Changing Fuel Costs

There has been much talk of late about energy cost, what we are paying "at the pump" to power our vehicles.  Future vehicles using everything from hydrogen to solar to battery power even air to help our plight have been outlined as our savior.  The truth is, these solutions can only be considered "pie in the sky" in that they need so much future development, infrastructure as well as hardware change that as far as you and I are concerned, these solutions will never come to pass on a  contributing scale in our lifetime.  These solutions will do very little to our condition in the foreseeable future and the price at the pump will continue to grow as those in control continue to do whatever it is that they are doing.  We all understand all of this energy thing is fueled, if you will, by money and the control of power. But in that we must live within our economic condition and all that it brings. The question is not how much can we put up with but what can we do about it?
 
So, what CAN we do about all of this today, right now?  What resources and technology do we have today that can be utilized to bring our transportation costs back into the percentage of our income that it previously was? This should be the question and the goal of those movers and shakers we look to for direction.
 
Talking in terms of the United States and the energy crunch we are in but also with regard for many other parts of the world, we have all made fossil fuels the energy that makes the world go around and in true fashion, those countries who have the petroleum reserves have been more than willing to allow us to make this happen.  Like a drug dealer to his junkie, we are now hooked. We must have our gasoline to run our cars, our diesel to run our trucks and all of this has happened because the fuel was cheap and plentiful. With most everything designed to run on the stuff, here we are.  Now the claws of these vultures are digging in and their stranglehold is choking us.
 
Recently, it was pointed out by a report that we will spend over 700 Billion (that's with a B) dollars this year to buy foreign oil. That's 70% of what we use.  We now consume 24% of the worlds energy but constitute only 4% of the population and as T. Boone Pickens says, “this is a problem.”  Actually this is the root of many problems.  At that rate, we will soon have all of our money taken from us! They already have chipped away at us on many other fronts—education, medicine, technology and breaking us with selling energy that does nothing to bolster our economy. Soon we will have much larger problems than higher "at the pump" fuel costs.  The only thing in life that is guaranteed is change and we do not want to be in a position of watching the rest of the world pass us by. We here in the greatest nation need to take action if we are to stay on top of this global community.
 
So, this is where this article comes in asking the question, “what can we do today to effect our fuel cost?”  Is there nothing other than not driving that will reduce the money we spend to drive?  Can our legislators do more than lift the ban on offshore drilling, which many oppose and could take years to impact the problem? Do we look to battery power – a technology that could take years to perfect – to solve our problems today? No, these things could one day help but right now they cannot.
 
Mr. Pickens does have a simple plan to do something about the imbalance right now and as far as transportation energy costs are concerned our goal needs to be focused on reducing our dependence on foreign fuel imports in the short term.  As far as gasoline powered vehicles go, the solution can actually be a simple one.  The US has the majority of the world's natural gas reserves here in the states today. We already own this energy source.  Internal combustion engines that use gasoline will run very effectively on Natural Gas.  It burns cleaner than gasoline so it helps our environment and is better for the engine leaving less contaminates inside of the motor which will help them run longer. The big news is the US is already holding the Natural Gas reserves. It belongs to us and using this already distributed energy source to power our vehicles can immediately cut our dependence on foreign oil use by almost 50%.  This is technology that's available today. Nothing needs to be discovered to use this energy source in our cars and trucks.  True, natural gas has differences from the use of gasoline but these issues can be overcome. We have a current infrastructure distribution throughout the country and with a little focus we can increase this availability.  Our current auto fleet does not have to be discarded to utilize this energy source since it will work in our cars and trucks right now! 
 
Our government has even identified Natural Gas as an "alternative energy source" and has incentives in place today to promote it's use, but nothing will happen until we as a whole make a move.  What's holding this up is that we are still hoping the powers that be can do something to bring that number on the gasoline pump down and we can go back to business as usual. What we need to understand is that we cannot go back to the way things were.  Our lives are changing, our dependence on foreign oil must change or the US is in for further economic bad times.  What can we do now to address the problem?  Natural gas does have a "carbon footprint", but at least it's a different shoe that is making the print and we own those shoes ourselves.  There needs to be an energy source that will bridge the gap between now and the wonderful inventions of the future.  We may be able to power our cars on hydrogen in the future but we need to get there and American natural Gas is here now.
 
As far as diesel vehicles are concerned, originally the diesel engine was developed to run on vegetable based fuels and even gasoline internal combustion motors first spun up on vapor gas from burning fossil fuels.  There are non petroleum based solutions (biodiesel and the like) that we have available to us with todays technology. These are the things we need to have our government focus on along with exploiting our oil reserves while we discover new technologies for the future.  This can all come together but we will never make it to the   future unless we do something now, this focus needs to be a "national initiative".  Look into Natural Gas as a viable transportation fuel today, the conversion of your gasoline burning motor can be accomplished with off the shelf parts today.  Press our legislators to loosen the grip on foreign oil by exploiting natural Gas, the technology is here now and it does work.  We cannot solve all of the worlds problems with this one directive but this will start us in the direction and maybe keep us out of the poor house in the foreseeable future.

Jim Bounds