The recent mid-term elections here in the US have resulted in a sweep for the Republican Party. They now control the White House and both houses of Congress, and bets are being placed about how much of their large agenda can be pushed into law. Odds are that large chunks of it can. That includes Bush's major energy bill that, until the elections, was tentative, at best. As of press time, debate on a US energy bill had withered in the lame-duck 107th Congress, to be taken up next year in the Republican controlled 108th Congress. With the looming possibility that the energy bill may pass, the question becomes, "How much will it benefit the US E&P industry?" And the answer is probably not much if the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling and production is not included in the bill. Reserve estimates for ANWR run from 5.7 billion to 16 billion bbl. A mean estimate is 10.4 billion bbl. It is improbable that the energy bill will fail to include ANWR development with the Republicans decidedly in control.

We hope the same cannot be said for the ethanol mandate, being pushed as a part of the larger energy bill and supported by various, continually misguided environmentalists and the agricultural lobbying machine led by the National Corn Growers Association. As an environmental, or economic, solution to meet US energy demand, the ethanol mandate has a few problems. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (cei.org)offers the following analysis.

The ethanol mandate calls for the production of 5 billion gal/year of ethanol. Subtract from that the 75% (or 3.75 billion gal of ethanol) that the US Department of Agriculture estimates is required to produce 5 billion gal of ethanol, and the net available for consumption becomes 1.25 billion gal/year. As methanol contains only 55% of the BTU content of crude oil the figure for methanol available for consumption from the 5 billion gal produced is 677.5 million gal/year crude oil equivalent. The USDA estimates that it will take 16 million acres of corn - an area slightly larger than the state of West Virginia - to produce 5 billion gal/year of ethanol. And, at that production rate, the methanol plan should meet the total productive capacity of ANWR in only 580 years. Or, if you multiple 580 years by the 16 million acres required, you reach the staggering conclusion that the productive capacity of ANWR is equal to 9.28 billion acres planted in corn, an area roughly four times the size of the US. I haven't calculated the exact number of tractors required to plow and tend this much land but the number is in the millions - that's millions of tractors spitting out pollutants and spreading toxic pesticides to produce "cleaner" fuel? I am sorry, but I am having trouble buying this one.

Following up on last month's topic - preserving our rich upstream history - I have received notice of a 3-day symposium on the history of the oil industry. Sponsored by The Drake Well Foundation, History of Geology Division, History of Earth Science Society, the symposium, with some interesting-looking field trips, will be held in Shreveport, La., under the guidance of Mary Barrett of the Department of Geology and Geography at Centenary College. Conference programs such as these make an enormous contribution to the efforts to preserve our history. I urge you to attend these conferences and contribute your knowledge. There are a number of them around the world, and I will let you know of them as the details come to me. For further information on the Centenary symposium, visit www.oilhistory.com or contact Mary Barrett at mbarrett@centenary.edu or (318) 869-5232.


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