Tag Archives: energy policy

local news, national news, political news, State news

Wind power is in the wind

wind farm

ADRIAN, Texas — You have to squint your eyes a bit to take in the view in this picture.

It’s along Interstate 40 in the Texas Panhandle. I shot the picture this afternoon with my fancy-shmancy phone camera as I was returning home from a lunch meeting with a colleague in Tucumcari, N.M.

It’s a wind farm. Lots and lots and lots of wind turbines are blowing in the breeze, generating electricity — I reckon — to be shipped to points hither and yon. Given that I don’t get out as much as I used to, I was struck by the sight of hundreds of those turbines along nearly the entire length of I-40 through Oldham County after driving back onto the Caprock.

I want to call attention to this form of energy because of the presidential campaign that’s now in full swing in both major political parties.

Republicans and Democrats are seeking to nominate candidates for the White House, one of whom will succeed President Obama on Jan. 20, 2017.

That silence you’ve heard along the campaign trail has dealt with wind energy. You remember wind energy, don’t you?

Politicians are supposed to talk about it as a way to wean this nation from its dependence on fossil fuels. We’ve made some progress in one critical area: The United States is about to become the world’s leading fossil fuel energy producer, which means we’ve all but ended our dependence on foreign oil.

Of late, the only mention I’ve heard of energy production has been on the Democratic side of the campaign trail, with Bernie Sanders accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of being in the hip pocket of fossil fuel producers; Clinton has fired back, saying Sanders also is beholden to campaign contributors who are associated with fossil fuel producers. The world has a glut of oil, demand is down, therefore so is the price of fossil fuel-related products — such as gasoline!

Oh sure, the candidates traipsed through Iowa corn fields in the first contest of the season and talked here and there about ethanol, the “bio-fuel” produced by corn. One of the big surprises of the campaign, of course, was Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s victory in Iowa — even though he stuck his neck out and criticized ethanol subsidies as a form of government giveaway the nation couldn’t afford.

The Republican/Democratic Road Show trekked eventually to Texas. Did you hear much around the Panhandle about how any of the candidates would seek to shore up wind power?

If you did, then were dialed in far more acutely than I was. I don’t recall hearing a peep out of that still-large herd of candidates in the time leading up to the March 1 Texas primaries.

I’m proud of my state for becoming a leader in wind energy. Think of it: Texas and California have something in common after all, as they are the two leading wind-producing states in the country. Who knew?

Heaven knows we have enough of it here. It’s renewable and clean — even when it kicks up tons of dirt from the cultivated fields that are spread out for miles upon miles along our vast horizon.

Here’s my plea to the candidates … if they or their staffers see this blog post: How about talking more about wind and other renewables? It’s no longer cool to just “drill baby, drill.” We’ve got a lot of wind out there that’s not coming from the mouths of political blowhards.

How about ensuring we find ways to put it to use?

 

local news, political news

Why not debate … in Amarillo?

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APTOPIX_Presidential_Debate-0bf0c-7089

I’ve noted before in previous election cycles that the major political parties need to think beyond the norm when planning for debates between their presidential nominees.

The norm in the past has been to select cities with large media markets. Sometimes the parties put these debates in cities and states where the race is competitive.

Here’s a revolutionary thought: Why not stage one of these events right here, in little ol’ Amarillo, Texas?

Hey, I know it’s a long shot. A pipe dream. I know it won’t happen. Then again, in this strange, goofy, unpredictable, topsy-turvy primary campaign — which on the Republican side is being driven by Donald J. Trump — well, anything seems possible.

Look at it this way, Amarillo is a significant city in a significant state. One of Amarillo’s state lawmakers, Republican Four Price, said the other day that Texas’s economy all by itself is the 12th largest in the world. That by itself makes us a player.

What might be the theme of a debate held in Amarillo? Energy policy ought to be front and center. I doubt, of course, that debate planners would build a two-hour televised event around energy policy by itself.

But it does tie into the nation’s economy. How about foreign policy, given that we’re weaning ourselves of foreign oil? We’re becoming something of a trend-setter in the development of wind energy, one of those alternatives that gets some of the credit for the plunging oil prices around the world.

We’ve got venues for such an event. The Civic Center is one. The performing arts center across the street is another. Why not look at the West Texas A&M University event center in Canyon?

Is such a thing possible?

Consider this: No one ever thought that Donald Trump would be setting the pace in the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination.

I’m just saying that this election is wild and crazy enough for Amarillo to get a serious look if the political parties here want to put together a formal request.

 

 

business news

Obama got the blame … where’s the credit?

oil prices

Let’s flash back to around 2010.

Oil prices were spiking. They surpassed $100 per barrel of crude. The price of gasoline also skyrocketed. It passed $4 per gallon in some parts of the country; it got nearly that high in the Texas Panhandle.

Who got the blame? President Barack H. Obama. His congressional critics, namely the Republicans, kept hammering the president over the price spikes. Why, they just couldn’t stomach the idea of watching these gas prices heading into the stratosphere and they had to blame someone. Obama was the target.

