Oil Deposit Could Increase US Reserves 10x

HighWizard notes the upcoming release, on Thursday, of a report by the US Geological Survey on the Bakken Formation. This is an oil field covering 200,000 square miles and underlying parts of North and South Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan. A geologist who began surveying the field, before dying in 2000, believed it may hold as much as 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Later estimates have ranged to the hundreds of billions of barrels. Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy independence.

Fungible

[corsec67]

Too bad oil is fungible [wikipedia.org], so OPEC can still hurt us monetarily.

So, how far back does this push "peak oil"?

Re:Nice

[snl2587]

I'm not going to hold my breath.

I wouldn't. Even with that much oil it still is going to run out someday. If anything we should leave it alone for now to ensure that we don't end up with massive shortages as we transition to alternative fuel sources.

Securing energy independece...until it's gone

[RedSteve]

Even if the field is as productive as the summary makes it sound, it should be treated as a reprieve, not as an absolute solution.

Giant shale fields...

[lpangelrob]

Giant shale fields still make for expensive recovery costs. And will this make make large expanses of the Dakotas like the strip mines of West Virginia?

Uhhh, What?

[pclminion]

I'm sorry, I must have missed the part that explained how having a huge excess of oil was going to stop global warming... "Energy independence" doesn't mean having as much oil to burn as you would ever like.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

There won't be any massive shortages.

As supply diminishes, prices will rise. We're starting to see this happen already; remember when $1.20/gallon was expensive?

As prices rise, it encourages people to conserve. This isn't happening very much yet, but that's just because the price is still relatively low. Yes, $3.50/gallon is relatively low. Think about how much driving people would do at, say, $10/gallon, or $20/gallon.

Rising prices also makes alternative sources of oil profitable, and thus exploitable. For example, Canada has enormous oil reserves in tar sands [wikipedia.org]. It used to be economically infeasible to extract these reserves. But now that the product fetches a higher price, it becomes profitable and those areas are booming. This effect helps to stabilize supply, since as supply goes up, prices rise, making it more economical to find new supply.

And lastly, rising prices encourage development of alternative energy. If gasoline had stayed at $1/gallon forever, I doubt that hybrids and electrics would have ever been more than curiosities. Now they're becoming serious business, and as prices continue to rise they will become ever more viable. Alternative energy sources that look foolishly expensive now will become useful money savers above a certain price point. The higher oil prices rise, the more money becomes available for research and purchase of alternatives.

We won't wake up one day to discover that the oil has run out overnight and we're all doomed. Instead, we should see a steady rise in oil prices as reserves continue to diminish, and alternatives will slowly take over as this process continues. This is bad news when it comes to global warming, because I doubt that anything is going to stop people from burning oil aside from it becoming too expensive due to reduced supply. But it's good news when it comes to the survival of modern technological civilization, because there shouldn't be any great supply shocks as it slowly decreases over time.

It's interesting to note that price controls and subsidies on oil such as exist in Venezuela defeat this process and would be extremely harmful if implemented more widely than just a few medium-sized nations. The surest way to guarantee that we do hit a supply wall one day would be to have the governments of the Earth band together and decide to guarantee $3/gallon gasoline to all of their citizens forever.

Re:Uhhh, What?

[introspekt.i]

Hold up there, buddy. I didn't say it was anything. I just said it had nothing to do with ecology. Not that it's a good thing, though. It comes from a line of thinking that doesn't really take an ecological perspective on things...which probably isn't good. The term just reflects a point of view. You could use a more precise term like "sustainable energy independence", then we could all hold hands and dance and sing around the Maypole.

Wow, imagine what this will do for gas prices!

[epp_b]

Absolutely nothing!

Re:Uhhh, What?

[pclminion]

I'm simply questioning how a country can be "independent," in an energy respect or otherwise, when the world literally can't be lived upon. Finding a mass reserve will do nothing but encourage Americans to burn oil even more wantonly -- this would seem to be a form of independence, up until the very last second, when what is left of humanity murder each other in a primal, animalistic rage for scarce remaining resources.

