The other nuclear country

Meet Marita Noon

The fuel is now loaded into the reactor, following inspections, the switch will be flipped and, around August 10, the reactor will be fired up. Three days later, transmission of electricity is expected to start, ramping up to full power and commercial operation in September. The same process is expected to take place at a second reactor in September/October.

Despite public protest, Japan is going nuclear—again.

Following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the severe accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear reactor in northeastern Japan, all nuclear reactors were gradually switched off for inspections. No commercial reactor has been online in Japan for nearly two years. Due to safety concerns, the country’s nuclear power generation has been at a standstill. Meanwhile, new regulatory standards have been developed and reactors are undergoing inspections.

Prior to 2011, nuclear power provided nearly one third of Japan’s electricity. Lost power-generation capacity has been replaced by importing pricey fossil fuels. Japan has few natural resources of its own. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports: “Japan imports more than 90% of its fossil fuels, and is particularly dependent on the Middle East for oil and natural gas.”

The loss of nuclear power has, according to the CS Monitor, raised household utility bills in Japan by 20 percent. A survey of Japanese manufacturers, conducted by the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, found that increases in power rates represented the greatest burden for more than 40 percent of the 335 firms who responded, and that “chronic power outages” and further increases in power rates “would do serious damage to industries located in the Kansai region.” The WSJ confirms: “businesses say the rise in electricity costs without the nuclear reactors makes it harder to run a factory in Japan.”

The economic impact of shifting from nuclear power to imported fossil fuels is evident in Japan’s trade deficits. In OilPrice.com, John Manfreda sees a direct correlation. He says: “Before the Fukushima accident occurred, Japan’s economy was driven by its large trade surpluses, which it achieved year after year. However, since Fukushima, Japan reversed that trend, and began posting trade deficits on a yearly basis.”

Japan’s reliance on nuclear power began after OPEC’s 1973 oil embargo that caused a severe energy shortage and nearly derailed its economic progress. Manfreda reports: “When this embargo ended, Japan conducted a national energy study to find out how the country could implement an energy policy that would protect supplies from future embargoes and geopolitical turmoil. The ultimate conclusion of the study was that Japan needed to invest heavily in the use of nuclear power, which could supplant imported fossil fuels for electricity. After that study, the development of nuclear power was considered a national priority.”

Japan has, once again, reviewed its energy needs. The fourth Basic Energy Plan, approved in June 2015, concludes: “Nuclear power is an ‘important power source that supports the stability of our energy supply and demand structure.’” The plan increases nuclear from current levels by restarting most of the idle plants, while calling for an approximate 10 percent reduction from the pre-Fukushima level of 30 percent. WSJ adds: “Japan also plans to continue its use of coal, the cheapest of its energy imports. …Already this year, the nation’s utilities have announced the construction of seven new coal-fired power plants.”

Due to its need for power and its reliance on fossil fuels, Japan revised its emissions targets, saying, according to the New York Times: “it would release 3 percent more greenhouse gases in 2020 than it did in 1990, rather than the 6 percent cut it originally promised or the 25 percent reduction it promised two years before the 2011 nuclear accident.” In 2012, Japan opted out of a proposed U.N. Kyoto Protocol extension. WSJ reports: “The government’s energy plan also seeks to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, but doesn’t stop companies’ plans to spend billions of dollars on new plants powered by cheap coal from countries like Australia and the U.S.”

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) favors nuclear power because it is a “quasi-domestic source” (four of the world’s top six manufacturers of nuclear plant technology are Japanese or Japanese-owned). Addressing Japan’s plan, World Nuclear News states: nuclear power “gives stable power, operates inexpensively and has a low greenhouse gas profile.”

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government reportedly wants to operate as many nuclear plants as possible “to meet the nation’s energy needs and grow the economy.” Twenty-five reactors are seeking a restart.

The plant, fueled up on July 10 and scheduled to start commercial operation in September, is one of two reactors being restarted at the Sendai Nuclear Power Station, owned by Kyushu Electric Power Company. With all six of its reactors idle, Kyushu Electric has been “reeling from losses caused by hefty imported fossil fuel costs to run conventional power plants.” Likewise, Chubu Electric Power Company, according to the Japan Times, has applied to restart the Number 3 reactor at its Hamaoka nuclear plant and hopes to resume power generation as soon as possible “to reduce its reliance on expensive fossil fuels.”

