Energy Literacy Advocates Newsroom

It looks as though the inelasticity of gasoline prices is finally giving way to increased conservation by the American public, as evidenced by the article below:


Americans ditching the car

By Kenneth Musante and Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writers

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May compared with a year earlier, according to a report Monday from the Federal Highway Administration.
"We have seen the longest decline in vehicular miles traveled since we started collecting this data," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters in a conference call with reporters.
Peters said that in the first four months of this year, Americans traveled 40.5 billion miles less compared with the same period in 2007. She said the decline in usage means less tax revenue for highway system.
Many of these commuters are flocking to trains, buses and bikes, or telecommuting from home.
Rising gas prices are to blame for the driving decline, and the use of public transportation is soaring, said Virginia Miller, spokeswoman for the American Public Transit Association, a private trade group.
"It does seem that we are on track to beat last year's record [public transportation] ridership," she said, noting that the 2007 tally of 10.3 billion public transit trips was a 50-year high.
"That can really only be explained by the large increase in gas prices," said Miller.
Gasoline prices soared in May, rising for 24 consecutive days in the month, and breaking the psychologically significant $4-a-gallon barrier in many states, according to data from motorist group AAA.
The FHA said that driving in May experienced the third-largest monthly drop since the agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation that manages the nation's highways and bridges, began collecting data 66 years ago. It was the largest drop for any May, a month that usually sees driving increase due to the Memorial Day holiday, the agency said. Three of those largest monthly declines have occurred since December, as unusually high fuel prices take a toll on drivers.
Trains, buses, bikes, telecommuting
Many of these drivers switched to public transportation. Usage jumped in the first three months of the year by 88 million trips from a year ago, for a total of 2.6 billion, according to the most recent figures available from the APTA.
Some of the most dramatic increases occurred in the light rail systems in Baltimore, Minneapolis and St. Louis, the commuter rails of Seattle and Harrisburg, Penn., the buses of San Antonio and Denver, and the subways and elevated rails of and Boston.
The Boston Globe reported Monday that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority broke a ridership record of 375 million passengers in fiscal year 2008, which is 21 million more than the prior year.
Other commuters, like Eric Creese, a senior database administrator in Eagan, Minn., switched to muscle power for commuting. Creese, a former triathloner, said that high gas prices inspired him to "get back" into biking.
"I asked myself, 'Why drive 150 miles a week when I can save my car, my money and do something good for my body and environment,?'" said Creese, who said he has biked 1,000 miles to work since May and saved about $250 in gas.
Now Creese runs a Web site - GasFreeCommute.com - for bike commuters, with calculators to estimate calories burned and gasoline saved. His co-workers have logged their miles on his site, totaling 5,400 so far.
And if commuters really want to save money, they'll stay at home, said Chuck Wilsker, president and co-founder of The Telework Coalition. Wilsker estimates the nationwide tally of telecommuters to increase by 4 or 5 million workers this year, from an estimated 28 million at the start of 2008.
"If you want to quickly reduce your commuting costs by 20%, leave your car at home one day a week; if you want to reduce your costs by 40%, leave your car at home two days," said Wilsker, who telecommutes from his suburban Maryland home to Washington, D.C.
Not only does Wilsker save on gas, but he said he saves on automotive wear and tear, lunch and dry cleaning.
"You know what I'm wearing?" said Wilsker. "I'm wearing shorts, sandals and a tank top. I'm sitting here working from home. My dry cleaning bill is none."
Feds get squeezed on taxes
As high fuel costs led many to rely on other forms of transportation, such as mass transit, and to cut back their miles on the road this year, the reduced driving also sliced tax revenue that would normally go toward highway maintenance, the FHA said.
The federal tax on gas generates 18.4 cents per gallon of regular gas sold and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel, which gets pumped in to the federal Highway Trust Fund. Some states also add a tax of their own to fund various projects.
The FHA budget totaled $42.18 billion in fiscal year 2008. The Bush Administration has requested $40.14 billion for fiscal year 2009.
As Americans drive less, new ways are needed to fund the national road system, the highway agency said. Even though fewer drivers are using the highways, funding is still critical, party because of a backlog in highway projects.
Peters said she would unveil a new plan on Tuesday to "fundamentally reform our nation's transportation." She said much of the plan will focus on calculating a better cost-benefit analysis for maintaining the national highway system, as well as "weaning ourselves from the gas tax over time."
First Published: July 28, 2008: 9:45 AM EDT



Find this article at: http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/28/news/economy/driving/index.htm?cnn=yes

Labels: economy, oil price, oil supply/demand

It is a testament to our media driven society that Paris Hilton actually puts forth a more reasonable (albeit over simplified) energy plan than either presidential candidate! Below is an article on the subject, including a link to the video.