Then something happened.

Automakers began making more fuel-efficient cars after they were bailed out partly with federal government stimulus money. Research on alternative energy sources ramped up. Other oil-producing nations’ economies began to falter, diminishing demand on fossil fuels around the world.

The price of oil today is less than $40 per barrel, less than half of where it was five years ago. The price of gasoline? Today in Amarillo, regular unleaded is being pumped at $2.26 per gallon in most stations.

Is the president getting the “blame,” let alone the credit, for any of this?

Not on your life.

How come?

 

business news, local news

Age keeps getting in the way

Don’t you hate it when you show your age to a young person who doesn’t quite get the reference?

It happened to me today while I was working one of my four part-time jobs.

I was sitting in the break room at the car dealership where I work, visiting with a courtesy driver who’s about eight years older than I am.

I’m 65; he’s 73.

In walked a young salesman. We started talking about how his sales business was going.

The young man made note of how popular SUVs have become “since the price of gasoline has gotten to be so cheap.”

My courtesy driver friend and I exchanged looks — and then laughed out loud.

I told my young salesman friend that he was “talking to two fellas who remember when gasoline sold for about a quarter a gallon.” My courtesy driver friend mouthed the words “19 cents.”

My young friend, who’s 26 years of age, took note of when gasoline “first hit a buck 50.”

So, there we have a clear definition of what I’ve termed the “new normal” at the gasoline pump.

When gasoline sells for $2.50 per gallon for regular unleaded and that’s considered “cheap,” well, that signals a new way — in my view at least — of assessing the relative price of a common commodity.

I reminded my good friend — the young man — that when gasoline hit $1.50 per gallon, some of us became apoplectic.

I don’t think he quite got it. My other friend — the older one — surely did.

 

national news

'Government ethics' takes another hit

Government ethics has taken another punch in the chops on Capitol Hill.

Imagine that.

It turns out several members of Congress went on a junket in 2013 paid for by the government of Azerbaijan. Four of them are from Texas: Democrats Ruben Hinojosa and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Republicans Ted Poe and Steve Stockman (who’s no longer in Congress).

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/13/four-texas-members-congress-took-trip-secretly-fun/

The Azerbaijanis showered the members with gifts, wined and dined them and apparently tried to purchase some influence regarding energy policy.

The Washington Post reported: “Lawmakers and their staff members received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of travel expenses, silk scarves, crystal tea sets and Azerbaijani rugs valued at $2,500 to $10,000, according to the ethics report. Airfare for the lawmakers and some of their spouses cost $112,899, travel invoices show.”

The host government paid for every penny of it, according to the Post.

The ethics investigation is the most extensive since the congressional ethics office was created in response to the Jack Abramoff scandal involving payoffs, bribes and assorted influence-peddling deeds perpetrated by the one-time wheeler-dealer.

Most damning of all is that it was done under the radar. The Post reported: “The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as SOCAR, allegedly funneled $750,000 through nonprofit corporations based in the United States to conceal the source of the funding for the conference in the former Soviet nation, according to the 70-page report by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative arm of the House.”

Gosh. If it was OK to do this, why do you suppose the Azerbaijanis sought to hide it from congressional ethics investigators? Hey, maybe it was illegal. Right?

Here’s the question: Did the members of Congress who took the money know it was being hidden?

We have laws that prohibit foreign governments from trying to influence U.S. foreign policy. There well might have been more a few of those laws broken here, not to mention serious violations of congressional ethics rules.

Don’t these people get it?

local news

Those signs look different to us now

ADRIAN, Texas — It’s weird how economic trends can make one look at virtually everything a little differently.

Often, we long for the old days. Not today when my wife and I noticed a sign on an abandoned gasoline service station on the south side of Interstate 40 in this tiny town just this side of the New Mexico border.

A Shell gasoline dealership went dark I’m guessing about a year ago. How do I know that?

The sign for regular unleaded gasoline read “$3.89.” That would be the price per gallon of gasoline.

Let’s flash back for a moment to the time when gas prices were skyrocketing into the ionosphere — or some layer far above Earth’s surface. You’d see a sign in front of a vacant gasoline station and it would advertise a price of, oh, let’s say $1.89 per gallon of regular unleaded gas. You’d long for the day when prices would return to that level.

Well, today we received a signal that sent precisely the opposite message. We do not want to see prices return to the total posted on that empty Shell station perched on the farthest western edge of the Texas Panhandle.

We rolled into Amarillo a little while later and were pleased to see that prices hadn’t spiked too terribly while we were away for a week out West.

Perhaps we ought to preserve these relics just to remind us what can happen to the price of fossil fuel when we get careless with the way we use it.

 

 

environmental news, International news, national news

Keystone veto will stick, for now

President Obama has vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline.

However, his reason seems a bit nit-picky.