“There is no greater issue for the health of the Japanese economy,” Robert Feldman, managing director of Morgan Stanley’s MUFG Securities Co., opined in WSJ, “than energy.” Echoing the sentiment, Masahiro Sakane, chairman of a panel sponsored by METI that has been debating the energy mix, said: “The most important thing is energy self-sufficiency.”

Regarding Japan’s energy plan, Makoto Yagi, Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan chairman, stated: “We believe that energy policy is a core policy of a nation and must be approached from a medium to long-term standpoint.”

Japan is restarting its nuclear program. Iran, supposedly, wants nuclear power. Driven by the need for clean reliable power, the need to bolster energy security, and reduce dependence on imported fuels, many other countries are pursuing nuclear power. Russia has eight reactors under construction—which will double its nuclear capacity. China has 26 reactors in operation and 24 under construction and is now building identical power plants that allow for cost efficiencies that come with mass production. Many new plants, such as the reactors being built in the U.S., utilize “third-generation designs that improve safety and cut costs,” E&E News reports. Fourth-generation reactors, which use different coolants and fuels, are in the proposal stages.

The lesson is here is less about nuclear power and more about the need for energy that is cost-effective, reliable, and secure.

In a country like Japan, with limited natural resources, nuclear power meets the need. In the U.S., where we are rich in coal, oil, natural gas and uranium (the fuel for nuclear power), we have more options and should select the energy source that is right for specific needs and locales. As Japan has learned, energy is one of the most important components of the economy and expensive energy has hurt it.

Japan has an energy plan that is a “core policy” of the nation. In the U.S., instead of having an energy policy, we continue to drive up costs by regulating away our energy advantage and throwing money at expensive renewable energy—with the Clean Power Plan ignoring new nuclear. It is time for America to really evaluate our energy needs and maximize our advantage.

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The author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc. and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy. She hosts a weekly radio program: America’s Voice for Energy—which expands on the content of her weekly column

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Divesting people of better living standards

Divesting people of better living standards from Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek

“Disinvestment” of fossil fuel holdings is misguided, irresponsible, lethal – and racist

“Social responsibility” activists want universities and pension funds to eliminate fossil fuel companies from their investment portfolios. They plan to spotlight their demands on “Global Divestment Day,” February 13-14. Their agenda is misguided, immoral, lethal … even racist.

A mere 200 years ago, the vast majority of humans were poor, sick and malnourished. Life expectancy in 1810 was less than 40 years, and even royal families lived under sanitation, disease and housing standards inferior to what poor American families enjoy today. Then a veritable revolution occurred.

The world began to enjoy a bonanza in wealth, technology, living standards and life spans. In just two centuries, average world incomes rose eleven-fold, disease rates plummeted, and life expectancy more than doubled.

Unfortunately, not everyone benefitted equally, and even today billions of people still live under conditions little better than what prevailed in 1810. Bringing them from squalor, disease and early death to modernity may be our most important economic, technological and moral challenge.

Many factors played vital roles in this phenomenal advancement. However, as Julian Simon, Indur Goklany, Alex Epstein and the authors of this article have documented, driving all this progress were fossil fuels that provided the energy for improvements in industry, transportation, housing, healthcare and environmental quality, and for huge declines in climate-related deaths due to storms, droughts, heat and cold.

Modern civilization is undeniably high energy – and 85% of the world’s energy today is still coal, oil and natural gas.

These fuels support $70 trillion per year in global gross domestic product, to power virtually everything we make, grow, ship, drive, eat and do. The rest of the world deserves nothing less.

Demands that institutions eliminate hydrocarbon stocks, and society stop using fossil fuels, would reverse this progress, jeopardize people’s health and living standards, and prevent billions of still impoverished people worldwide from enjoying the living standards that many of us take for granted.

Trains and automobiles would not run. Planes would not fly. Refrigeration, indoor plumbing, safe food and water, central heating and air conditioning, plastics and pharmaceuticals would disappear or become luxuries for wealthy elites.

