[Starvid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Simmons', 'I')f any of you didn’t have a chance this morning to look at USA Today, there’s a very interesting on page 4B showing the path of Rita. And what Rita did was finally sweep right over, while it was force five, the heart and soul of the platforms and pipelines of the Gulf of Mexico. And I think it will probably be Thursday or Friday before we have any sort of reports of the visual – how many platforms we don’t have and what’s happened to rigs. But it couldn’t be good news.

[Starvid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Simmons', 'A')t this Oil & Money Conference last Wednesday morning, one of my favorite people in the energy business, Herman Franssen, who used to be chief economist at the IEA and is really respected among his peer group of chief economists, said to his profession – he said, I think basically, gentlemen, it’s time to stop using the word "I believe" outside of church.

[Starvid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wulfinghoff', 'V')irtually every idea and virtually all the technology needed to make the transition was developed in the ‘70s. We do not lack for ideas and we do not lack for technology. What we have to do is we have to get the right ideas and the right technology in the game and the wrong ideas and the wrong technology out of the game.

[Starvid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Questions and answers', 'R')EP. BARTLETT: Thank you turning in questions. There were two questions directed at me and I will include them together because they’re the same subject. I understand you recently had a meeting with President Bush about peak oil. Is he aware of the potential consequences? If so, why aren’t we serious about this from a policy standpoint.


And the second question is, how can we convince the administration and Congress that the recently passed energy bill was woefully inadequate and misdirected? I thought it was. I voted against it.



MR. SIMMONS: I did talk to President Bush. He does understand the problem. I tell you, this is a very good example of the tyranny of the urgent. The urgent always takes precedence over the important, and the urgent thing today, those couple of hurricanes down there and the urgent things tend to push important things off the table.



What we need to do is just for the American citizens. That’s why we’re here today. American citizens need to go to elected representatives, we have a problem, you need to do something about it.



REP. BARTLETT: Okay, and one for Matt Simmons. If the peak is going to be soon, five years or less, does it make sense to the U.S. to build more refineries?



We need to limit our answers to a couple of minutes or we’re not going to get through our questions.



MR. SIMMONS: The simple answer is that our refinery system is so old today that if we don’t replace it then – peak load doesn’t mean running out, but if we don’t replace it, we don’t need any more oil. I mean, there’s a refinery that got hurt in the hurricane, the Motiva (ph) refinery that they’re talking about expanding a base unit that was built in 1903 to refine spindle top oil. We can’t go 30 or 40 more years with 100-year-old refineries. So the answer is we’ve got to rebuild the refineries.



REP. BARTLETT: Thank you very much. And another one for Matt Simmons. Why is nuclear power not getting more attention in the U.S. as it is in Europe? Although the building of nuclear power plants may not mitigate the adverse effects of the oil crisis, it could provide long-term energy.



MR. SIMMONS: I was in a program at the University of Wyoming this weekend and I heard the most articulate speaker on nuclear – on the benefits of nuclear power. This is hard to see, but this is basically one nuclear uranium pellet. And this uranium pellet is the equivalent of a ton of coal. And one pellet – five pellets this size heat a home for a year. So we have got to go back to nuclear energy. It just takes a long time. And we can basically tackle the spent waste. That’s a military problem.



But we also have to remember that nuclear power is electricity. We’re going to have to have electricity because of our natural gas problem, but it doesn’t solve the oil problem, period.



MR. SPEARS: Do we know what the supply lifetime of uranium is? Some estimates are as short as 50 years for uranium, at our current consumption rate.



MR. SIMMONS: This guy was actually part of a company in Saskatoon, Canada, our largest supplier. The reality is we don’t have a clue, but we haven’t explored for uranium for about 40 years.

REP. BARTLETT: I get widely divergent estimates of how much fissionable uranium is left in the world, from 30 years to 200 years. Before we can really have an effective dialogue about how to address this problem, we need to have an agreement on what the problem is. And there is just so much difference of opinion out there, and I talked to the National Academy of Sciences. They would be delighted. We need to find the money for them. We need an honest broker somewhere that tells us roughly what the truth is because we have widely divergent opinions now as to how much fissionable uranium is out there.



