High-Speed Rail and Oil Imports

2. Pays for itself by significantly reducing our $700B and year oil purchase trade deficits.

--We could probably put a big dent in that trade deficit if we opened up ANWR and inner continental shelf to drilling and at no cost to the taxpayer. There are some estimates floating around out there that the oil companies could see $1T in profits. The oil companies would willingly open up their coffers to drill in those locations to get at that level of return. No taxpayer funding necessary to get the oil out of the ground. But that would mean we’d have to let the “evil” oil companies make those profits and we can’t have that, now can we?

I have read some reports that opening ANWR and the continental shelf for drilling and extraction would only give us an additional 2.5 years of crude oil. Based on the way I crunch their numbers, it looks like they are assuming that ANWR would replace all of our imported oil. I don’t see it that way but I could be incorrectly looking at the number provided. I’d guess there would be a dent put into the import trade deficit. Of course, since oil is a world commodity, it all goes into the same “pot”, it’s just that our contribution to the pot would be larger, and our demand on the Middle East’s contributions to the pot would be reduced.

Here are two viewpoints, one “for”, one “against”, on opening up ANWR.

For

Against

  The “against” essay has a few points in it that might rile up some folks such as “most American’s agree the Iraq War is about oil” I don’t think most Americans share that view. But he does provide some interesting data on wind harvesting. Another point he makes that has already been proven false is that wind energy development would create jobs here and they can’t be out-sourced. I think he is glossing over this subject. It is true that operations at a wind field would be done here, but that actual construction of the equipment used to harvest the wind would not be built here. This has already happened.

The “for” essay also has a few weak points. The one that stuck out for me was the “only 8% of ANWR” would be impacted. The tree-huggers (or tundra-huggers in this case) would be up in arms over this amount. In fact, they would be all-a-titter if there was an .0000008% impact on a region that sees maybe a 1000 visitors a year. While I have not been to ANWR, based on the reading that I have done on this subject, it looks like the region where the drilling would take place is on the plains, an area seldom visited. It is great and noble to protect our wild areas and wildlife, and lines do have to be drawn. But I think the line in this case is too far left.

I kind of went off track here, as I have a tendency to do, so I’ll bring it back on point. If these high-speed rail lines are to be built, they will also need energy to power the system. This energy has to come from somewhere.  Solar and wind power are not yet up to snuff. We have the ability to generate the energy with solar and wind, but we don’t yet have the storage capacity or the means to transfer the energy efficiently. Until these problems are solved in 10 years or more, we need the means to generate the power to run these trains. And that is either going to come from imports or from our own domestic resources.