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Thoughts from an old progressive
Roy Pratt

T. Boone Pickens, an oil mans point of view.

Posted Wednesday, February 29, 2012, at 7:27 PM
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  • Mike, not propane, natural gas like in your house. We ship more than we can use. Conversion isn't that hard, but still expensive due to lack of volume. The filling station, if you have gas at home, there is your filling station. 75% of oil usage is transportation related. Ever check the oil or plugs in a CNG engine? 100k miles, clean as a whistle. CNG $1.75 a gallon equiv. The technologies have been blocked for a long time because it would break the back of big oil. If we made a big enough switch, we would have at least 100 years to develop other efficient renewable sources of energy. We are sitting on more natural gas than almost the whole world combined.

    Why use oil?

    Buckshot, no other comment? Addicted to oil? Earn your income from oil or gasoline?

    Talk about a boost to manufacturing. Retrofitting millions of vehicles. I can't even begin to imagine how many manufacturing jobs that would create.

    -- Posted by royincaldwell on Wed, Feb 29, 2012, at 8:41 PM
  • Mike, never said we wouldn't need any oil, we just wouldn't need any from anyone.

    Buckshot, CNG is cleaner and CHEAPER. All new sources of oil in this country are becoming more expensive to extract. Do you enjoy giving your paycheck to the oil companies? What's wrong with some REAL competition? That field has been there for a long time, it just takes a very high price of oil to make it profitable.

    Your starting to sound like an big oil man.

    BTW, CNG converted cars run on both CNG and gas with a flip of the switch.

    -- Posted by royincaldwell on Thu, Mar 1, 2012, at 5:22 AM
  • Still sounds like you don't want any competition to oil. Why is that? I for one would love to have a choice. As it is, there is no competition now, very Un-American if you ask me.

    -- Posted by royincaldwell on Thu, Mar 1, 2012, at 8:07 AM
  • Buckshot, just what is wrong with using CNG, when it is plentiful and CHEAP? What is wrong with competition? I'm not trying to argue, I just fail to understand your position. CNG would encourage competition, how is that a bad thing?

    -- Posted by royincaldwell on Thu, Mar 1, 2012, at 11:38 AM
  • No one ever said you had to change, but what about the rest of the country? How many people do you think would love to fill up for $1.75 a gallon?

    -- Posted by royincaldwell on Thu, Mar 1, 2012, at 2:07 PM
  • Check into it Mike. You might be surprised. Plus no more winter/summer blends and the price spikes that come with them and never go away it seems.

    -- Posted by royincaldwell on Thu, Mar 1, 2012, at 3:16 PM
  • Buckshot, now your the one that seems to be looking for an argument. You seem so focused on Obama, that you seem to fail to see some of the things I have said.

    The one thing I have advocated here is the one thing I thought conservatives embraced, competition and lots of it.

    Mr. Pickens has no desire to force anyone to make the change, neither do I, but I would love it if I could.

    You really confuse me.

    -- Posted by royincaldwell on Thu, Mar 1, 2012, at 3:30 PM
  • Hey Roy,

    Thanks for the article. I remember as a young, naive GI back in the late 70's being stationed in Korea; and alot of the taxi's then ran on CNG. Totally blew me away; cars had gasoline engines - not something your heat your house with...

    I understand there is a loss of "power" with CNG, but as a commuter, it's not a bad trade-off.

    -- Posted by Craftbeer on Fri, Mar 2, 2012, at 8:27 PM
  • Buckshot,

    Your drill here drill now, we have plenty of oil stance is way off. You think drilling up all America's oil is the answer to our problems? In simple terms, this is very short sighted and wrong.

    Unfortunately, America has very little of this limited resource. America uses 19.5 million barrels of oil a day. Our oil reserves total about 21 billion barrels. So all of America's reserves will last only 1077 days. Emptying our reserves does not address the limited resource issue. Start developing more and better alternative energy sources now. Do not wait until the situation is completely dire.

    What about the rest of the world? 2010 was the first year in history where Global oil Consumption was larger than Global oil Production- A big data-point in favor of the theory of "Peak Oil" and higher gas prices coming in the future. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/oil-production-and-consumption

    We have a HUGE system now that is built on oil. It took us long time and a ton of money to build that system. It will take time and money to build us a new sustainable system. We can start now and spread it out of time, or we can do it late in the game and be forced to spend huge sums in a small mount of time. That is bad. So suffer some extra costs now, or suffer worse later. Get off of oil before the worst of the crisis hits. It is an obvious choice to be sustainable now.