MR. DEFFEYES: I suggest you look at the Scientific American for January 1980, Deffeyes and MacGregor, on the world uranium supply.



REP. BARTLETT: And how much is there, sir?



MR. DEFFEYES: Every time you drop the ore grade by a factor of 10, you find about 300 times as much uranium, so that going down to the ore grade of – going down through the ore grades continues to increase the supply. But just about the time we were writing that Scientific American article, these enormously rich deposits, and big deposits in Australia and Canada sort of blew away our early estimates and we had to quickly increase the estimates. There are deposits in Saskatchewan so rich that the miners can’t be in the same room as the uranium, where the uranium is being mined. They mine it by remote control. So at the moment we’re swimming in uranium, but the Deffeyes-MacGregor piece, which comes out with a Hubbard-like curve, says that, no, we can go on down, and specifically we don’t need a breeder reactor.



REP. BARTLETT: If we don’t need the breeder reactor, that’s good news because if you had to go to the breeder reactor you would borrow some problems that you don’t have with fissionable uranium.



MR. SPEARS: My concern is that the investment in nuclear power is huge, and we have a long history of massive investment in nuclear power. That same level of investment could also go towards completely safe renewable energy systems and technology development -- (applause) -- without the risks of nuclear power. And without the ultimate end of nuclear power, when the fissionable materials runs out, or we find that more Chernobyls and others have totally trumped that issue. (Applause.)

[Starvid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bartlett', ' ') We talked about nuclear, and if in fact there is an essentially unlimited amount of fissionable uranium and you are willing to accept the environmental impacts of that, we could be producing – France is now -- what, 70, 80 percent of their electricity is produced by nuclear, and so that’s something we really need to think about.



Nuclear fusion, by the way – I support all the money. About 300 million (dollars) a year goes into that. You know, I think our chances of getting nuclear fusion are about the same as my odds of solving my personal financial problems by winning the lottery. (Laughter.) Now if you think that’s a good bet, well, you may think that nuclear fusion is a good bet. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and I support all the money that that sector of our technology can support.

[dinopello]

Did anyone catch Bartlett on Washington Journal on CSPAN this morning ? It was the typical (good) Bartlett spiel, interspersed with mostly goofy questions from callers. There was a guy who said he could make electricity from a gravity machine he invented, but the DOE wasn't interested.

[PhilBiker]

Here's a transcript of Congressman Roscoe Bartlett's recent forum on oil depletion.

[BabyPeanut]

Global Public Media has the trascripts with all the transcription errors now.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he red curve there is Russia - a bit more oil than we. And they picked a bit after us.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BabyPeanut', 'G')lobal Public Media has the trascripts with all the transcription errors now.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he red curve there is Russia - a bit more oil than we. And they picked a bit after us.

[thorn]

E&E TV OnPoint

Scheduled for air on Monday, October 3, 2005 at 10:00 am Eastern

Interview of Congressman Roscoe Bartlett concerning CAFÉ standards
and the question of global peak oil with E&E TV host Brian Stempeck
and Energy and Environment Daily Editor Colin Sullivan.

http://www.eande.tv/main/

[BabyPeanut]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://www.fcnp.com/530/peakoil.htm]Falls Church News Press on Congressman Bartlett's Conference (link)[/url]

By Tom Whipple

Of the 535 members of Congress, it seems that only one, Roscoe Bartlett of western Maryland , fully appreciates the nature and seriousness of the impending peak oil crisis. Bartlett has given a series of speeches on the House floor outlining the problems ahead and scheduled a meeting to discuss peak oil face-to-face with President Bush. On Monday, he participated in an energy conference in Frederick , MD organized by his office.

As the only peak oil Congressman— the rest presumably remember what happened to Jimmy Carter— Bartlett was able to attract an all-star panel consisting of: Kenneth Deffeyes, the geologist who reworked the original Hubbert calculations to determine that peak oil will occur on Thanksgiving Day 2005; Matthew Simmons, the Houston banker who recently published a book concluding that Saudi oil production has, or is about to peak: and Richard Heinberg, who has written extensively on life after oil depletion starts. Another set of panelists talked about actions we can take to soften the impending crash. A transcript of the proceedings will be available on the Congressman's web site.