We would swelter in summer and freeze in winter. We’d have electricity only when it’s available, not when we need it – to operate assembly lines, conduct classes and research, perform life-saving surgeries, and use computers, smart phones and social media.

Divesting fossil fuels portfolios is also financially imprudent. Fossil-fuel stocks are among the best for solid, risk-adjusted returns. One analysis found that a 2.1% share in fossil fuel companies by colleges and universities generated 5.7% of all endowment gains in 2010 to 2011, to fund scholarship, building and other programs. Teacher, police and other public pension funds have experienced similar results.

That may be why such institutions often divest slowly, if at all, over 5-10 years, to maximize their profits. One is reminded of St. Augustine of Hippo’s prayer: “Please let me be chaste and celibate – but not yet.” The “ethical” institutions selling fossil fuel stocks also need to find buyers who are willing to stand up to divestment pressure group insults and harassment. They also need to deal with hard realities.

No “scalable” alternative fuels currently exist to replace fossil fuels. To avoid the economic, social, environmental and human health catastrophes that would follow the elimination of hydrocarbons, we would need affordable, reliable options on a large enough scale to replace the fuels we rely on today.

The divestment movement ignores the enormity of current and future global energy needs (met and unmet), and the fact that existing “renewable” technologies cannot possibly meet those requirements.

Fossil fuels produce far more energy per acre than biofuels, notes analyst Howard Hayden. Using biomass – instead of coal or natural gas – to generate electricity for one U.S. city of 700,000 people would require cutting down trees across an area the size of Rhode Island every year.

Making corn-based ethanol to replace the gasoline in U.S. vehicles would require planting every single acre of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, North and South Dakota and Wisconsin in corn for fuel.

Wind and solar currently provide just 3% of global energy consumption, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports; by 2040, as the world’s population continues to grow, hydroelectric, wind, solar, biomass and geothermal energy combined will still represent only 15% of the total, the EIA predicts.

Not using fossil fuels is tantamount to not using energy. It is economic suicide and eco-manslaughter.

Over the past three decades, fossil fuels enabled 1.3 billion people to escape debilitating energy poverty – over 830 million thanks to coal alone – and China connected 99% of its population to the grid and increased its steel production eight times over, again mostly with coal.

However, 1.3 billion people are still desperate for electricity and modern living standards. In India alone, over 300 million people (the population of the entire United States) remain deprived of electricity.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, some 615 million (100 million more than in the USA, Canada and Mexico combined) still lack this life-saving technology, and 730 million (the population of Europe) still cook and heat with wood, charcoal and animal dung. Millions die every year from lung and intestinal diseases, due to breathing smoke from open fires and not having the safe food and water that electricity brings.

Ending this lethal energy deprivation will require abundant, reliable, affordable energy on unprecedented scales, and more than 80% of it will have to come from fossil fuels. Coal now provides 40% of the world’s electricity, and much more than that in some countries. That is unlikely to change anytime soon.

We cannot even build wind and solar facilities without coal and petroleum: to mine, smelt, manufacture and transport materials for turbines, panels and transmission lines – and to build and operate backup power units that also require vast amounts of land, cement, steel, copper, rare earth metals and other materials.

Coal-fired power plants in China, India and other developing countries do emit large quantities of sulfates, nitrous oxides, mercury and soot that can cause respiratory problems and death. However, modern pollution control systems could – and eventually will – eliminate most of that.

Divestment activists try to counter these facts by claiming that climate science is settled and the world faces a manmade global warming cataclysm. On that basis they demand that colleges and universities forego any debate and rush to judgment on hydrocarbon divestment.

However, as we have pointed out here and elsewhere, the alleged “97% consensus” is a fiction, no manmade climate crisis is looming, and there is abundant evidence of massive “pHraud” in all too much climate chaos “research.”

We therefore ask: What right do divestment activists and climate change alarmists have to deny Earth’s most destitute people access to electricity and motor fuels, jobs and better lives? To tell people what level of economic development, health and living standards they will be “permitted” to enjoy?

