After my last post I found a rebuttal letter to the editor in the Laconia Daily Sun and felt that I had to write a letter too. Below is my letter in its entirety. More posts will follow (some of which will repeat what I have written to the Editors of the Laconia Daily Sun, where the original letters appeared, and the Citizen of Laconia. If you were listening to "Meet the New Press" this Saturday you heard some discussion on this topic and heard it mentioned that I would be adding more posts on this subject on this blog.

To the Editor,

I have been doing some studying on the current situation concerning the high energy prices that we find ourselves in today. I started doing this research so I could present accurate facts on my blog site, The Blogging Councilor (www.laconia-nh.us) and when I saw the letter from Sean Holgate in the April 23^rd edition of the Laconia Daily Sun I figured it was time to finish my research and start posting the information.

Then I saw the rebuttal letter from Tim Sullivan in the April 24^th edition of the Laconia Daily Sun. I would like to provide some of the information I have found in a rebuttal to this letter.

Mr. Holgate states “When will it be enough? When will someone stand up and say no more? We need to pass laws to prevent price gouging on a daily basis. We need to open the federal oil reserves and lower the price of fuel so Americans don’t have to figure out how to put food on the tables and heating oil in the tank.” The answer to this is that the time to start taking action was a long time ago, but it’s not too late to start. I assume the federal oil reserves he is talking about is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) that was set up after the 1973 – 74 Arab Oil Embargo. The SPR was set up for emergency situations that affect the supply of oil; such as another embargo, a serious outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East or an attack on the Saudi oil fields and shipping lanes that prevent the oil from getting to the U.S. and our refineries.

It is said that the SPR has had a positive effect on oil rich anti-American countries not wanting to seriously affect the world wide oil supply because we can “wait them out” and they would have to resume oil supply before going bankrupt.

The SPR contains 700 million barrels of oil and has never been used for its intended purpose, but has been tapped for problems with domestic supply in situations like Hurricane Katrina. The world wide demand for oil is 86 million barrels of oil per day and the American demand makes up 21 million barrels of that number. Given the fact that the SPR can provide 3 – 4 million barrels per day it can only be used to affect pricing for 5 – 6 months. At that time the price would jump back to current levels and the reserve would be depleted.

Mr. Holgate also asks “What can we do? Maybe park the cars for a day. Maybe protest in Washington DC and let the president hear the people of the United States of America!” This again would be fruitless because we are eventually going to have to drive and fill our cars.

Mr. Sullivan appears to have some valid research of his own on the current economic woes that have accelerated this problem, but his main thesis is the “blame Bush” mentality that does no good in this discussion. I would say to Mr. Sullivan that this problem started many decades ago and the blame belongs on both sides of the aisle. We are where we are because of the decisions our elected representatives in both the U.S. Legislature and the Presidency has made over the past 30 years.

I hope Mr. Sullivan doesn’t think that all Republicans are Conservatives, but with the tone of his remarks it appears he does. I consider myself a Conservative and it doesn’t matter to me WHICH SIDE OF THE AISLE a solution to a problem comes from, only that it is a good solution that doesn’t cause more problems than it solves. I agree that the Republicans have gone crazy with spending, but that is not the Conservative way. On a problem of this nature partisanship is a hindrance to an effective solution.

In the 70’s, over the objections of several environmental groups Congress decided to allow the drilling of oil in Prudhoe Bay in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). There were objections that the Caribou population would suffer and they were already on the threatened species list. The objections have been proved to be wrong as all of the wildlife has thrived and the populations have grown dramatically. At least Congress got this one right.

In the late 70’s President Carter made a choice to pursue research in nuclear power and to turn our back on research for wind, hydroelectric, ocean current and solar technologies. This plan was approved by Congress.

Then we had the problems with nuclear power (Three Mile Island and later Chernobyl) which made Congress decide to stop pursuing this strategy. Regulations were put in place that made it virtually impossible for nuclear power plants to come on-line. Because Congress has turned their back on this power source we have never, as a nation, decided what to do with the nuclear waste that comes from this type of energy production.

Wind power is currently being expanded, but we have elected officials not allowing it in certain areas because they don’t like it. Here locally we have PSNH paying owners of hydroelectric power plants to remove them and not produce electricity because they don’t like the competition. Where is the outrage about this.

Throughout the 80’s and 90’s (and even into this decade) Congress defeated efforts to expand drilling in ANWR. In 1995 President Clinton vetoed a bill to allow drilling in another 2,000 acres at ANWR. This is a small percentage of the 19 million acres that make up ANWR. In fact 2,000 acres equals less than 1% of New Hampshire, and NH equals less than 1% of ANWR. President Clinton cited environmental concerns but the technology has evolved to a point that there would be less impact than the current site in Prudhoe Bay.

If this work had been started in 1995 we would be producing more than 1 million barrels of oil domestically right now. ANWR isn’t the only area of oil that is off limits by federal regulations. The Department of Interior has estimated that we have over 20 billion barrels of oil onshore and another 20 billion barrels of oil off shore. In fact we are the only country in the world that has oil reserves that are “off limits” to drilling and production.

There is a lot of talk about alternative energy sources such as ethanol. Mr. Holgate mentions in his letter “Now remember everything else will double in price — food, heating oil, utilities, etc.” I am sure everyone has noticed the increase at the supermarket for food. This is because the current energy policy passed by Congress in 2005 and signed into law by President Bush mandates ethanol production and ethanol blends of fuel. Currently we are committed to 9 billion barrels of ethanol and this is to increase to 36 billion barrels by 2022.

The current supply of ethanol comes from corn and has caused the price of corn to go from a stable $2 per bushel to over $5 per bushel and the increased planting of corn to meet the mandate has reduced the acreage available for wheat and soybean harvests. This increases the price for these products too, not to mention the price increase of feeding livestock for meat production. Last year, in order to protect a further dependency Congress strengthened the restrictions on importing ethanol from countries like Brazil.

There are other problems with ethanol use. First of all every gallon of ethanol is subsidized by our tax dollars in the amount of $0.51 per gallon. Secondly cars using ethanol get fewer miles per gallon and the greenhouse gasses that are supposed to be reduced are actually being increased. According to two articles in the February 29, 2008 issue of Science (vol. 319) “Joseph Fagione et al titled Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt and Timothy Searchinger et al titled Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gasses Through Emissions from Land-Use Change” carbon dioxide is being released by 17 to 420 times more than the fuels they are supposed to replace. There are many more issues and problems with ethanol use and I won’t go into them now.

Suffice it to say that alternative energy sources will take time to become effective. Sources like Hydrogen Fuel Cells are working now but still need to be researched to make them commercially available.

The 2007 energy bill is being held up by both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. They have differing versions of the same bill and refuse to go into conference to work out the differences until after the November elections. WHY???

What we can do now is to pressure our federally elected representatives to work out a compromise on the energy bill and to make sure it has BOTH short term and long term solutions. In the short term we need to open up drilling in ANWR and off shore in the Gulf of Mexico, where China, Great Britain, India, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Venezuela are currently drilling. In the long term we need to provide incentives for research for profitable sources of energy and remove subsidies for alternative sources that cause more harm than good.

I will be posting my sources for this research online and I encourage everyone to take a close look at the postings and provide their input. If we can collectively create a loud enough voice they will hear us in Washington.

Greg Knytych

Laconia

This is such a complex subject and I will try to make future posts shorter and confined to one aspect.