand, has a flat $200 per ton carbon tax – four times the highest rate being suggested by the U.S – and no one seems to mind. The Swedes eliminated all special exemptions and used the revenue to lower personal income and estate taxes. True, the Swedes pay a higher price for gasoline – close to $4 per gallon – but they are happy with the simplicity of the system and accept the higher price as a fact of life. Of course, Sweden is a much more egalitarian country, with few truly poor people, but the population is happy and no one complains.

And the main problem is that the amount of tax will really not introduce any behavioral change. Five cents a gallon is just a tax – it will not create any real incentive to change to alternative fuels. What is blocking off alternative fuels today is not price, as they are already cheaper. It is the monopolistic structure of the car and distribution market. Even if gas prices were a dollar higher, the market first needs to be opened to competition so people could actually choose a fuel.

A carbon tax would cross political lines and maybe prove to be one of those rare instances where we can all agree. Conservatives would show that they take climate change seriously, and liberals would have to give up on their complex regulatory schemes and admit that simplest sometimes works best. Most of all, it would show the public that things can get done in Washington. However, a prerequisite for any tax or other solution is to open the market for competition by other fuels. Otherwise, the consumer will not have any option, and it will be just a new government tax.

Arctic Leaf

10 reasons why falling oil prices is good for the U.S. and replacement fuels

/in , , /by

While they might not make the Late Show with David Letterman, here are ten reasons why the fall in oil and gas prices, if it is sustained for a while, is, on balance, good for the U.S. and replacement fuels.

  1. U.S. consumers are getting a price break. While the numbers differ by researchers, most indicate that on average they have saved near $80 billion. According to The Wall Street Journal, every one cent drop in gasoline adds approximately a billion dollars to nationwide household consumption.
  2. Low- and moderate-income households will have extra money for basic goods and services, including housing, health care and transportation to work.
  3. Increased consumer spending will be good for the economy and overall job growth. Because of the slowdown in production and the loss of jobs in the oil shale areas and Alaska, the net positive impact on GNP will be relatively small, higher at first as consumers make larger purchases, and then lower as oil field economic declines are reflected in GNP.
  4. Low prices for oil and gas will impede drilling in tight oil areas and give the nation time to develop much-needed regulations to protect environmentally sensitive areas. Oil is now under $80 a barrel. The price is getting close to the cost of drilling. Comments from producers and oil experts seem to suggest that $70-75 per barrel would begin to generate negative risk analyses.
  5. Low prices for oil and gas will make it tough on Russia to avoid the impact of U.S. and EU sanctions. Russia needs to export oil and gas to secure revenue to meet budget constraints. Its drilling and distribution costs will remain higher than current low global and U.S. prices.
  6. Low prices of oil and gas will reduce U.S. need to import oil and help improve U.S. balance of payments. Imports now are about 30 percent of oil used in the nation.
  7. Low prices of oil and gas will further reduce dependence on Middle East oil and enhance U.S. security as well as reduce the need to rely on military intervention. While the Saudis and allies in OPEC may try to undercut the price of oil per barrel in the U.S., it is not likely that they can sustain a lower cost and meet domestic budget needs.
  8. Low prices of oil and gas will create tension within OPEC. Some nations desiring to improve market share may desire to keep oil prices low to sustain market share, others may want to increase prices and production to sustain, if not increase, revenue.
  9. Low prices of oil and gas will spur growth in developing economies.
  10. Low prices for oil and gas will likely secure oil company interests in alternative fuels. It may also compel coalitions of environmentalists and others concerned with emissions and other pollutants to push for open fuel markets and natural gas based ethanol, methanol and cellulosic-based fuels as well as a range of renewable fuels.

We haven’t reached fuel Nirvana. The differential between gasoline and corn-based E85 has lessened in most areas of the nation and now appears less than the 20-23 percent needed to get consumers to think about switching to alternative fuels like E85. But cheaper replacement fuels appear on the horizon (e.g., natural gas-based ethanol) and competition in the supply chain likely will reduce their prices. Significantly, in terms of alternative replacement fuels, oil and gas prices are likely to increase relatively soon, because of: continuing tensions in the Middle East, a change of heart on the part of the Saudis concerning maintaining low prices, the increased cost of drilling for tight oil and slow improvements in the U.S. economy resulting in increased demand. The recent decline in hybrid, plug-in and electric car sales in the U.S. follows historical patterns. Cheap gas or perceived cheap gas causes some Americans to switch to larger vehicles (e.g., SUVs) and, understandably, for some, to temporarily forget environmental objectives. But, paraphrasing and editing Gov. Schwarzenegger’s admonition or warning in one of his films, unfortunately high gas prices “will be back…” and early responders to the decline of gasoline prices may end up with hard-to-sell, older, gas-guzzling dinosaurs — unless, of course, they are flex-fuel vehicles.