Oil Dependance

[Anonymous Coward]

This is inaccurate:

"Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy independence."

This is correct:

"Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy dependency on oil."

Re:Uhhh, What?

[teknomage1]

Why do people always discuss National Energy Independence, when the oil is just going to be harvested by a multinational energy corporation and sold at whatever the market will bear?

Re:We have more oil?

[KDR_11k]

Even if we all decide today that we're going to swear off fossil fuels, the process of converting our society to the alternatives will take decades, decades in which we will still rely on millions of barrels of oil every day.

Which is why that decision should've been made decades ago. The switch will never be painless, just like switching from MS Office or Windows to the competition will never be painless.

Re:The $100+ Million Question

[TubeSteak]

About $50 per barrel - a little higher than oil from Albertan tar sands, which is about $40 per barrel. Considering that the price is $100 per barrel, there are tremendous profits here.

The only problem with that line of thought is that it assumes $100 a barrel is here to stay.

Current prices have nothing to do with supply or demand issues and everything to do with (1) the crappy value of the US dollar, (2) the ongoing instability in/around Iraq, (3) ongoing violence and instability in Nigeria and (4) Hugo Chavez's ongoing nationalization of industries while threatening to stop oil exports to the USA.

Re:Nice

[hardburn]

Yeah, all the SUVs being replaced with Priuses are just a figment of a diseased mind.

Re:The real question is *SHOULD* you use it

[Itchyeyes]

A lot of people question the wisdom of continuing the oil economy, there just aren't a lot of clear cut answers. There are a lot of possibilities, and a lot of people are working hard to make those possibilities a reality, but at the moment nothing is really ready to take oil's (and for that matter coal's) place in our energy production on a large enough scale.

At the rate we use it, this wouldn't last long

[paxundae]

I believe we (the United States) are burning around 7.5 billion barrels per year at the moment. I'm not a mathematician, but that gives us around 13 years per every 100 billion barrels we're able to extract.

Unless, of course, our usage keeps going up (as recently as 1990, it was around 6 billion barrels per year).

All in all, it would be optimistic to assume we'd get a decade out of each 100 billion barrels we get to the surface. A decade is a long time, but I wouldn't call it "energy independence." I could easily live long enough to see these reserves disappear, even if we do have 500 billion barrels, and my kids certainly will.

True independence will need something renewable.

Re:We have more oil?

[iq in binary]

You, sir, are a complete fucking moron.

The big oil companies haven't been making their profit by virtue of artificially controlling the supply, they've been doing it by selling more than they've ever sold before. The profits reaped last year and the year previous wasn't because of raising their profit margins (I.E. raising prices to increase their profit margin), they've been doing it by selling more petrol than in any years previous.

Big Oil has has the same business infrastructure, organizational structure, and sales methods as they've had for 50 fucking years. They held a razor thin profit margin on gasoline for going on 25 years now. For every dollar on gas, you spend maybe 3 pennies giving them profit. So quit bitching about oil companies gouging the public, because they aren't. You want to know the real culprit for gas prices these days? Our own fucking government, they make about a dollar per gallon on taxes.

Where does that money go? Who knows any more. Just quit bitching about a company actually doing good business, because for the most part the petrol companies are. They have to deal with literally thousands of different mixtures of gasoline being shipped among this country, the different ways to refine them, and finally the shipping, and they're only pulling 3% profit. Fuck you for thinking that's out of line. Learn your economics, and then learn how the real world works. The price of gas being as high as it is is MORE the gov's fault for spending so much money on pork that it has to rape us on gas to compensate. Bitch at your governments for taxing gas so much, then bitch at them for making good companies spend twice as much as they have to for making a good product, THEN bitch at the gas companies for not making things cheap enough when they're only pulling a 3% margin.

