Streetsblog Capitol Hill

What if peak oil doesn’t take care of gas-guzzling by cutting off the supply?

Oil exploration has moved from deepwater drilling to pumping on the plains of North Dakota. Photo: Wikimedia

The Saudi oil fields may be finite, but new sources like the Canadian tar sands and the North Dakota oil shale keep opening up. That poses a challenge to the shift away from carbon-intensive transportation, according to Deborah Gordon, who studies transportation oils at the Carnegie Endowment’s Energy & Climate Program.

“The real paradigm shift in the past year is abundance,” Gordon said last Friday at the book launch for Transport Beyond Oil, a new examination of the possibilities for transforming transportation.

“We’ve moved, in the last year and a half, [away] from oil scarcity,” Gordon said. “We’ve been living since the seventies, and even before, thinking, ‘America uses so much, there’s only so much oil to be accessed and there’s a scarcity.’ That’s the paradigm shift. The transformation of transportation off oil now in the face of oil abundance — North American and global oil abundance — is going to be the most important lift of all and the heaviest lift of all.”

There are 160 types of oils being traded worldwide today and some of them have a heavier carbon footprint than traditional crude. North Dakota shale oil fracked from the Bakken formation is light and emits relatively less carbon than normal crude, though fracking itself is a highly controversial and potentially environmentally devastating process. Meanwhile, Canadian tar sands oil, which is higher in carbon and as thick as window putty — and about seven times more abundant than the light oil from the northern plains – requires extra, carbon-intensive processes to extract it and make it flow through pipelines, producing high-carbon byproducts.

Transportation accounts for 70 percent of the oil used in the United States and a third of all carbon emissions. Any attempt to wean the U.S. off oil will have to tackle transportation. To avoid catastrophic climate change, that effort is as crucial as ever. But with a newfound abundance of oil supplies, will the incentives to make the shift lose power?

Maybe not. One thing that hasn’t changed with oil abundance is the price. “In spite of the decreased scarcity, price is still a problem,” said Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council at the book launch. “There is still a global marketplace that determines the price of oil and there’s still a cartel whose countries depend on a lot of revenue from oil sales.” Oil price volatility is likely here to stay, he added.

Gordon says she’s not so sure prices will remain high. “Look at natural gas,” she told me in an email today. “Abundance usually brings down prices.”

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It has a nice ring to it: using oil and gas revenue to shift transportation off oil and gas dependence. President Obama announced a plan to do just that on Friday — but the details of his plan are disappointing if you want to see the conversation on clean transportation go beyond cars.

Hey, it's OK -- they're all electric cars. Photo: A Marked Man

The Energy Security Trust would be funded with $2 billion in oil and gas revenues, in what the Washington Post called a “jujitsu” move – using oil and gas money to hasten the elimination of oil and gas as a transportation fuel.

This handy infographic from the Energy Department about what the money will fund shows just how narrowly defined the trust is. Light fuel tanks for natural gas, advanced vehicle batteries, cleaner biofuels, hydrogen fuel-cell technology. But as David Burwell of the Carnegie Endowment’s Climate Program notes, “it has the distinct sound — to use a Zen Buddhist metaphor — of one hand clapping.”

“Certainly, electric vehicles and advanced biofuels are a key tool in drastically reducing the 70 percent of total U.S. oil consumption devoted to transportation,” Burwell said. “However, it misses at least two additional key elements of any oil-back-out scheme — (1) more trip choices and (2) reducing the need to travel.”

Obama has shown an impressive resolve to reduce vehicle emissions but not much desire to reduce vehicle trips. While his transportation budgets have enabled some progress on rail and transit, and his infrastructure initiatives focus on maintenance instead of road expansion, his signature program – the increase in CAFE standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 – would do nothing to reduce traffic, create more transportation choices, or encourage walkable development.

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President Obama’s choice for Interior Secretary could be an unexpected breath of fresh air for cyclists. Sally Jewell, nominated to the position yesterday, is the CEO of adventure outfitter REI, a business-minded conservationist — and a veteran of the fossil fuel industry.

This is how Sally Jewell climbs the corporate ladder. Photo: Business Insider

Under Jewell, REI has been one of the nation’s leading corporate promoters of bicycling. Soon after she took over as CEO at REI, the company partnered with Bikes Belong and the League of American Bicyclists to provide grants to communities that are working to improve their bikeability and build partnerships between advocacy groups and municipalities.

Last month, REI gave $100,000 to expand Bikes Belong’s Green Lane Project, which focuses on urban cycling in six key cities, working to ramp up the building of protected bicycling infrastructure.

“During Sally’s term as the head of REI, REI has gotten even more engaged in bicycling in general — bicycling for short trips and commuting, bicycling as a transportation solution,” said Tim Blumenthal, director of Bikes Belong. “This is much more a part of the current REI than it was even 10 years ago.”