Don’t Laugh. Paris Is Right.
What Ms. Hilton could teach Messrs. McCain and Obama about our energy crisis.
Howard Fineman
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 3:27 PM ET Aug 7, 2008
Even if you know this statistic it's worth repeating: In the mid 1970s, the last time we were in a dither about energy, we were getting a third of our petroleum from abroad. Now, decades later, we buy more than two thirds of it from overseas. As T. Boone Pickens says, it's the largest transfer of wealth in history, with the possible exception of the armadas of gold and silver the Spanish took home from the New World centuries ago.
The new "oil shock"—not an Arab oil embargo this time, but a scary run-up in the price of crude—has dragged us back to an old storyline and a confrontation with the monsters we failed to destroy decades ago. We're still using up our resources too fast, damaging the environment unnecessarily and becoming too dependent on others for our survival. This time, the challenges are even more difficult to deal with. China and India are growing too fast; oil producers are choking on dollars whose value they distrust; Russia and Venezuela (and some Muslim countries) are antagonistic, turbo-charged petroligarchies.
So where should we turn for inspiration and leadership? To Paris Hilton, of course!
I mention her not only because I am betting she looks better in a one-piece bathing suit than John McCain or even Barack Obama. No, we need Paris because her cheerful and sensible approach to the energy problem—encapsulated in her own poolside “ad"—is a lesson in leadership to the two "real" presidential candidates.
Paris's message: don't stress, don't dis each other's ideas, let's just try everything!
It doesn't get any smarter than that.
McCain and Obama, by contrast, are engaged in a phony war that refuses to accept the Hiltonian point: we need every tactic in this new energy war. We need all the production, conservation and research strategies we can imagine. Nothing should be belittled, or dismissed; everything should be attempted. We can't afford to think otherwise.
At the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival recently, I was struck by the fact that the captains of industry from Silicon Valley and the academic and journalistic muckety-mucks agreed on only one thing: we need to tackle the energy challenge with the urgency and imagination of the Manhattan Project and the Marshall Plan combined. Men and women who are paid to see over the horizon, and who have a good track record of doing so, said privately that we are a decade from ruin at best.
So what are McCain and Obama doing? Arguing about tire gauges and offshore drilling!
It didn't have to come to this.
Perhaps because of his national-security and Navy background, McCain was the first of the two candidates to see the urgency of the issue. The other, less generous explanation, is that McCain needed to tap into the old Bush crowd at the Houston Petroleum Club, and that the only way to overcome their skepticism of him was for him to abandon his semi-green stance on things and go pedal-to-the-metal on the need for more production. And it is true that McCain has racked up lots of donations.
For whatever reason, he was the first of the two candidates to capture the urgency that the American people feel. His Lexington Project was unveiled early this summer at a time when Obama, who had just wrapped up the Democratic nomination, wasn't paying much attention. And to McCain's credit, his plan does have an all-hands-on-deck quality to it, stressing production, to be sure, but also creative tax and investment notions for pushing the technology and conservation envelope.
But in recent days, McCain has gotten sidetracked by some of his own (and his advisers) juvenile rhetoric, as they attempt to portray Obama as an unmanly and out-of-touch Ivy League fop. McCain has wasted valuable time ridiculing Obama for his sensible reminder that individual self-help acts on conservation—like making sure your automobile tires are properly inflated—can add up to tremendous energy savings.
Eventually, McCain was forced to concede that everyone from the American Automobile Association to the Department of Energy has been saying exactly the same thing about tires. In fact, I'm sure even the guys at NASCAR check the pressure on the tires of their civilian cars, not to mention the ones they drive around the track.
As for Obama, his own New Energy for America Plan, released last week, bears similarities to McCain's in terms of a cap on carbon emissions and trading of emission rights; various tax incentives and awards to push the technology of alternative fuels, especially for cars. He, too, is in favor of a "smart grid" to wheel power more efficiently as we increase of reliance on electricity to power all kinds of vehicles.
But Obama can't let go of the chance to portray McCain as a mindless, rapacious driller and digger who eats uranium for breakfast and quaffs kerosene with his coterie of Big Oil friends. Obama's plan dwells on problems associated with nuclear power, and none of its benefits (such as the complete absence of carbon emissions). In his original proposal, Obama flatly opposed opening up new offshore areas to oil exploration, too.
As rapacious as McCain is, however, Obama has now joined him—at least part way—in agreeing that some drilling in newly permitted offshore spots may in fact be a good idea. Obama knows the truth. New ocean prospecting won't produce immediate results, but it can at the least be an expression of American determination—and that can have an effect in and of itself.
Just ask Paris.


URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/151256

Labels: energy policy

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released today a report entitled "Offshore Drilling and Energy Conservation: The Relative Impact on Gas Prices". This report argues that offshore domestic drilling would have a negligible impact only on the price at the pump. We have included the full text for you below.

Senator McCain recently proposed opening up environmentally sensitive offshore zones to oil drilling in response to the recent jump in oil and gas prices. He argues that increased offshore production will reduce dependence on foreign oil, in addition to lowering gas prices.
However, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that Senator McCain's proposal would have no impact in the near-term since it will be close to a decade before the first oil can be extracted from the currently protected offshore areas. The EIA projects that production will reach 200,000 barrels a day (0.2 percent of projected world production) at peak production in close to twenty years. It describes this amount as too small to have any significant effect on oil prices.

By contrast, the United States barely changed its auto fuel efficiency standards from 1985 until 2005. This followed a 5-year period in which the fuel efficiency standard for cars was raised by 7.5 miles per gallon (MPG) from 20.0 MPG in 1980 to 27.5 MPG in 1985, an increase of 1.5 MPG per year. The fuel efficiency standards for light trucks were increased by 5.5 MPG over this period, from 14.5 MPG in 1980 to 19.5 MPG in 1985, a rate of 1.1 MPG per year.
These standards were virtually unchanged over the next 22 years. In 2007, the standard for cars was still 27.5 MPG. The standard for light trucks had been raised to 22.2 MPG, but almost all of the increase was in the last 3 years. It is possible to imagine a counterfactual in which the country continued to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards after 1985.
If, instead of holding them constant, the government had increased mileage standards after 1985 at the rate of 0.4 MPG per year for both cars and light trucks (a much slower pace of increase than in the period from 1980 to 1985), then the standard for cars in 2007 would have been 36.8 MPG and the standard for light trucks would have been 28.3 MPG. The average for the current fleet of cars on the road would be over 32 miles per gallon.

If fuel efficiency had improved at this rate, then the average car on the road would be more than 50 percent more fuel efficient than is currently the case (32 miles per gallon compared with 20.2 miles per gallon). If increased efficiency did not change the number of miles driven each year, then this would imply a reduction of more than one-third in the amount of oil used for the country gasoline needs. This savings would be equal to approximately 3,300,000 barrels per day.

In conclusion, if Congress had continued to increase fuel efficiency standards over the last 22 years, we would currently have more than sixteen times the savings in oil consumption than what Senator McCain's plan promises to accomplish in 20 years by drilling offshore in protected areas- and a proportionately larger impact on gas prices.