This is a capitalist economy, damnit, it's what is responsible for this country's well-being. Think about the business first, then bitch.

Re:Fungible

[teh moges]

I'm not an environmental crack pot, but two things make me consider 'peak' to be a unavoidable event:
1) Oil is being used quicker then it is being created. This is known from basic facts about how much oil we use and how it is known to be created (slowly)
2) Oil usage isn't decreasing at a fast enough rate. This is known again from facts about how much oil we use.

The simple mathematics are that if something is being used faster then it is created, it will reach zero. Whether that is now, or in 1000 years, I don't know. All of the data is being obfuscated on both sides for their own gain. The only way that the peak won't occur is if that idea about oil actually being a renewable resource (i.e. (1) above is false) is true, or if we remove our dependency on it so much that our usage doesn't make that much of a dent anymore (i.e. (2) above is made false). I can't see either of these happening, and I can't see the second one happening without the oil tycoons, the companies profiting from oil AND the countries tied in with these companies being force to do so.

Re:100 Billion Barrels of Greenhouse Gases

[dbIII]

The big problem we have is the cheap energy we need to get rid of the CO2 is from sources that make the stuff. As a parallel limestone would be a fantastic way to tie up carbon dioxide - until you think of how you would get the calcium.

There really is incredible amounts of energy wastage we can target first with nothing but behavioural issues and political stubbonness in the way. Airconditioning, transport and lighting are handled in very inefficient ways in a lot of situations and there are many industrial situations optimised for energy pricing that has very little to do with actual energy usage. In a lot of cases there is no incentive at all to use less energy when the sane situation would be to give those that cut their usage a discount. Where the climate change argument got weird and partisan political was when economic penalties and the prospect of a new artificial market to make money in appeared. There is also an overemphasis on penalties which is just making enemies of those that could be using less (but don't use less because they get no saving at all on their energy bills) and just stretches out the time before any action is taken by a few more years. We need to avoid what is really fairytale bullshit from many (not the above poster but often economists) and get back to the idea of actually doing what we can to burn less stuff instead. We're seeing things like traffic lights getting replaced by an array of LED's, streetlights with reflectors so that lower power bulbs do the same job and other measures that cut power consumption in places where the power bill for a city is actually lower if they use less electricity - and no effort at all in places that just face the threat of some sort of carbon tax in the future. To get large savings we need large organisations to make major efforts. It costs a lot to put in a railway line between two areas that a lot of people want to move between but it cuts down the daily energy use by a large amount.

Re:Securing energy independece...until it's gone

[jamesh]

but is there any reason not to use it?

Depends what you mean by 'use'. If you mean 'burn' then yes, there are plenty of reasons, and almost all of them have to do with taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air, while we are spending billions of dollars trying to figure out how to put the carbon back into the ground again.

If you mean 'turn into other products like plastic and vaseline' then go for it :)

Re:The real question is *SHOULD* you use it

[tacocat]

Well of course we should use it.

We're going to need every drop of it to invade all the other oil producing nations so we'll have even more oil. All sarcasm aside, this is a really going to be a set back to the American economy in the long run.

While we are spending our time and money pulling oil out of the ground we are not going to be making any effort to develop alternatives, while the rest of the world (except China) is actually going to work on developing alternative energies.

At some point we need to address the question of whether it's more important to lower the price of gas at the pump or take measures to develop more sustainable alternatives while we still have some oil to fall back onto. Alternatives to oil are not limited to the fuel pump, but all applications of oil. And plastic is going to be a hard one to replace.

Re:Exactly

[whatnotever]

For those of you that think it has any validity, try this 6 step experiment.

1) Get a drinking straw.
2) Go to a pool.
3) Start sucking the water out of the pool as fast as you can with that straw. (You probably should not swallow the water)
4) Go to the ocean.
5) Start sucking the water out of the ocean as fast as you can with the same straw. (You definitely should not swallow the water)
6) Now explain to us all how the amount of water that you sucked through the straw was dictated by reserve you are pulling from.

