RB, surely you realize that the premise of your question is that there is a consensus on the "costs" and "benefits" of drilling in Alaska. Assuming you mean "economically," then the simple answer is that if there is no realistic profit opportunity the people whoa re able to exploit the opportunity won't do it. But if they think they can make money, they will. I suspect, however, that that's not the analysis you're making. Just guessing there, but you'd prefer to identify costs and benefits in ways that are not cleanly quantifiable and thus manipulable by people with political viewpoints.
My post was not limited to the idea of drilling in Alaska, which is why I didn't formulate it by reference to that. I'm sorry if you perceive that as sidestepping. I was addressing the more general point of whether we should be doing more petroleum exploration than we are doing, whether in Alaska or elsewhere. Economically speaking, the very mention of drilling within the US and its territorial waters applies downward pressure on prices as the market assesses, discounts and factors in the prospect of some quantity of additional petroleum coming online in a given time frame. (That's because it means that petroleum is less scarce than it had been previously). That happens even before the first hole is drilled. The progress of actual projects will improve the information, and thus allow for better precision in the pricing effect, but the raw fact of the prospect of additional production is already applying downward pressure on the price.
I'm not sure that's elegant, but it's fairly simple economically. I would hope that by the time the actual stuff comes up out of the ground, we'll be well on the way to much more diversity in our energy sources.
Quote:
dc_dux wrote:
loquitor...do you think the Pickens Plan is a leap of faith....to generate 20%+ of power generation needs through wind power in 10 years.
Creating the wind power is relatively simple and requires little innovation...building the pipeline/infrastructure to deliver it nationwide is the challenge...but it is a $$ challenge, not an innovation challenge. And in any case, would require government coordination.
The other challenge is converting vehicles to natural gas....utlizing the natural gas saved by converting power plants to wind.
Who will benefit most from this plan....probably Pickens...but thats fine with me. Isnt that how capitalism (with some government stimulation and coordination) is supposed to work.
No one is suggestion replacing the need for petroleum completely.
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Yes, I think that proposed level of substitution (wind for petroleum) is unlikely and unrealistic. We don't have enough land with enough wind for the number of wind farms we'd need, and the environmental/esthetic blight it would cause would curl your hair if it isn't already curly. I'm happy for Pickens to try, and I'd be thrilled if he succeeded, but I think he's just talking this thing up in order to get backing (financial, legal, governmental). We'd be lucky getting a fraction of what he's proposing in terms of energy. I'm pretty sure, though, that he'd put together a deal for himself in which his downside is protected. More power to him.
As for LNG, how is it conceptually different from petroleum? It comes out of the ground, it's a hyrdocarbon, it releases pollutants of one kind or another (different ones from gasoline, true, but pollutants nonetheless). Oh, and it can explode if it leaks. It may not even solve the geopolitical problem, because a lot of LNG occurs in proximity to petroleum (though a lot does not). Again: I'm not averse to adding LNG to the mix of alternative energy sources, but we have to be realistic about what is likely to happen.