Author Dean Baker is Co-Director and Nichole Szembrot is a Domestic Intern at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.
1 The projections for oil output from the protected areas can be found in: United States. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency. Annual Energy Outlook with Projections to 2030. Washington: GPO, 2007. Accessed online at [http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/aeo07/issues.html].
2 This calculation assumes the daily use of oil for refining gasoline is equal to approximately 9 million barrels. See: United States. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency. Weekly Inputs Utilization, and Production. Washington: GPO, 2008. Accessed online at [http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_wiup_dcu_nus_w.htm]. The projected savings are equal to the difference between the current rate of consumption and the consumption that would occur if the auto fleet was 58.4 percent more fuel efficient.
3 This calculation is based on a number of simplifying assumptions. It assumes that ten percent of the cars of a model year are pull off the road each year or driven less frequently. So a 2006 car would be on average driven 90 percent as much as a 2007 car and 81 percent as much as a 2008 car (0.9*0.9). It assumes that cars are pulled off the road altogether after 20 years. The calculation also assumes that an equal number of cars and trucks are sold each year and that the number of cars sold each year has been constant over the last twenty years. The data on fuel efficiency standards can be found in: United States. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1980-2007. Summary of Fuel Economy Performance. Washington, GPO: 2005. Accessed online on March 3, 2008. [http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/portal/site/nhtsa/menuitem.43ac99aefa80569eea57529cdba046a0/]

On June 27, Neil King Jr. of the Wall Street Journal posted an article opening a window into Saudi oil supply discussions. We've published the text of that article here for you.

"Global Oil-Supply WorriesFuel Debate in Saudi ArabiaFormer Officials at OddsOver 'Peak' Theory;Crude Hits High" By NEIL KING JR. June 27, 2008; Page A1

Sadad al-Husseini and Nansen Saleri raced up the ranks at Saudi Aramco, the world's most powerful oil company, working together for years to squeezemore crude from Saudi Arabia's massive fields. Today, the two men havestaked out opposite sides of a momentous industry debate.[Sadad al-Husseini]

Mr. Husseini, Aramco's second-in-command until 2004, says the world faces a brute reality of depleting resources and ever rising prices. Mr. Saleri, until recently the company's oil-reservoir manager, insists that with enough ingenuity and investment, plenty more oil can be found. With oil prices having doubled over the past year, political leaders, Wall Street investors, commuters, airlines and car makers are all scrambling todivine where prices will head next. The disparity of opinion between two ofthe most knowledgeable men in the industry shows how much fog hangs over the most basic question of all -- whether oil can be unearthed any faster than it currently is.

At the moment, Mr. Husseini's pessimistic view is clearly ascendant. Even before this year's surge in oil prices, there were gloomy industry predictions that world oil output would soon hit a ceiling. U.S. benchmark crude hit a record high on Thursday, propelled by Libyan threats of possible supply cuts, closing at $139.64 a barrel, up more than threefold since 2004.

But Mr. Saleri isn't alone in dismissing the gloom as misplaced. Optimists, from Exxon Mobil Corp. to the U.S. Energy Department, argue that high prices propel companies to innovate and invest more. As supplies rebound, prices will fall from today's levels. Saudi Arabia itself, producer of 12% of the world's oil, has vacillated for years over whether to try to extract oil faster than it already is. Last weekend, urged on by Saudi King Abdullah, it appeared to move into Mr. Saleri's camp. Fearful that supply jitters were damaging the world economy,the kingdom said it was ready to invest tens of billions of dollars to boostits capacity to unprecedented levels -- to 15 million barrels a day over the next decade, from just over 11 million now. Opinions within the region on the health of the Persian Gulf's remaining petroleum riches vary more widely than many realize. Messrs. Husseini and Saleri disagree over whether the new Saudi production target iseither feasible or wise -- echoing a debate that has swirled behind thescenes at Aramco for years. That the two men worked side by side at the company that controls one-quarter of the world's proven oil reserves makes their divergent outlooks all the more striking.

Mr. Husseini, now an independent consultant, has jetted around the worldspreading his views, including recently over dinner with George Soros and a clutch of other top financiers. Mr. Saleri has lectured, written opinionpieces and buttonholed top oil officials from Latin America to Kuwait. Mr. Husseini, 61 years old, lives across the street from the Saudi oil minister, Ali Naimi, in a leafy neighborhood of Dhahran, the Aramco company town on Saudi Arabia's east coast. The suave but sharply opinionated petroleum geologist says most of the big oil repositories have been found, and no amount of gadgetry will restore bubbly youth to aging fields fromI ndonesia to the Gulf of Mexico. War, politics and soaring costs, he adds, are slowing development in many of the most promising regions."The fact is, we have to work harder and harder to get the oil we need," he says. Those who contend otherwise, he insists, "claim to have some magic potion, like voodoo, that doesn't exist."