Or try this experiment:

1) Get a drinking straw.
2) Get a really big sponge really soaking wet.
3) Start sucking the water out of the sponge as fast as you can with that straw.
4) If you start getting less water, try a different spot on the sponge.
5) Marvel at how thought experiments can prove anything you want if they are divorced enough from the phenomenon of interest, but note that mine is probably closer to the reality of oil extraction than yours is.

Re:We have more oil?

[tacocat]

You might have made a better point if you weren't such a dingus about it.

And they absolutely do not have a fixed three percent profit margin. It's varied.

As for the government taxes, it's probably used for something pretty stupid.

Re:We have more oil?

[khallow]

Which is why that decision should've been made decades ago.

Why do you think planning things decades ahead works? Why do you think we'd make better decisions than the ones we did make? For example, fifty years ago, we had a good idea about the extent of Middle East oil (it was starting to be exploited), but no idea about how unstable the region was going to be. Nuclear power looked huge (they were planning at one point to have 40-50 nuclear plants lining just the California coast to exploit the Pacific Ocean as a heat sink). Solar and wind power (for electricity generation) weren't developed yet. They still had some places to put in hydroelectric plants in the developed world. Computers and space technology were very crude. We just found out about DNA. The greenhouse effect was just a vague theory. The economic surge of the Third World wasn't expected.

I guess my point here is that any energy-based plans in the late 50's would be completely obselete by now. You seem to imply that we should have decided to shift away from oil a few decades ago. But what would have been the basis of such a decision? That there were only a few decades of oil production (which incidentally, we're in the process of blowing past)? That fossil fuel burning causes air pollution? Those have been addressed. What we think of as problems now, will be dealt with. It might mean that we move away in the near future from burning fossil fuels, or not. But in fifty years, what we see as problems now, will change. Old problems may vanish while new ones take their place.

Re:The real question is *SHOULD* you use it

[Xarin]

A lot of people question the wisdom of continuing the oil economy, there just aren't a lot of clear cut answers. There are a lot of possibilities, and a lot of people are working hard to make those possibilities a reality, but at the moment nothing is really ready to take oil's (and for that matter coal's) place in our energy production on a large enough scale.

The real issue is that US dollars are no longer backed by gold but by oil. Oil is priced, bought and sold with dollars. This is how the dollar gets its value and one reason other governments must hold dollars as a reserve currency. It also allows the US government to print a lot of dollars without any ill effects as they are taken out of the US economy and held/spent abroad. They then are repatriated by being spent on US Treasury bonds which pays for the dollars being printed backwards. The US is like the ticket booth at a fair. It prints and sell the tickets while the rest of the world spends it on the rides. To eliminate oil is to effectively eliminate the dollar and to eliminate the dollar and replace it with another currency such as the euro is to effectively eliminate US sovereignty as its economic policies will no longer be solely its own. It may also lead the US to abandon its debt obligations to the peril of banks, Social Security, pensions etc. One should not cut off one of the branches that the world economy is sitting on without seriously considering the implications.

Re:The $100+ Million Question

[Urkki]

Uh, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela are supply issues. This is the real world, stuff like that will be happening always.

Also, note that if there is so much demand that expensive "unconventional sources" are needed to satisfy the demand, then price of all oil (fungible commodity) will be the price of oil from the most expensive source.

Also, in this situation, increasing production from cheap sources so much that "unconventional sources" become unprofitable makes no economic sense for any oil producer. It would be spending money to run out of your cheap-to-produce oil faster, and getting less total money for it. Spending money to get less money, why would anybody do that? Just let the "unconventional sources" determine the price, and sell your cheap-to-produce oil at that price (or slightly lower if there is oversupply of "unconventional oil").

Don't tell me you are suggesting artifically increased supply, forced by the governments? That would be socialism, and it's been seen that it really doesn't work in the long run.

Re:We have more oil?

