Just how much of a difference could efficiency gains make on oil imports? A lot
Sometimes you have to step away from the daily updates and take a peek at the larger "domestic and global fuels supply situation.' If you're the DOE Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuel that just released a three-volume report on exactly that matter, you'll discover that the "outlook is urgent." The good news is that efficiency gains and other "alternatives" will help reduce the need for oil imports in the coming decades. The task force's "alternatives" to importing oil include: shale oil, heavy crude, tar sands, coal-to-liquids and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using captured carbon dioxide. Remember, this is a military-based "strategic" fuel document here.
And, as The Energy Blog points out, the report says: "Aggressive development by private industry, and encouraged by government, could supply all of the Department of Defense's domestic fuels demand by 2016, and supply upwards of 7 million barrels per day of domestically produced liquid fuels to domestic markets by 2035." My question, what about the DoD's foreign fuel demand? The U.S. military uses around
The details, with graphs and analysis, can be found at EV World.
[Source: EV World via The Energy Blog]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tim mcleod 10:32AM (10/10/2007)
somebody lost a decimal point or mixed up their units of measure here; i know our military consumes a lot of petroleum products, but not over four times that of the entire planet
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rgseidl 3:38PM (10/10/2007)
@tim mcleod -
correct, global oil production is now somewhere between 86 and 89 million barrels per day.
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Sebastian Blanco 5:47PM (10/10/2007)
You're right. Update forthcoming.
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tim mcleod 7:15PM (10/10/2007)
I only recently discovered autobloggreen and within the first couple of weeks read back through the almost 500 pages - very informative and useful (I've even been inspired to build my own hybrid with an eye toward full EV if it proves out). When I noticed the apparent numerical error I thought it would be more thoughtful to mention it directly to the Sebastian, the author. But on my computer the link to his name didn't yield access to his email. Perhaps that is a feature autobloggreen might consider adding - maybe through an anonymous filter to retain the option of blocking hecklers? Not to the detriment of the public forum that I so much enjoy, but occasionally there are reasons to contact the writer(s) directly. Thanks again for a wonderful site. Please take no offense at my amateur blurting out of the numbers error. Only people actually doing something can make mistakes. The point of the article stands. thanks, tim
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bioburner 7:34PM (10/10/2007)
WWW.energybulletin.net/23097.html shows DOD fuel consumption at 2% of domestic consumption. I wounder if this number includes our on going activity in Iraq?
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mike 7:44PM (10/10/2007)
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/
Thanks for the link to the Energy Blog.
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Sebastian 9:17PM (10/11/2007)
Tim -
Thanks for reading. We're glad to be corrected, especially when it's something important like this. While we don't put our personal emails out for the public, we do get messages from the contact link to the right, aka
http://www.autobloggreen.com/contact/comments/
Glad to have you on board.
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