To the editor:
The way the Biden administration has handled the production of energy in this country has been a debacle. When one thinks it through, however, it becomes more than just a debacle; it becomes both terribly irrational and hypocritical.
At the end of president Trump’s term of office, for the first time in my memory, we produced more oil than we actually used, which I thought was a very positive thing. Then, because of the Executive Orders to cut our oil production issued by Biden in the first days of his administration, we began buying about 600,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia, then banned the import of Russian oil due to their invasion of the Ukraine and now are petitioning countries like Iran and Venezuela to import enough oil to meet our energy needs. All this ostensibly, in the name of climate control.
It is my understanding that probably the biggest concern in controlling our climate is the level of carbon dioxide in the air. The higher the levels, the more our climate will be altered. Oil imported to the U.S. is normally shipped via oil tankers. Tankers use diesel fuel, each gallon producing about 22 units of CO2. A super tanker uses about 2,000 gallons of fuel per hour and on average takes hundreds of hours to get from most foreign ports to the U.S. These super tankers hold about 2 million barrels of oil, so we would need about two shipments a week to meet our needs. I’ll let you do the math, but that is a whole lot of CO2. Compare this scenario with pumping oil through a pipeline from Canada or domestic drilling sites to our storage units.
Our government would have us believe that stopping domestic drilling is helpful to our climate control efforts. This just does not appear to be so.
In doing research on climate control, I have concluded that many of us, including our lawmakers, really do not understand the realities of using green energy to control climate change. About two years ago, I contacted both the U.S. Department of Energy and the Electrical Engineering Department at Kansas State University regarding the current feasibility of widespread use of green energy sources to power our country. Both responded in almost exactly the same way.
There are two major problems with extensive use of renewable energy. One is that we have no way to store meaningful amounts of electricity. The second is the fragility and vulnerability of our obsolete electrical grid. Until these two problems are solved, the widespread use of green energy is a pipe dream. The DOE did tell me that they and universities around the country are working diligently on these issues and hope to have a solution within the next decade.
To me, the course of action regarding our energy crisis is clear. Go back to doing what we were doing. Open up the Keystone Pipeline and restore fracking on federal lands. Remove much of the sanctions imposed in both the Biden and Obama administrations to encourage the private sector to drill and pump oil. Make developing a battery capable of storing large amounts of electricity and renovating our electrical grid a top priority. At the same time, we certainly need to continue to explore ways to reduce our carbon emissions until we are ready for green energy. Many times, this country and our government make relatively simple things seem very difficult.
Don McCullough
Manhattan
