Chairman Fred Upton believes
that our natural gas surplus is needed by “our allies around the world” and we
should engage in “a mutually beneficial trade in liquefied natural gas (LNG).”
In his opinion, federal policy has not yet “adjusted to the new reality of
American energy abundance, and in fact Obama administration red tape often
stands in the way of the potential benefits of the energy boom.”
Besides job creation at
home, “constructing and running the LNG export facilities and additional energy
industry jobs as natural gas producers expand their output to meet the increase
in demand,” Chairman Upton believes that H.R. 6 would help Ukraine and Eastern
and Central European countries who are dependent on Russian natural gas. Russia
would have less “leverage over these nations” and prices of LNG would come
down. https://energycommerce.house.gov/hearing/hr-6-domestic-prosperity-and-global-freedom-act
The Hoover Institution
agreed that “the hydrocarbon boom in the United States has been driven by
fracking.” Shale-gas production through fracking in North Dakota, Texas, West
Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York accounts for 44 percent of total
U.S. natural gas output. http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/170026
Predictions in the 1970s
indicating that America would run out of natural gas were wrong. Even the
production of oil fell (1990-2008), increasing our oil dependency on imports
from unstable and hostile nations. The International Energy Agency reported
that in 2013 U.S. production of crude oil increased by 991,000 barrels a day
and oil imports declined by 16 percent.
Newsmax.com wrote that
“America produced an average of about 12.1 million barrels of crude oil,
natural gas liquids, and biofuels a day in 2013 – that’s 300,000 barrels a day
more than Saudi Arabia and 1.6 million more than Russia, the two previous
leaders.”
Gary D. Libecap, Economics
professor at the University of California and research fellow at Hoover
Institution, said that “fracking and natural gas production have been good for
the economy, good for democracies worldwide, and good for the environment.”
Environmentalists would probably disagree since complaints have been lodged
with the EPA about the deleterious effects on soil and ground water from
fracking and horizontal drilling.
Energy experts believe
that the Obama administration slows or prevents drilling on federal lands by
delaying and denying permits. Consequently, production on federal lands fell 23
percent since 2007. According to the Institute for Policy Innovation, the
federal government owns 28 percent of U.S. land, 62 percent in Alaska and 47
percent in 11 western states. http://www.ipi.org/
The current administration
chooses instead to concentrate on very expensive and insufficient wind and
solar energy generation, particularly solar. In addition to the 34 failed green
companies funded with taxpayer dollars, of which Solyndra was the poster child
of a $535 million colossal failure, the Aqua Caliente Solar Project in Yuma,
Arizona takes the top spot with $967 million in federal loans. Yuma has an
unemployment rate of 26.1 percent. So far, the Yuma project created 10
permanent jobs. When completed at the end of this year, the solar facility will
have 16 permanent employees. It will only cost taxpayers $60.4 million per job
creation. http://lastresistance.com/5226/obama-spends-967-million-create-10-solar-energy-jobs/
Fracking on
the other hand, creates real jobs and helps towns like Midland, Texas to
increase per capita income three times the national average and to reduce
unemployment to a low 2.9 percent, while extracting oil which is needed to
produce energy and to run our large economy.
Because the
current administration believes that carbon pollution drives climate change,
the proposed budget for FY 2015 includes a $1 billion Climate Resilience Fund
to fight man-made (anthropogenic) global warming. Our electricity generation
from “dirty” coal will then be curtailed by EPA’s expensive job-killing and
coal fire-plant closing regulations and we will be stuck with huge electric
bills and potential shortages.
Our way of
life depends on electricity - lights, refrigerators, air conditioning,
furnaces, computers, internet, radios, TVs, ATMs, banks, grocery stores, cell
phones, chargers, medical devices, life support systems, operating rooms, gas
pumps, electric cars, plants, farms, refineries, water purification, sewer
systems – 68 percent is generated by fossil fuels, 20 percent by nuclear, and 7
percent by hydro power. http://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2014/03/22/us-electricity-system-in-regulatory-and-terrorist-crosshairs-n1812722/page/full
According to
the Energy Information Agency (EIA), net energy generation from coal has
dropped from 49 percent in 2007 to 37 percent in 2012. Right now, the shortage
is partly offset by increases in natural gas.