Mr. Saleri, who is a year younger, shrugs off his former boss's pessimism. A self-described "technology nut" who resigned as Aramco's top reservoir manager last fall to set up his own consulting shop in Houston, Mr. Saleri has become a vociferous opponent of the "peak oil"view, which holds that global oil production is about to enter a permanent slump due to shrinking resources and limited investment."We have consumed only one trillion of the 14 or 15 trillion barrels of oilthat are out there," says Mr. Saleri, citing a personal estimate for all types of oil that is far higher than most. "For the next 40, 50 or 60 years, I see no problem at all."

Both men started their careers at Aramco as outsiders. Mr. Husseini's family moved to Saudi Arabia from Syria in 1961, when he was 14. The royal family had invited his father to help establish the Saudi National Guard under the command of Prince Abdullah, who is now the Saudi king. Prince Abdullah became a guardian of sorts to the six Husseini children after their father died in a car wreck in 1968. After graduating from Brown University, Mr. Husseini took a job with Aramco,which was then in American hands. By 1980, when the Saudi government took over the company, the young geologist was rising fast."Sadad was one of the best engineers I worked with anywhere in the world,"says Edward Price, Aramco's president at the time.

THE CAPACITY QUESTION. The Debate: Industry experts are divided over whether global oil production has peaked. The Background: Pessimists say big new discoveries are unlikely; optimists say innovation and investment will yield more. The Saudi Factor: Last weekend, Saudi Arabia said it would move to boos tproduction capacity. Mr. Saleri's route to Aramco was more circuitous. Born to a prominent Armenian family in Istanbul, he studied in the U.S., then joined Standard Oil of California, now Chevron Corp. His job was to take all the known data on an oil field -- well-flow rates, geological core samples, seismic charts-- and predict how the reservoir would behave under different production scenarios. "I basically sat in a dark room and crunched data," he says. In 1978, Chevron sent him to Saudi Arabia for a seven-year stint as a consultant to Aramco, where he met Mr. Husseini. The oil world was about to experience a price spike that began with the Iranian revolution. For three years, starting in 1979, Aramco pushed its oil production to nearly 10 million barrels a day -- still its all-time record.What happened next bears directly on Mr. Husseini's current view. The effort to draw out so much more oil, he says, nearly crippled the kingdom's mightiest fields. The pressure in many of them plummeted. Water seeped into oil zones."They were going hellbent for leather to take care of world demand,"he says. "And then we spent the next seven or eight years cleaning up the mess."

After Aramco began cutting back on output in 1981, Mr. Husseini worked to mend its huge reservoirs -- and to understand them better. In 1992, he persuaded Mr. Saleri to join Aramco full-time to help create computer-simulation models of all Saudi oil fields. The two men worked side by side on some of Aramco's most ambitious projects, including the development of a vast oil field called Shaybah, deep in the country's remote and forbidding Empty Quarter. It was at Shaybah that Mr. Saleri had what he calls his "big eureka moment."Aramco had developed the field using hundreds of wells that went down, then snaked horizontally. But when Shaybah came on stream in 1998, its production fell short of the planned 500,000 barrels a day. Mr. Saleri led an aggressive campaign to drill a new batch of extraordinarily long wells, many with multiple branches shooting off in all directions. Shaybah's production shot up. "That was a true engineering breakthrough," says Rick Chimblo, Aramco's chief geophysicist at the time.That success helps explain why Mr. Saleri is now such an optimist."Shaybah brought me fame," says Mr. Saleri. "And it made me realize how the old rules no longer applied."

Mr. Husseini applauded Mr. Saleri's accomplishment. But soon, the two executives were disagreeing on key forecasts. In 2001, Aramco was looking to open the kingdom's vast Empty Quarter to foreign natural-gas exploration. Mr. Husseini estimated that the area contained at most about 30 trillioncubic feet of gas -- not large by Saudi standards. Mr. Saleri predicted the area would yield 10 times that much. So far, drilling in the area has found no commercial quantities of gas. At around that time, rising oil demand revived discussion within Aramco overwhen and how to boost the kingdom's production capacity, then just over 10 million barrels a day. Then, as now, Messrs. Husseini and Saleri had sharply different views on the issue. Recalling his experience in Shaybah, Mr. Saleri argued that the kingdom could hit 15 million barrels a day and hold that level for decades. Mr.Husseini, remembering the missteps of the late 1970s, pushed for what he calls "a realistic, gradual approach." Fifteen million barrels a day would be sustainable only briefly, he said, and then only with huge effort and expense."My view is that you produce a field for the longest period of time at the least capital cost," says Mr. Husseini. "Nansen comes from the international-company school of thought, which is to get the maximum amountof oil you can in the shortest time."