To subject people to policies that “safeguard” families from hypothetical, exaggerated, manufactured and illusory climate change risks 50 to 100 years from now – by imposing energy, economic and healthcare deprivation that will perpetuate disease and could kill them tomorrow?

That is not ethical. It is intolerant and totalitarian. It is arrogant, immoral, lethal and racist.

To these activists, we say: “You first. Divest yourselves first. Get fossil fuels out of your lives. All of them. Go live in Sub-Saharan Africa just like the natives for a few months, drinking their parasite-infested water, breathing their polluted air, enduring their disease-ridden flies and mosquitoes – without benefit of modern drugs or malaria preventatives... and walking 20 miles to a clinic when you collapse with fever.

To colleges, universities and pension funds, we suggest this: Ensure open, robust debate on all these issues, before you vote on divestment. Allow no noisy disruption, walk-outs or false claims of consensus. Compel divestment advocates to defend their positions, factually and respectfully.

Protect the rights and aspirations of people everywhere to reliable, affordable electricity, better living standards and improved health. And instead of “Global Divestment Day,” host and honor “Hydrocarbon Appreciation Day.”

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Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death. Dr. Roger Bezdek is an internationally recognized energy analyst and president of Management Information Services, Inc., in Washington, DC.

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Merchants of Environmental Smear

Merchants of Smear from the files of Paul Driessen at CFACT.org

Read the Driessen Column at CFACT.org

Obama, Gore other climate alarmists refuse to debate, but love to vilify – and love their money

Manmade climate disaster proponents know the Saul Alinksy community agitator playbook by heart. In a fight, almost anything goes. Never admit error; just change your terminology and attack again. Expand your base, by giving potential allies financial and political reasons to join your cause. Pick “enemy” targets, freeze them, personalize them, polarize them and vilify them.

The “crisis” was global cooling, until Earth stopped cooling around 1976. It was global warming, until our planet stopped warming around 1995. The alarmist mantra then became “climate change” or “climate disruption” or “extreme weather.” Always manmade. Since Earth’s climate often fluctuates, and there are always weather extremes, such claims can never be disproven, certainly not to the alarmists’ satisfaction.

Alarmists say modern civilization’s “greenhouse gas” emissions are causing profound climate change – by replacing the powerful, interconnected solar and other natural forces that have driven climate and weather patterns and events since Earth and human history began.

They insist that these alleged human-induced changes are already happening and are already disastrous. Pope Francis says we are already witnessing a “great cataclysm” for our planet, people and environment.

However, there is no cataclysm – now or imminent – even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have gone well past the alleged 350 parts-per-million “tipping point,” and now hover near 400 ppm (0.04%). There has been no warming since 1995, and recent winters have been among the coldest in centuries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, despite steadily rising levels of plant-fertilizing CO2.

As of January 12, 2015, it has been 3,365 days (9.2 years!) since a Category 3-5 hurricane hit the US mainland. This is by far the longest such stretch since record-keeping began in 1900, if not since the American Civil War. Sea levels are barely rising, at a mere seven inches per century. Antarctic sea ice is expanding to new records; Arctic ice has also rebounded. Polar bears are thriving. In fact:

Every measure of actual evidence contradicts alarmist claims and computer model predictions. No matter how fast or sophisticated those models are, feeding them false or unproven assumptions about CO2 and manipulated or “homogenized” temperature data still yields garbage output, scenarios and predictions.

That’s why alarmists also intoned the “peak oil” and “resource depletion” mantra – until fracking produced gushers of new supplies. So now they talk about “sustainable development,” which really means “whatever we advocate is sustainable; whatever we despise and oppose is unsustainable.”

USEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy also ignores climate realities. Her agency is battling coal-fired power plants (and will go after methane and gas-fired generators next), to “stop climate change” and “trigger a range of investments” in innovation and a “clean power future.”

What she really means is: Smart businesses will support our agenda. If they do, we’ll give them billions in taxpayer and consumer money. If they oppose us, we will crush them. And when we say innovation, we don’t mean fracking.

As to responding to these inconvenient climate realities, or debating them with the thousands of scientists who reject the “dangerous manmade climate change” tautology, she responds: “The time for arguing about climate change has passed. The vast majority of scientists agree that our climate is changing.”