For those familiar with the tenets of peak oil, the message was familiar: It will start soon; it is already too late to mitigate the effects; and a global economic depression will only be one of the many hardships the world will face.

On a humorous note, Deffeyes revealed that calculations that oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day 2005 really had some wriggle room so that the appointed day could come as much as three weeks before or after Thanksgiving. On a more somber note, Deffeyes said there is bound to be some sort of oil rationing

Simmons characterized the present situation as the culmination of 50 years of energy planning mistakes. Only a few years ago, energy planners believed demand would peak, supply would grow, and oil would be cheap. But instead, demand grew, production costs doubled, there were few new discoveries, and reserves turned out to have been overstated.

All this led to a situation where by August 2005 spare capacity had dropped to the point that the world was effectively at 100 percent of production capacity. Then came the Hurricanes taking away more production capacity than was left to offset the damage. We do not yet know the full implications of this situation.

Simmons calls for the nation to go immediately onto an "energy war" footing, where productive capacity and the ingenuity of the country is mobilized to deal with the crisis.

Heinberg now believes peak oil may look more like a bumpy plateau with much volatility in prices and production with events such a hurricanes, wars, demand destruction, and political moves alternately cutting and stimulating additional production. As do the other panelists, he foresees major problems in the global economy, transportation, food production, and resource wars. He emphasized the impact on localities, as people struggle to get to work, feed themselves and heat their homes.

The next panel discussed ways to save energy in transportation, buildings and industry. The dominant theme was that our current machinery and practices are highly wasteful and that we have the existing technology to live on only a small fraction of our current consumption, such as 100-mpg cars and buildings that get by nicely on 20 percent of current energy consumption.

The key point made during the panel discussions was that the nation's goal has got to be movement towards 100 percent renewable energy: water, solar, wind, waves, biomass etc. As the US currently gets only seven percent of its energy from these sources, the idea of nearly all energy coming from renewables is often derided as an impossible dream. The point the panel made is that within a few decades, we will have no other choice.

One interesting note came during the questioning, when a member of the audience asked Congressman Bartlett about his meeting on peak oil with President Bush. Did the President understand?

Bartlett responded "Yes, the President understands" but it is the age-old problem of the urgent vs. the important. Apparently, the President believed that as of this summer he had more pressing issues to deal with than the possibility the world's oil supply would one day start to decline.

On Monday, however, the President issued a call for Americans to conserve gas by driving less and directed all federal agencies to cut gasoline consumption. This is a major change in the administration's position for many years has emphasizing production of additional oil over conservation and alternative energy.

It is beginning to sound as if the President knows the hurricane damage to offshore production is far more serious than has been generally reported, and that it may be a while before all the Gulf refineries are back in production. If this is indeed the case, higher prices and gas lines (rationing by inconvenience) are not far ahead.

[thorn]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Congressman Bartlett, Secretary McGinty to Address Pa. Council of Professional Geologists' Symposium
HARRISBURG, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 5, 2005--U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, one of the first among a now-growing list of congressmen warning of rapidly depleting oil resources, will be the headline speaker at the Pennsylvania Council of Professional Geologists symposium in Carlisle on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

Bartlett, of Maryland, will present an overview of the national energy plan, which he calls "woefully short of what's needed." He will speak at 9 a.m. on Oct. 31 to kick off the symposium, to be held at the Carlisle Hotel.

Kathleen McGinty, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, will speak at the dinner on Oct. 31.

Secretary McGinty is the first woman to head the DEP, a 3,000-employee agency with a mission to protect Pennsylvania's air, land and water from pollution and provide for the health and safety of its citizens through a cleaner environment. Her emphasis is in creating approaches to environmental problems that generate economic growth and encourage advanced technology development in Pennsylvania.

Additional speakers, with expertise in energy, water and land resources, will address the availability and production needs of Pennsylvania's earth resources for the next decade. Others will discuss emerging alternate fuel technology, such as coal-to-fuel, biodiesel fuel from soybeans and coal-bed methane production.

For additional information on the symposium, visit www.pcpg.org., or e-mail the Pennsylvania Council of Professional Geologists at info@pcpg.org.