Twenty-four REI stores are designated Bicycle Friendly Businesses, too, with the flagship Denver store boasting 80 bicycle parking spots, a bike-share kiosk, and incentives for employees who ride to work, according to BikeDenver. And REI just finished working with the Bike League to create a Bicycle Friendly Business application for corporate designation, which will likely count REI among its first recipients.

Blumenthal said it’s pretty exciting to imagine Jewell running the agency that controls one-fifth of all the land in the United States.

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President Obama released a blueprint for his second term yesterday, a 20-page booklet focused on job creation [PDF]. Let’s be clear: This came from his campaign machine, not the White House.

In the booklet, called “The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan For Jobs and Middle-Class Security,” Obama touts his success at keeping the American auto industry alive through government life support, saying the bailout brought back the nearly-extinct manufacturing sector in the United States.

He also commits to drilling in the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, it’s part of Obama’s “all of the above” strategy that includes renewable energy sources, but it’s also got a lot of oil and gas, not to mention “clean” coal.

While about 70 percent of U.S. oil consumption is used for transportation, there’s not much in the document about investing in smarter, more efficient ways to get around.

The President mentions the doubling of fuel economy standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025, but that’s all he has to say about how to reduce fuel consumption. It would be refreshing to see a mention of transit and active transportation, freight rail, or even his apparently abandoned signature initiative around high-speed passenger rail. Reducing the appetite for drilling in the Arctic could be a more inspiring rallying cry than this surrender to our oil overlords.

At the end of the section on energy, in boldface, Obama says, “And by growing American energy, we can keep our young men and women working here at home, not fighting wars on foreign soil.” If he’d replaced — or at least supplemented – ”growing American energy” with “building American transit,” he could have made a more convincing and coherent argument.

Later in the document, in a section on deficit reduction, Obama proposes to “commit half of the money saved from responsibly ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to reducing the deficit and the other half to putting Americans back to work rebuilding roads, bridges, runways, and schools here in the United States.” Still no mention of “transit” amidst the roads and bridges. No hint that we can fund transportation projects that use space and energy more efficiently, so that perhaps we can avoid the next war over oil.

If you want to hear the President say "transit" on the national stage, you have to put the words in his mouth. Image: AP

At last night’s presidential debate in Nassau County, the best opening for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to talk about transportation policy came when undecided voter Phillip Tricolla asked the following question of the President:

QUESTION: Your energy secretary, Steven Chu, has now been on record three times stating it’s not policy of his department to help lower gas prices. Do you agree with Secretary Chu that this is not the job of the Energy Department?

Let’s imagine the contours of the straightforward, leveling-with-America response that never came:

OBAMA: Yes, I do agree with Secretary Chu that it is not the job of the Energy Department to lower gas prices, any more than it’s the job of the Commerce Department to lower the price of tin or cotton.

But there’s a lot we can do to become more resilient in the face of oil price shocks. We can give people real transportation choices — invest more in transit, and in making our streets safer – so you aren’t forced to burn a gallon of gas every time you need to pick up some groceries.

My administration has started us down a smarter path with the Sustainable Communities Initiative and the Department of Transportation’s TIGER program. These programs are laying the groundwork for a 21st Century transportation system that makes our communities more productive and efficient while reducing our addiction to oil. If we make these investments, not only will we free ourselves from constantly worrying about prices at the pump, we’ll also stave off the disaster of climate change and prevent the kind of droughts and other extreme weather events that are battering America.

Feel free to add your own embellishments in the comments.

Maybe in an electoral system where the most valuable votes aren’t highly concentrated in the suburbs of swing states, you would see at least some part of that answer aired in a national debate. But here’s what the candidates actually said — apart from a few references to efficiency and the global oil market from Obama, it was basically a contest to see who could convince America that he would open up more land for fossil fuel extraction:

OBAMA: The most important thing we can do is to make sure we control our own energy. So here’s what I’ve done since I’ve been president. We have increased oil production to the highest levels in 16 years.

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The overwhelming sentiment that greeted our story on the gas consumption maps the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club put out last week went something like this: These are almost useful. Just about everyone agreed that looking at total fuel consumption per county wasn’t very informative without weighing that number against population.

There were problems with doing per-capita fuel comparisons, but after hearing from several sources (including Streetsblog) that it was needed, NRDC’s Deron Lovaas has put out a follow-up post with new maps and charts that have, in my opinion, much more useful information.

First, the map of per-capita fuel consumption:

This per-capita map of gas consumption provides more nuance than the previous map, giving totals per country, but it still doesn't answer all the questions. Graphic: NRDC.

As Lovaas mentioned last week, there are problems with this map too. Some of these places are so rural and lightly populated that massive per-capita fuel consumption just isn’t a big enough problem to worry about, since there are few capitas there. Plus, there’s the problem of through-traffic — in many rural states, most traffic neither originates nor ends up there. So, since NRDC and the Sierra Club designed these maps, in part, to help them strategize where to focus their efforts, this per-capita map is of limited value.