This absurd, dismissive assertion underscores citizen investigative journalist Russell Cook’s findings, in his perceptive and fascinating Merchants of Smear report. The climate catastrophe narrative survives only because there has been virtually no debate over its scientific claims, he explains.

The public rarely sees the extensive evidence debunking and destroying climate cataclysm assertions, because alarmists insist that “the science is settled,” refuse to acknowledge or debate anyone who says otherwise, and claim skeptical scientists get paid by oil companies, tainting anything they say.

The fossil-fuel-payoff claim is classic Alinsky: Target and vilify your “enemies.”

“No one has ever offered an iota of evidence” that oil interests paid skeptical researchers to change their science to fit industry views, “despite legions of people repeating the claim,” Cook notes. “Never has so much – the very survival of the global warming issue – depended on so little – a paper-thin accusation from people having hugely troubling credibility issues of their own.”

The tactic is intended to marginalize manmade global warming skeptics. But the larger problem is mainstream media malfeasance: reporters never question “climate crisis” dogmas … or allegations that “climate denier” scientists are willing to fabricate studies questioning “settled science” for a few grand in illicit industry money.

Pay no attention to the real-world climate or those guys behind the curtain, we are told. Just worry about climate monsters conjured up by their computer models. “Climate change deniers” are Big Oil lackeys – and you should turn a blind eye to the billions of dollars in government, industry and foundation money paid annually to researchers and modelers who subscribe to manmade climate disruption claims.

In fact, the US government alone spent over $106 billion in taxpayer funds on alarmist climate research between 2003 and 2010. In return, the researchers refuse to let other scientists, IPCC reviewers or FOIA investigators see their raw data, computer codes or CO2-driven algorithms.

The modelers and scientists claim the information is private property, even though taxpayers paid for the work and the results are used to justify energy, job and economy-killing policies and regulations. Uncle Sam spends billions more every year on renewable energy programs that raise energy prices, cost jobs and reduce living standards.

None of these recipients wants to derail this money train, by entertaining doubts about the “climate crisis.” Al Gore won’t debate anyone or even address audience questions he hasn’t preapproved.

As to claims of a “97% consensus,” one source is responses from 75 of 77 “climate scientists” who were selected from a 2010 survey that went to 10,257 scientists. Apparently, the analysts didn’t like the “consensus” of the other 10,180 scientists.

Another study, by a University of Queensland professor, claimed that 97% of published scientific papers agree that humans caused at least half of the 1.3o F (0.7o C) global warming since 1950; in reality, only 41 of the 11,944 papers cited explicitly said this.

“Skeptical” scientists do not say climate doesn’t change or humans don’t affect Earth’s climate to some (small) degree. However, more than 1,000 climate scientists, 31,000 American scientists and 48% of US meteorologists say there is no evidence that we are causing dangerous warming or climate change.

Two recent United States Senate staff reports shed further light on other shady dealings that underlie the “dangerous manmade climate change” house of cards. Chains of Environmental Command reveals how Big Green activists and foundations collude with federal agencies to develop renewable energy and anti-hydrocarbon policies. EPA’s Playbook Unveiled shines a bright light on the fraud, deceit and secret science behind the agency’s sue-and-settle lawsuits, pollution standards and CO2 regulations.

The phony “solutions” to the imaginary “climate crisis” hurt our children and grandchildren, by driving up energy prices, threatening electricity reliability, thwarting job creation, adversely impacting people’s health and welfare, and subsidizing wind turbines that slaughter birds and bats.

They perpetuate poverty, misery, disease and premature death in poor African and Asian countries, by blocking construction of fossil fuel power plants that would bring electricity to 1.3 billion people who still do not have it.

The caterwauling over climate change has nothing to do with real-world warming, cooling, storms or droughts. It has everything to do with an ideologically driven hatred of hydrocarbons, capitalism and economic development, and a callous disdain for middle class workers and impoverished Third World families that “progressive” activists, politicians and bureaucrats always claim to care so much about.