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, fifty years ago, we had a good idea about the extent of Middle East oil (it was starting to be exploited), but no idea about how unstable the region was going to be.

Let's see, you're saying that in 1958, people had no idea how unstable the Middle East was going to be. HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Yes, such a peaceful time [wikipedia.org] it was, nobody had any idea how unstable [wikipedia.org] the Middle East would be. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Will you be here all week? Should we try the veal?

Re:We have more oil?

[Simon]

Why do you think planning things decades ahead works? Why do you think we'd make better decisions than the ones we did make?

Ok, so you are saying that we didn't know decades ago that being dependent on oil [wikipedia.org] might be a bad idea and that we should try to get off it?

--
Simon

Re:The real question is *SHOULD* you use it

[doktorjayd]

The real issue is that US dollars are no longer backed by gold but by oil. Oil is priced, bought and sold with dollars. This is how the dollar gets its value and one reason other governments must hold dollars as a reserve currency

it also appears to be the real underlying reason the bush/chaney regime went in to iraq: the formerly pliant iraqi administration was considering trading their oil exclusively in euros, leaving the Fiat Currency [wikipedia.org] without its real underlying value, and they couldnt have that.

what, with all the haliburon stock those guys have.

Re:We have more oil?

[plantman-the-womb-st]

No, Montana doesn't have "nukes", there are "nukes" in Montana. They are not the property of the state or any state agency. So um, good luck with just waltzing in and trying to point one at another part of your own country. And get back to logging, slacker.

Re:I am not a petrol engineer but I know Chinese

[drsmithy]

Invest in decent public transport. There should be no _need_ for anyone living within 10-20km of the centre of any reasonably large city (few hundred thousand people and up) to own a car.

Re:We have more oil?

[downix]

You know a "Feeder Reactor" actually is designed to do pretty much this, reprocess the fuel as it's being fissioned into more fissionable material.

Re:We have more oil?

[Dutchy Wutchy]

You see, profit is the money left over after everyone is paid off. You know, AFTER the executive officers earn their hundreds of millions of dollars.

The companies could easily be in the red just by giving out billion dollar bonuses. After all, a bonus is just another part of the operation cost.

Record Profit + Record Salaries = Record Exploitation

Re:We have more oil?

[DavidShor]

When was the last time gas taxes were raised? 1996? Oh... So that means that the tripling in gas prices since year 2000 was due to something other than government?

Re:We have more oil?

[Itchyeyes]

Just read the numbers. Canada and Mexico account for 35% of our oil imports. Is that a lot, sure it is. But is it anywhere near most of our oil? No. What's more, the GP was making this point to support his idea that events in the Middle East do not affect our oil supply. But the #2 provider of US oil imports is Saudi Arabia at 17%.

Re:Fungible

[universalconstant]

You seem to be forgetting (deliberately?) that oil is primarily used as an energy _source_. Sure, you can make it artificially. But when it takes more energy to make that than it contains it is no longer an energy source, it's an energy _sink_. But don't let that worry your head in the sand.

Re:The real question is *SHOULD* you use it

[Itchyeyes]

At some point we need to address the question of whether it's more important to lower the price of gas at the pump or take measures to develop more sustainable alternatives while we still have some oil to fall back onto. Alternatives to oil are not limited to the fuel pump, but all applications of oil. And plastic is going to be a hard one to replace.

The thing most people don't understand is that oil reservoirs deplete. As you pull oil out of the rock it decreases the pressure and decreases the amount you're able to pull out in the future. It's not just an issue of lowering the price at the pump. You have to work constantly just to keep the price at the pump where it is, and that's if demand is just steady. If we stop developing new reserves before we have a viable alternative to take its place, this $100/bbl we pay now is going to look like a drop in the bucket. And if energy starts getting too expensive there are some pretty dire consequences, like people not being able to afford turning on their heaters in the winter or people not being able to work because they can't afford transportation.

Re:We have more oil?