In recent months, Saudi leaders appeared to have adopted Mr.Husseini's view. Local reports quoted King Abdullah saying that some new discoveries should stay in the ground. "With grace from God, our children need it," he said. Mr. Naimi, the oil minister, announced that Aramco saw no need to go beyond 12.5 million barrels a day next year. But on Sunday, under heavy international pressure, the kingdom revived its earlier promise to push for the far higher target of 15 million barrels a day. Mr. Husseini, once viewed as a shoo-in to be Aramco's top executive, left Aramco in March 2004 after clashing with other senior managers overproduction targets and other matters, others at the company say. Mr. Husseini declines to explain why he left, saying only: "I'd done all I could to support all our collective objectives without having to do anything I would feel embarrassed about." Months later, he issued his first gloomy take on the world's oil. Forces ranging from resource nationalism to depletion rates in the biggest fields, he wrote in Oil and Gas Journal, meant that oil prices will continue to escalate through the end of the decade. By fall he was warning that consumers shouldn't expect any big Saudi production increases over the next decade. His statements earned him several sharp rebukes from the Saudi Oil Ministry, though Mr. Husseini insists that his relations with the country's top oil officials remain warm. Mr. Husseini says he often bumps into Mr. Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, in their Dhahran neighborhood or at parties. "We are great friends. I see him all the time," he says. Mr. Naimi declined to comment.

By last fall, anxiety was growing within the industry and on Wall Street over whether long-term supplies could keep pace with the rising world demand. Mr. Husseini stoked those fears at a London conference in October. The major oil-producing nations were inflating their oil reserves by as much as 300 billion barrels, about one-quarter of the world's proven reserves, he said, while the giant fields of the Persian Gulf region are 41% depleted. Mr. Saleri, who left Aramco in September, doesn't share those worries. He has hired a half dozen former Aramco and Chevron officials and opened a business in Houston. His company, Quantum Reservoir Impact, says it has the reservoir-modeling and management know-how to revive declining oil fields. Mr. Saleri is now shopping his services to big national oil companies in Latin America and the Middle East, though he has yet to sign any contracts.

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in March, he dismissed the peak-oil theory. "The world has plenty of oil," he wrote. Three weeks later, Mr. Husseini flew to New York at the invitation of a clutch of high-powered financiers, including Mr. Soros, Leucadia NationalCorp. Chairman Ian M. Cumming and Aubrey McClendon, the chief executive of natural-gas company Chesapeake Energy Corp. The group of about 20 met for dinner in the 21 Club's wine cellar. Mr. Husseini declines to comment on the session. One guest says he spoke mainly about the geopolitical thunderclouds hovering over the oil market, especially the U.S. and Israeli standoff with Iran. In a longer presentation the following morning, he argued that the world will have to work hard just to keep its oil production where it is. Conservation, not new oil discoveries, will be "the primary source of overall energy availability" going forward, he said. He delivered the same message to oil magnate T. Boone Pickens over lunch in Chicago. "It was just two oil guys talking," says Mr.Pickens, adding that Mr. Husseini's views dovetail with his own.

Messrs. Husseini and Saleri remain collegial, though they haven't spoken for months. Both see the other's views as largely a matter of personal disposition."Sadad by nature sees the dark clouds overhead," says Mr. Saleri. "He's a pessimist."His former boss laughs at the description. "The problem with Nansen,"he says, "is that he loves his theories, even when they run up against reality."

Labels: oil companies, oil supply, oil supply/demand, peak oil

Senator Mike Crapo is asking for stories from his constituents about how high energy prices are affecting them, as well as their ideas about how to resolve the energy crisis. He pledges to post these stories on his site and present them in the Senate. To post, please email energy_prices@crapo.senate.gov.

Let us know your ideas!