EPA’s retrofitting
regulations and the requirement to use non-existent carbon capture technology,
has resulted in coal fire plant closures. This prompted Lamar Smith (R-Texas),
the Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, to propose
an amendment to H.R. 3826 (http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/3826)
that would
make sure that EPA’s standards for all types of new power plants use existing
technology. Rep. Smith said, “By
requiring carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology that doesn’t even exist,
the EPA’s new power plant proposal effectively bans new coal power. There is no
coal power plant anywhere in the world that can meet the EPA’s radical
proposal.” http://schweikert.house.gov/press-releases/rep-schweikert-cosponsors-amendment-to-curb-epa-overreach-on-power-plant-emissions-standards/
Robert Romano
explained that “largely as a result of coal plant closures, overall electricity
generation in the U.S. has dropped from 4.005 trillion kWh in 2007 to 3.89
trillion kWh in 2012, meanwhile end use has only decreased from 3.89 trillion
kWh to just 3.832 trillion kWh. The difference between electricity generation
and end use, or implied spare capacity, has dropped from 115 billion kWh to 58
billion kWh from 2007-2012.” This decrease of 50 percent is troublesome -
steady demand would cause eventual brownouts. http://netrightdaily.com/2014/03/epa-lost-mind/#ixzz2vaOr9QUP
According to
the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), approximately 11.5 million American
homes use wood burning stoves for heat. EPA issued new rules on emissions of
particles and gases released from residential wood stoves and other wood-fired
heaters built after 2015 and the rules will be more stringent in five years. EPA “estimates that 85,695 wood stoves will be
manufactured and sold in 2015.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-moves-to-regulate-new-wood-stoves/2014/01/03/b08cb232-7484-11e3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html
The airborne
particulates allowed change from 15 micrograms per cubic meter to 12. Bob
Adelman put it in proper perspective, “Secondhand tobacco smoke in a closed-car
exposes a person to 3,000-4,000 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter.” According to John Crouch of the Hearth, Patio
and Barbecue Association, particulate pollution from wood burning stoves often
occurs because consumers use insufficiently dried wood.
I wrote about
cook stoves in my book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy.” The drive to
replace cook stoves with “clean cook stoves” with chimneys came from the United
Nations and translated into grants of $100,000 to $750,000 awarded by the
Department of Energy through the “Clean Biomass Cook stove Technologies”
initiative. The grants were intended to
help 100 million households in third world countries by 2020. http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396282329&sr=1-1&keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy
Two studies
evaluated the “clean cook stoves” and found that they delivered the same amount
of measured pollution as the previous stoves. RESPIRA (Randomized Exposure
Study of Pollution Indoors) showed improved air quality but not overall
health. “Up in Smoke,” a much larger
study from MIT showed same amount of measured pollution and no significant
change in overall health. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is forging
ahead with studies in Ghana, Nepal, and Kenya in spite of the two studies’
results.
Should our
power grid fail because of a solar flare, EMP, cyber, or terrorist attack, we
will experience a civilization setback and population demise that is hard to
fathom. While our administration concentrates on environmental issues, on April
16, 2013, terrorists attacked a power substation near San Jose, California as
reported by the Wall Street Journal on February 5, 2014. The fact that this very important piece of
information was not reported by the media until a year later is disturbing.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304851104579359141941621778
Terrorists cut
fiber optic cables and destroyed 17 transformers by causing them to leak oil
coolant, resulting in overheating and failure. The targeted attack which lasted
one hour indicated that the terrorists were very knowledgeable. The repairs
took 27 days. Those maintaining the grid were able to reroute power and avoid
blackouts.
Electricity is
delivered to us through “a complex, interconnected system of power lines,
substations, and transformers called the power grid. The entire United States
is divided into just three separate grid segments: East, West, and Texas.”
(Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek)
Billions are
spent on “climate change prevention,” and on expensive smart meters that
endanger and harm our health and attack our privacy, while our complex grid is
easy prey to sabotage and attacks, protected
only by cameras and chain link fences. It is not just that electricity prices must
“necessarily skyrocket,” as our President promised, our grid is a sitting duck
to potential attacks, and our energy production is being reduced significantly
by overly stringent EPA regulations.
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