[aurispector]

I can actually *remember* the lines to fill up . All the arguments about energy policy here are bunk except for one; cost, pure and simple. With oil, you stick a big straw in the ground and suck it out, then boil it to break it down into gas and stuff. Then you put it in your car and burn it. Nothing else is that cheap or simple and has as much energy per gallon.

The hidden advantage of the current prices is that other technologies become economically viable for development. Besides, there's plenty of OIL right now - current high gas prices are due to a relative lack of refining capacity. I'd bet that when gas hits $5 a gallon in the US, suddenly new refineries will spring up, but also more alternate energy sources will become competitive. THIS IS THE KEY. Once it's really worth it to try out new technologies (a prius does not yet save you money in terms of total cost of ownership), we hit critical mass for research and funding and the market takes care of the rest. Economies of scale will reduce the costs and after a while oil isn't all that profitable, especially when the easily pumped deposits dwindle and it's more expensive to suck it out of the ground.

Re:6000SUX

[rubberglove]

Or just bring your own bag(s).

I've done this for just about every grocery trip for the past two or three years (except for maybe once a month or two when I actually want a few bags for household garbage cans).

You don't have to be an ecowarrior to think that the number of bags that we use (and throw away) is ridiculous. Here in Canada it's something like 10 billion a year (!).

But the 'environmental' aspect of it is only part of it. Frankly, I stopped taking bags from the grocery store mostly just because I was sick of having so many of the damn things that I would never use. But once I started, I realized just how more convenient it is to have a larger sturdy bag (or bags, usually) that I can throw over my shoulder instead of a dozen or so flimsy plastic ones that are uncomfortable to carry.

Even when I'm doing a larger shopping run with a car (about half the time over the winter) it's still a hell of a lot easier to carry two big blue ikea bags to the kitchen.

Over these past 3 years I've noticed a huge shift in attitudes about the whole thing. It used to be that I'd have to practically shove the grocery bagboy out of the way and get into a discussion about why I didn't want their bags. Now it seems like at least a third of people bring their own bags, and most stores give a 5 cent discount for it (yay. 5 cents).

Re:6000SUX

[bonehead]

You might want to replace that gasket.

Re:Now Iraq is looking really stupid...

[statichead]

If we were going to war for iraqs oil we would not be paying over $3 per gallon at the pump today.

Re:I am not a petrol engineer but I know Chinese

[Ihlosi]

I am *not* making those trips with 2 young children on any form of public transportation.

Well, a 3-hour train ride is much more fun for kids (due to being able to run around, having more space, etc) than being strapped into a car seat for 3 hours. That is, if you have decent quality trains. If you have _fast_ trains, then those 250 miles would be a 2-hour train ride, which oughta beat the heck out of driving, especially at the slow speeds allowed in the States.

Re:6000SUX

[spun]

There are also major new discoveries of oil in Vietnam [aapg.org] and Southeast Asia. So why am I paying $3.40 for gas????

And why don't these new discoveries make to the news networks, radio or newpapers???

Because these aren't new discoveries. They are old, know deposits that were, for one reason or another, not economical to tap when the price of oil was low. Now that it is high, it makes economic sense to tap these reserves. If the price went down again, the reserves would no longer make enough profit to justify using them.

Re:We have more oil?

[ivan256]

My claim was based on the fact that we have plenty of product. Which we do. Reserves are at historically high levels. The only reason we have this obsession with "eliminating the dependence on foreign oil" is because it sounds good to the American public when a politician says it. Rare is the politician that wants to eliminate or dependence on foreign refining.

Re:I am not a petrol engineer but I know Chinese

[drsmithy]

I don't think you understand how big the United States actually is, and how spread out people are here.

I'm from Australia. I think I've got a reasonably good handle on spread out populations in large landmasses.

OTOH, I don't think _you_ realise just how well a co-ordinated, comprehensive public transport system can work. Particularly when you're only limiting yourself to relatively high-density urban areas.