    And that is the real key....Sustainability. No matter what you talk about, money, business, resources, if you do not have a sustainable plan, you will run out of money, go out of business, or use your resources, before any can be replenished. That is very bad.

    -- Posted by Miraxian on Sun, Mar 4, 2012, at 8:46 AM
  • I would play nice, but since the tone here is not that, I see no reason to.

    Disingenuous? You don't know the first thing about me to make such a statement. So you are one of those grand assumption people who think they know everything. All your message here already told us that though. For the record, I care very much about the health of this country and make decisions to help it. What have you done other than get on the internet and ***** like a little girl who thinks they know everything.

    Keystone XL is a waste of time and money. Lower prices from what? $7 a gallon to $6.90/gal by the time it's complete? If it were completed tomorrow, any minor lowering of prices would be wiped out by the next news event that worries "speculators", and the price at the pump would spike yet again.

    Fossil fuels is a dying industry, and it's killing us. The sooner Americans realize it and demand an end to oil subsidies and attention (research & investment) be focused ELSEWHERE, the better for consumers and the planet.

    Get off oil and onto a renewable resource, that our country has control over, is my plan. Take the oil subsidies ans start directing them to R&D into renewables and the innovation will follow the money. That is what the government can do when they do it right. Give companies a reason to invest in something, then watch as they create new and wonderful things that generate profits for the best ideas. Kind of sounds like capitalism.

    I am looking at the future, you are stuck looking at the now and saying everything is fine, no reason to change. Except change is inevitable, and the smart and strong plan for it.

    -- Posted by Miraxian on Sun, Mar 4, 2012, at 4:12 PM
  • I copied and pasted Miraxian's comment. I didn't want it to be deleted because of one word.. I changed the word and put quotation marks before and after the word plus I capitalized the letters.

    I didn't want Buckshot61 to miss out on answering Miraxian's comment

    Below is the new version of Miraxian's comment

    I would play nice, but since the tone here is not that, I see no reason to.

    Disingenuous? You don't know the first thing about me to make such a statement. So you are one of those grand assumption people who think they know everything. All your message here already told us that though. For the record, I care very much about the health of this country and make decisions to help it. What have you done other than get on the internet and "COMPLAIN" like a little girl who thinks they know everything.

    Keystone XL is a waste of time and money. Lower prices from what? $7 a gallon to $6.90/gal by the time it's complete? If it were completed tomorrow, any minor lowering of prices would be wiped out by the next news event that worries "speculators", and the price at the pump would spike yet again.

    Fossil fuels is a dying industry, and it's killing us. The sooner Americans realize it and demand an end to oil subsidies and attention (research & investment) be focused ELSEWHERE, the better for consumers and the planet.

    Get off oil and onto a renewable resource, that our country has control over, is my plan. Take the oil subsidies ans start directing them to R&D into renewables and the innovation will follow the money. That is what the government can do when they do it right. Give companies a reason to invest in something, then watch as they create new and wonderful things that generate profits for the best ideas. Kind of sounds like capitalism.

    I am looking at the future, you are stuck looking at the now and saying everything is fine, no reason to change. Except change is inevitable, and the smart and strong plan for it.

    -- Posted by Miraxian on Sun, Mar 4, 2012, at 4:12 PM

    -- Posted by MsMarylin on Sun, Mar 4, 2012, at 5:43 PM
  • Your actions are sad Buckshot. Profane language is too much for you to even try and respond. But you will still call someone a psycho because you are not above name calling. Nothing hypocritical there. And, once again you prove that you are a grand assumption person who thinks that they know everything. No matter what anyone says, you are right. Both of these actions are like those of a child.

    I am not a liberal. Just because you want to classify something as true does not make it correct. You like to talk about facts, yet, you seem to focus on the ones that you like and ignore the others. Hate to break it to you, but your beliefs are not the only ones, and, amazingly, you may not even be correct.

    I am a realist. I am looking at the long term future of humanity and our country as part of humanity. You are looking only at your views and extend them insomuch as you see them applying to America. There is a TON more issues to consider when it comes to the country. Unfortunately, you can't seem to accept that just because you don't think something matters, does not mean it does not matter. It may be a critical factor, and having your head in the sand will not change that.

    -- Posted by Miraxian on Mon, Mar 5, 2012, at 10:04 AM
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