House and Senate committees should use studies cited above as a guide for requiring a robust pollution, health and climate debate. They should compel EPA, climate modelers and scientists to testify under oath, present their evidence and respond to tough questions. Congress should then block any regulations that do not conform to the scientific method and basic standards of honesty, transparency and solid proof.

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Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

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Why raise the federal gas tax?

Corker’s Folly - Raise the federal gas tax? Here’s a better idea by Larry Kudlow

Meet Larry Kudlow

What can Senator Bob Corker be thinking? On his first Sunday-news-show appearance of the year, right at the beginning of a new Republican Senate era, does Corker communicate a new GOP message of growth and reform?

Does he talk about business and personal tax reduction that might rejuvenate start-ups, higher wages, and job-creation?

Does he talk about rolling back Obamacare or regulations in general?

Does he discuss sensible immigration reform, including border security? Free-trade promotion that will help consumers and businesses? Education reform? The Keystone pipeline?

No. His first Republican message is:

Raise the federal gasoline tax. He said this on Fox News Sunday and he repeated it on CNBC the next day.

What a great idea. American consumers and businesses finally get a break with plunging oil and gasoline prices. Main Street finally has something to cheer about. And then Mr. Corker weighs in with a wet-blanket proposal to raise federal gasoline and diesel taxes by 12 cents a gallon over two years from the current 18.4 cents.

I have a counter idea for Mr. Corker. Why not lead the way for a complete reform of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), transportation spending, and the Federal Highway Administration?

Corker can start by going to the history books. There he’ll learn that President Eisenhower’s original version of federal highway funding was to devote money to interstate highways. Not to mass transit or the “Big Bertha” boondoggle in Seattle.

Not to the infamous “Big Dig” project in Boston, which finished five times over-budget and nine years behind schedule. Not to a museum honoring the long defunct Packard luxury car. Not to hiking trails on old rail lines in small towns and other exotic, earmarked, boondoggled forms of taxpayer waste. (Hat tip: CNBC producer Jake Novak.) Ike said the money should go to interstate highways.

Next, the good senator can read congressional testimony from the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards on federal highway transit funding. Edwards has at least a dozen good ideas to reform so-called infrastructure spending.

In particular, Edwards says that if you took the transit-spending portion out of the HTF and placed it with the states and localities where it belongs, the trust fund would actually be in balance. If states like California want to build $100 billion speed trains to nowhere, let them. But people in the rest of the country shouldn’t have to pay for it with gas and diesel taxes.

Think of this: A quarter of HTF spending today is for non-highway purposes. That should be stopped. That was not Ike’s original mission.

Federal redistribution of gas-tax revenues is almost always unfair, with fast-growing states like Texas getting far less than they need. Federal rules like Davis-Bacon raise building costs for state and local infrastructure by at least 20 percent. Federal aid breeds cronyism, political connections, and bureaucratic power in Washington D.C. And Federal aid distorts state and local decision making, especially for local urban transit.

Why should federal-government disbursements of tax money from the 50 states be for local busing, subways, and other forms of urban transit? Actually, there was a time when most of that was privately funded, owned, and operated. And today, there’s actually a lot of local experimentation going on for the privatization of toll roads (Indiana) or public-private partnerships for roads (Texas, Florida, California, and Virginia).

Whatever it is, you can trust that private management will be more efficient than the federal government. And state and local officials and their wasteful programs can be removed more easily than federal legislation that never expires.

And all this talk of infrastructure stimulus for the economy is nonsense. In a piece called “An Autopsy for the Keynesians” in the Wall Street Journal, University of Chicago professor John Cochrane described how the spending multipliers never happened, a forecasted depression didn’t follow the end of WWII spending, and, more recently, the federal spending sequester of 2013 did not lead to the loss of 700,000 jobs, but instead sparked a modest pickup in employment and economic growth.

And Cochrane asked these pointed questions of the infrastructure-stimulus advocates:

“Can you bring yourself to say that the Keystone XL pipeline, LNG export terminals, nuclear power plants and dams are infrastructure?

Can you bring yourself to mention that the Environmental Protection Agency makes it nearly impossible to build anything in the U.S.?”

No and no.