[thorn]

Bartlett on CSPAN last night.
There were other members there:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')r. GUTKNECHT:
I think we ought to set as a vision that we are going to become energy independent.

Now, I was taught many years ago in sales training class that a goal is a dream with a deadline, and so I tried to offer last week in the energy bill that we had what we described as a 10-by-10 amendment mandating that by the year 2010, 10 percent of our gasoline will be renewable energy. We did not get a chance to offer that amendment, so now I am having it redrafted as a bill. I am planning to offer it as a bipartisan effort. I think energy policy does not have to be partisan. But these numbers, I think, speak for themselves. Even if ethanol were more expensive, because of the environment and in terms of keeping more of those dollars rotating through our economy, it makes sense to use more renewable energy.

So I want to thank the gentleman for what he is doing tonight, I want to thank him for what he has done in the past, and I want to encourage Members, if they would like more information, because there are so many myths about renewable energy and particularly about ethanol, if they would like a fact sheet, we have some in our office, get ahold of my office or go to my Web site at gil.house.gov. We have some great information, and we have sources for all of it. This is from the actual people who produce it, and it was authenticated and authorized by the United States Department of Agriculture. Ethanol is cheaper than gasoline. I yield back to the gentleman, and I thank him for having this Special Order.

[NeoPeasant]

Congressman Bartlett continues to give eloquent late night Peak Oil speeches to the congressional cleaning staff. I imagine the cleaning staff is becoming quite concerned.

Now if he could only schedule some time during the day when there were some actual other congressmen present.

[thorn]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NeoPeasant', 'C')ongressman Bartlett continues to give eloquent late night Peak Oil speeches to the congressional cleaning staff. I imagine the cleaning staff is becoming quite concerned. Now if he could only schedule some time during the day when there were some actual other congressmen present.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NeoPeasant', 'C')ongressman Bartlett continues to give eloquent late night Peak Oil speeches to the congressional cleaning staff. I imagine the cleaning staff is becoming quite concerned.

Now if he could only schedule some time during the day when there were some actual other congressmen present.

[thorn]

Congressman Bartlett is handing out the poster "The Oil Age" and the book "The Last Chance for Sustainability" to all members of Congress:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')ear Colleague,
High energy prices are a top concern of our constituents. The two items dropped off by my staff are designed to help you address them.

The first item is a poster titled "The Oil Age: World Oil Production 1859-2050." It is an encyclopedia of information about oil from world energy experts divided into sections. The common conclusion is that world oil production will reach its maximum capacity or "peak" within a decade. That means supply will not be able to grow to meet projected worldwide increases in demand. The energy policies we as lawmakers craft and enact will influence how drastic or steep the decline in supply will be.

I am also providing you a copy of the book "The End of Fossil Energy and The Last Chance for Sustainability" by John G. Howe. Mr. Howe has some very creative ideas to help us think "outside of the box" when it comes to alternative, nuclear, and renewable energy proposals.

If you should have any questions regarding either of these items please do not hesitate to contact me, my Energy Project Coordinator (John Darnell), or my Energy Legislative Assistant (Mark Aitken) at ext. 5-2721. I hope you find these items useful as we work together to investigate and adopt solutions that will address our pending energy crisis.
Sincerely,
Roscoe G. Bartlett, Member of Congress

[Revi]

John Howe wrote the End of Fossil Energy and a Last Chance for Sustainability. It contains a plan for what to do about the peak oil problem. Reduce energy use 5% a year, systematically, and have everyone put 4 kw of solar on their house to run their houses, send extra back to the grid and run electric transportation. It can work! We have started on the plan. We shrunk both our cars, installed solar hot water and pv emergency lights, got some electric transportation and have cut our energy use more than the 5% a year with no pain. Why can't the rest of the US do this? It all cost less than a wave runner!

[NeoPeasant]

I'm sure my Utah congressmen will use this material in their argument for western shale oil project subsidies when they're not busy trying to get federal billions to build more superhighways.

[GreyZone]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NeoPeasant', 'I')'m sure my Utah congressmen will use this material in their argument for western shale oil project subsidies when they're not busy trying to get federal billions to build more superhighways.