I live within this 10-20 KM os the center of a city, but routinely have to travel.

How frequently ? To where ? What stops you using public transport ? What would allow you to ?

Weekly my wife drives to her mother's house, which is about 60 miles away.

So once a week she grabs a short term rental car and drives over there.

I am *not* making those trips with 2 young children on any form of public transportation.

Instead of having to strap your children into the back of a car for ~4-5 hours and concentrate on driving, you can interact with them for 2-3 hours and arrive at your destination earlier, less stressed and having possibly spent the time getting there doing something useful rather that sitting in a car doing nothing.

(Bonus, this will almost certainly be cheaper than actually owning and running multiple cars.)

Clarification: in my previous post I was talking about owning a vehicle for "personal use" and excluding people for who it is a necessary part of their work (builders, electricians, etc). Note that "commuting" isn't a "necessary part of work" with decent public transport (although why anyone would *prefer* to drive in the presence of a decent public transport system is beyond me). I should also emphasise that I don't believe people shouldn't be allowed to have cars, merely that they shouldn't feel like owning one is required to make life livable.

Re:Only 10% of oil goes to automotive gasoline?

[electrictroy]

I think he has a valid point; and all it takes is a little "back of the envelope" calculations:

- I burn about 1500 gallons of gasoline per year, which is around 7500 pounds of oil-based product.

- I use about 250 bags per year, which is perhaps 10 pounds of oil-based product.

Clearly the majority of my oil usage goes towards gasoline, and the plastic bag impact is negligible... just as the other guy was telling us.

Re:I am not a petrol engineer but I know Chinese

[geekoid]

"It's not like you can transmit their energy to people in the northeast."

Why not? you can transmit across the country with about a 10% loss.

In fact the new solar collectors are planned to do just that, collect gigawatts in the South West, and transm,itt it across the country.

These aren't you're roof top solar panels btw, they are huge reflector that focus the light onto a huge pipe of water are some other solution., that turns a generators. One of these pipes is about 100 yards long, and you could build several of these in the Southwest desert.
The liquid is stored, and used to turn a turbine. They can store it for many hours after dark.
This is doable, today.

"At least in NY, this is required. When you use power off the grid, the meter rolls up. When you give power back to the grid, the meter rolls down."
federal law, actually. However the system is limit do to physical limitation on how much you can send back.

Electric cars are fine for 95% of the daily commuters in the US. If you travel more then a couple of hundred mile, get a non-electric car for those drives.

I don't hate SUVs, I mean there great for camping and pulling boats and what not, but why people use them for commuting to work is beyond me. A complete waste of their money. I mean, buy a Geo metro, get 40+ MPG and they cost less then 50 bucks a year to maintain, and 4 good tires cost about 125 bucks, total.

Re:Only 10% of oil goes to automotive gasoline?

[Bryansix]

Save your bags if it makes you feel good, but it ain't gonna make any real difference.

Actually the problem with plastic bags is a waste problem and not with how they are made. They are super efficient as carrying devices but then what? The catch a small breeze and now they are a litter problem bound to last for decades. The solution here is to use reusable bags. Also Ralph's (Kroger)has a program where each time you use a reusable bag you get 10 cents off the total of your purchases. I get 20 cents off each purchase because I have two of them. They pay for themselves in no time.

Re:6000SUX

[JSBiff]

Thank you. I was wondering exactly the same thing - who measures gasoline in miles-of-gasoline-at-x-miles-per-gallon? I've never seen anyone measure gas that way.

To the GP, let me help simplify your expression:

N Miles * Gallons/XMiles = N/X Gallons.

So, that gives us 50000/25 = 2000 gallons.

  There, isn't that much simpler? Of course, 50000 just sounds so much worse than 2000. (Not that 2000 sounds good mind you, but I sometimes wonder with these tortured derived units that people come up with, instead of using basic units, whether they are simply trying to inflate the number while still being, technically, correct?)