Senator Corker, I hope you have a moment to read this article. And I hope you can read some of the history surrounding Ike’s interstate highway program, congressional testimony from Chris Edwards, and John Cochrane’s Wall Street Journal op-ed. With that background, perhaps you will become a true government reformer, rather than a high-taxer.

Please Senator Corker, with the new Republican Congress in place, don’t turn the GOP into the dumb party.

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The oil price is not the price of oil

The Book - Why Your Gasoline Prices Are So High (available on amazon.com)

The Oil Price is Not the Price of Oil by Sel Graham from the Society of Petroleum Engineers

Will Rogers said, "Everyone is ignorant; just on different subjects." What others don't know can and does hurt you.

Everyone seems ignorant:

(1) that "The oil price" seen and heard in the media is, in fact, the guess of Wall Street speculators (gamblers) on the New York Mercantile Exchange on the commodity price of a small amount of oil six months in the future;
(2) that there is a foreign oil price and a U.S. oil price that is never found in the media but on obscure websites of the Energy Information Administration;
(3) that in 2008, the Presidential election year, the foreign oil price decreased a total of $87.34 per barrel during the last half of the year, then increased in 2009;
(4) that foreign oil prices decreased in 2014 from June through October, before the election.

For those wanting to confirm the above facts, go to "Where To Find Data" on my website, SelGraham.com.

Because of this quadruple ignorance, in June some unidentified Wall Street gamblers made the worst guess of 2014, that the price of oil in December would be $106 per barrel. In attempting to correct this blunder, the gamblers became like lemmings in guessing lower and lower.

Wall Street gamblers' guesses are hurting the stock market and hurting the stock I own. They are probably decreasing your net worth. Foreign oil prices have affected Wall Street guesses without the gamblers knowing it. Wall Street gamblers should stop guessing, at least until they know what foreign oil prices will be in 2015.

Americans should demand that Congress regulate this gambling by requiring the media, if it reports the Mercantile Exchange price, to emphasize that it is the guess of the price in the future and to report the most recent price of foreign oil and U.S. oil along with this guess of the price in the future.

Falling oil prices (gamblers' guesses) were in the news on the last day of 2014. Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Gold's December 31 article on page A5 was entitled "Oil Prices Crater Amid U.S. Oil Glut." A glut? Is the U.S. oil market being flooded so that the U.S. oil supply exceeds the U.S. oil demand?

No, it is not. In October 2014, the most recent data available, U.S. oil production was 280 million barrels, only 56% of the total U.S. oil demand of 501 million barrels, leaving 221 million barrels, 44%, to be filled by foreign oil imports. As long as the U.S. is continuing to import large quantities of foreign oil, we don't have a U.S. oil glut flooding the global market. We have incorrect guesses by Wall Street gamblers.

Nearly ten years ago, I wrote a book, Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High, a short 54-page history of how Jimmy Carter made the U.S. dependent on expensive foreign oil. The basic points I made in this book are as valid today as when written in 2005.

U.S. oil producers are paid a "Posted Price" for U.S. oil production and are not paid the oil price in the media, which is the New York Mercantile Exchange commodity futures price. Foreign oil imports are more expensive than U.S. oil. As soon as I received copies of the book from the publisher, I invited Russell Gold, a resident of Austin, to the Westwood Country Club for lunch where I gave him a copy of my book.

Several weeks later, I phoned Mr. Gold and asked him what he thought of my book. He told me that he had not read my book and did not intend to read it. I had not expected such a response. I asked him to leave the book on his front porch for me to pick up and give to another person. He did, and I did.

Obviously, Mr. Gold was not interested in finding out why gasoline prices were high. Thank you for being interested in finding out why gasoline prices are low.

Here is another fact which few Americans know. Since Obama became President in 2009, the annual price of U.S. oil has been less than the annual price of foreign oil. This pattern is expected to continue until Americans demand that cheaper U.S. oil completely replace the more expensive foreign oil.

Now, go forth and educate fellow Americans.

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Graham is a World War II veteran, West Point graduate, and Legion of Honor Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Contact Graham at: SelGraham@austin.rr.com or at 4713 Palisade Drive, Austin, Texas 78731-4516.

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