This chart is where it starts getting good. It shows the counties with the highest total gasoline usage and ranks them by per-capita gas usage, showing where there are a whole lot of people using a whole lot of gas:

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Gasoline consumption by county. Graphic: NRDC

Have you ever thought to yourself, “What I really need is a map showing what U.S. counties use the most gasoline, so that I can target my sustainability efforts there?” Funny, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club were thinking the same thing. What they came up with gets us partway there.

“We were curious about which geographic areas were most oil dependent, and thus, driving the country’s oil addiction the most,” said Deron Lovaas of NRDC in his blog post. So they made this map of 2010 oil consumption by county.

It has the potential to be a useful tool, especially for groups like these that might be trying to figure out where to concentrate their field organizing efforts. But the map doesn’t tell us quite enough to be useful. This chart they made of the top ten gasoline consuming counties is a little more revealing:

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Last month, Mitt Romney held a $50,000 a plate lunch with major donors in Houston. What does a $50,000 lunch buy you besides steak and shrimp? Well, according to a new report from the New York Times, it’ll buy you the presidential contender’s ear. And a lot of folks from the energy industry are eager for that opportunity.

Romney netted $6 million during a lunch with oil tycoons in Houston last month, the Houston Chronicle reports. Photo: Houston Chronicle

During the event, “Mr. Romney solicited advice on energy policy from scores of oil and gas executives,” according to the paper. Romney shared the spotlight with billionaire Oklahoma City oil driller Harold Hamm, who is advising the presidential campaign on energy issues, according to the Houston Chronicle. Romney committed to “opening up [fossil fuel] markets in a much more aggressive way,” if elected.

According to the New York Times special investigation, the fossil fuel industry is having an outsized influence on this presidential campaign season.

More than $153 million has already been poured into ads criticizing President Obama’s energy policies and advocating for increased oil and gas drilling, mostly in swing states like Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania. That is four times the number of ads produced by entities promoting clean energy solutions.  The American Petroleum Institute alone has spent $37 million on television ads, according to the paper.

“These are companies and industries that clearly feel threatened,” Ken Goldstein, president of Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, told the New York Times. “And when companies and industries with resources feel threatened, they air advertisements.”

Meanwhile, the imbalance carries over to campaign contributions as well. NYT reports the Romney campaign has benefited from some $13 million in campaign cash from the fossil fuel industry, while Obama has received less than $950,000. Clean energy sources have donated just $78,000 to the Obama campaign, the paper reports.

Big oil makes $374 million a day in profits -- which gives them ample resources to pump into presidential politics. Source: Center for American Progress

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney unveiled his energy plan today [PDF]. The idea is to break our addiction to foreign oil — by increasing our addiction to domestic oil. If by “domestic” we mean Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.

Essentially, the plan is to go bananas on oil drilling. States would have the right to drill off their own shores, with merely a federal rubber stamp. Grist’s Philip Bump explains why oil drilling isn’t something that should be left to the states:

There’s a reason that the federal government has a legitimate role in monitoring extraction and resource development: Pollution and impacts don’t stop at state lines. It’s why the EPA is trying to figure out how to regulate cross-state air pollution. Air doesn’t care about borders.

And then there’s the obvious problem: Do residents of Florida want Georgia to build a series of unsafe oil derricks off its coast? Will any state still want to border Texas? Hard to see how this doesn’t result in a production boom — of complaints and lawsuits filed in federal courts.

There’s nothing in the document about reducing fossil fuel consumption. That just doesn’t figure in. No examination of how the nation uses energy and how it could use less. ”By 2025, [Obama's] increased CAFE standards are expected to reduce U.S. oil consumption by about 2.2 million barrels per day,” Brad Plumer writes in the Washington Post. “Without those rules, energy independence looks nearly impossible. And Romney, for his part, has pledged to overturn those fuel-economy rules.” To say nothing of Paul Ryan’s plan to continue outdated policies that enable sprawl and eliminate federal transportation programs that don’t involve highways.

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The tracker as it appeared at 10:50 a.m. Eastern on May 25.

As we head into the Memorial Day holiday, and move from one congressional recess to another [PDF], Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has given us something to do with our extra free time: Watch taxpayer subsidies to big oil climb higher and higher.

The clock, dubbed a STOP watch (for “Stop Taxpayer Oil Payouts”), tracks the amount of money that has flowed through a tax loophole for oil companies since the spring of 2010, when the Senate failed to close it even as the Deepwater Horizon wreck spewed crude into the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the senator’s website, “The Big 5 oil companies are raking in more than $76.00 a second” thanks to the tax loophole. That means that over $24 million will have been added to the tally after the long weekend.

You can read Menendez’s press release here.