The White House said Obama doesn’t necessarily oppose the pipeline, but he opposes the process that delivered the bill to his desk.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/obama-vetoes-republican-attempt-to-force-keystone-approval/ar-BBhVCrd

The pipeline is supposed to ship oil produced from Canadian tar sands through the middle of the United States, ending up in ports along the Texas Gulf Coast. It then will be shipped overseas. Proponents of the bill say it will create jobs and will help ensure that the world’s supply of oil remains high, thus helping ensue cheaper prices for the oil around the world.

Although I do support the pipeline, the president’s veto makes a modicum of sense.

He thinks an environmental study process should have been allowed to run its course. Congress short-circuited that process — which includes a complete review by the State Department.

“Through this bill, the United States Congress attempts to circumvent longstanding and proven processes for determining whether or not building and operating a cross-border pipeline serves the national interest,” the veto message said.

As Bloomberg News reported: “White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama’s rejection was strictly about the legislation and not the project. It’s ‘certainly possible’ that Obama would eventually approve the pipeline once a State Department review is completed, he said, without giving a timetable.

“’The president will keep an open mind,’ Earnest said, repeating past administration language.”

The White House said the review is part of an intricate longstanding process that’s been honored over many years. Congress’s decision to fast-track the pipeline didn’t allow a thorough review of the total impact of the project.

Perhaps the State Department can complete its review in relatively short order, deliver its findings to Capitol Hill and the White House — and then we can go through this legislative process all over again.

Let’s do it the right way.

local news, national news

Higher gas price = safer highways

Here’s a thought that perhaps didn’t cross your mind; I didn’t think of it.

It’s the idea that skyrocketing gasoline prices slow drivers down, make them think about quick starts and stops and keep them more alert on our streets and highways. Yes, they conserve fuel by driving more slowly while starting and stopping with more care — but they also make the streets and highways safer for everyone else.

A discussion on this topic occurred this morning on National Public Radio.

The interview discussed the plummeting gasoline prices and what it might do to drivers’ awareness of the need to conserve fuel. Accordingly, if drivers no longer are as concerned about fuel economy, they likely might drive more quickly and revert to relatively hazardous driving habits — which, therefore, make our public thoroughfares more dangerous.

Wow! None of this ever occurred to me.

Gasoline in Amarillo as of this morning is down to $1.87 per gallon of unleaded regular; diesel is down to around $2.85 per gallon. None of this really means I’m about to go speeding around the city with nary a care in the world. I trust it won’t do the same to others, although still others might throw caution to the wind and push the pedal to the metal.

Energy analysts tell us the price of oil is continuing to fall and will keep falling for the foreseeable future. It’s below 50 bucks a barrel as of this morning.

I’m not one to want to pay more for a product I consider essential to my existence.

Therefore, I’ll settle for paying less for gas — and hope that my fellow motorists will continue to observe safer driving habits.

 

business news, local news

Gas-price skid causes nervousness

So-called “experts” on energy prices and policies keep telling us the same thing.

The downward spiral in oil and gasoline prices is going to continue perhaps well into the new year.

But watching the price ticking down — often more than once daily — continues to make me nervous.

The price of unleaded gas has now dipped to less than $2 per gallon in Amarillo. I work part time across the street from a leading gas dealer here and I’ve seen the sign tick down as many as three times during a single day.

How low will it go?

The experts aren’t saying yet how cheap they think gas will get.

Supply is up. Demand is down. American drillers keep producing oil like there’s no tomorrow. But everyone knows how free-market economics works: If the supply keeps outstripping demand, eventually the suppliers will scale back their production to even out the inventory of oil and gasoline on the market. The result inevitably increases the price of gas a the pump.

As we’ve all seen for the past several years, gasoline increases in price at a far quicker pace than it decreases.

Hey, I’m not predicting gloom and doom at the pump.

I’m merely suggesting that I’m getting quite used to paying the same amount for gas that I was paying five years ago or longer.

The “new normal” in gas prices had produced a certain form of numbness to the prices we were paying. Now that new normal has been shaken — but in a positive sort of way.

It still makes me nervous about what could be coming down the road.

 

business news, national news

Big jobs numbers, but still no GOP applause

Critics of President Obama have been beating the drum for years about the economic recovery.

Yeah, nice jobs numbers, but those wages just aren’t increasing, they say, while lampooning the economic recovery as a sort of mirage.

Today’s news brought some serious good cheer to some of us, but not all.

The economy added 321,000 jobs in November. Wages increased 0.4 percent as well. The bottom line? The economy is finally beginning to be felt in people’s homes.

Will there be cheering among congressional critics of the president? Don’t hold your breath.

My hunch is that they’ll find a way to spread the joy among themselves without giving credit to a federal economic policy that’s been working for, oh, about the past five-plus years.

The stock market is heading into record territory — again. The trade deficit is down. The budget deficit is down. The national debt is slowing. Unemployment remains less than 6 percent. Investments are up. Spending is up. Real estate prices are up. Auto sales are up. Domestic energy production is up. Gasoline prices are plummeting.

Holy cow! I can’t stand all this good news!

I’ll just have to proclaim it from this forum yet again.