Text 4405, 90 rader
Skriven 2010-02-02 06:03:40 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
   Kommentar till text 4313 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Fox stoops even lower
=============================
Replying to a message of Michiel van der Vlist to Bob Ackley:

 MvdV> Hello Bob,

 MvdV> On Sunday January 31 2010 06:01, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>>> Where are you going to get oil?

 BA>> Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Wyoming and California. 
 BA>> Offshore wells in the Gulf of Mexico and off the southern
 BA>> California coast.  Of course it will be a LOT more
 BA>> expensive...

 MvdV> Maybe not if you do not just count the cost of drilling
 MvdV> and transport, but also the cost of all the "collateral
 MvdV> damage" that comes from getting oil from countries with
 MvdV> unstable and/or  unfriendly regimes....

 BA>>>> It occurs to me that reneging on those debts just might
 BA>>>> be
 BA>>>> the best thing that could happen to the US domestic
 BA>>>> industrial base.

 MvdV>>> How? If you have no oil?

 BA>> Coal if nothing else.  I think that it can be converted to
 BA>> oil if necessary.

 MvdV> Yes, it can be done. When I was in RSA in the early
 MvdV> seventees you could buy gasohol. A synthetic fuel made
 MvdV> from coal. South africa has lots of minerals, including
 MvdV> coal, but no oil.

 BA>> The US has one of the largest reserves of coal on the
 BA>> planet - sufficient for well over 100 years of use at
 BA>> present consumption

 MvdV> Hmmm...

 BA>>  (its primary use is fuel for power plants).

 MvdV> Not for the trains? ;-)

Not since about 1940.  Even most of the later designed steam
locomotives were oil fired - of course they used bunker oil,
which I'm told is basically sludge, I've never seen it.

 BA>> Converting motor vehicles to run on 85% or even 100%
 BA>> ethanol will help. There's a pilot plant up and running
 BA>> south of here that uses algae rather than corn to produce
 BA>> ethanol, that sort of thing can be scaled up.  There's at
 BA>> least one plant here in Iowa that produces diesel from
 BA>> soybeans, and there are a few folks that recycle used
 BA>> cooking oil (the overwhelming bulk of which is discarded)
 BA>> for use in diesel engines.

 MvdV> Using for transport what could be used for food is tricky
 MvdV> business. There is a shortage of food and diverting
 MvdV> resources to transport may substatially raise the price
 MvdV> of food with all sprts of  problems.

The US has huge surpluses of both corn and soybeans, even with
a large export market.  The fuel from food argument has been and
continues to be used by opponents of ethanol, but there's no indication
that more ethanol means less food.  Most of the corn grown in this country
goes to animal feed, not people food, and animals can eat the solid output
from ethanol plants (it's called 'distiller's grain' and is used as animal
feed).  The price of corn and soybeans has remained static for years,
corn is around $4.50/bu and soybeans are around $6.00/bu (a bushel is
56 pounds of corn or 60 pounds of soybeans); both vary up to +/- $2.00
from those numbers depending on the market at the time of sale.  If there
were a shortage or either grain the price would be going up, and neither
one is.

 MvdV>>> What other than military might do you have to sell to
 MvdV>>> pay
 MvdV>>> for the oil?

 BA>> Conquer enough of Venezuela to obtain the oil there.  And,
 BA>> I suppose, Aruba...

 MvdV> Aruba? You must be joking. Aruba is Dutch territory. If
 MvdV> there was any oil, WE would be drilling there.

I know that Aruba is Dutch.  I also know that they have refineries
and oil storage facilities there - or at least they did during WW II.
It may be that the oil there actually comes from Venezuela.

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 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)