"Age of Oil Has Entered Its Last Days"
Charles Mauch: Green Party Candidate for Railroad Commissioner - 2000
"Age of Oil Has Entered Its Last Days"
Charles Mauch: Green Party Candidate for Railroad Commissioner - 2000
In my 35 years in the oil patch, I learned that even the best oil fields eventually run dry. When they do, an operator who refuses to face facts and move on is a fool and pretty soon a bankrupt fool.
Our best experts now face this fact: The age of fossil fuels is drawing to a close. In Texas, oil production peaked in 1972 that was 28 years ago and has been declining ever since. As ARCO chief executive officer Michael Bowlin said last year, "We have embarked on the beginning of the last days of the Age of Oil." It is ending because production no longer can keep up with demand and because it presents threats to the environment that no longer are acceptable. Depletion long ago became obvious to Big Oil, which sold off most of its domestic production and went "elephant hunting" all over the world. Pollution is obvious even to our youngsters, for whom unhealthy air and ozone watches are becoming part of childhood.
An energy policy for the 21st century must be based on clean, renewable sources, and it is urgent that we recognize that and take appropriate action. We can start by insisting that our elected officials face facts.
The Texas Railroad Commission is charged with regulating our oil industry and with providing stewardship of our natural resources and our environment. About 25,000 illegally abandoned oil wells, strip mining of lignite and uranium, pipeline leaks and ruptures and routine oil-field operations constitute a continuing threat to underground aquifers and surface water, croplands and pastures and public health and safety. That should be the primary concern of the Railroad Commission, and commissioners should use their bully pulpit and their status as energy experts to inform the public and to help shape a future-oriented energy policy. But, like many such agencies, the Railroad Commission has been both beholden to and controlled by the industry it is supposed to regulate, and it tends to promote the oil industry instead of aggressively protecting the public interest and the environment.
Our present energy policy consists almost entirely of various schemes and incentives for increasing production more and better drilling and exploration technology, more tax breaks and subsidies for oil companies and so on with little or no emphasis on conservation or alternatives. And as long as there is big money to be made producing oil and our politicians are addicted to corporate money, we aren't likely to see any changes.
But part of any responsible energy policy must be restructuring our tax system and providing other incentives to insulate our homes and office buildings, drive fuel-efficient cars, use mass transit and make other adjustments in a wasteful lifestyle based on "cheap" oil. With planning for energy alternatives, disruptions can be minimized. But the longer we wait, the harder it will be.
The idea of "cheap" oil is a myth anyway. We are upset when the price of gasoline approaches $2 per gallon, but its real cost is far higher. A true analysis would include the cost of such things as the Persian Gulf War, the environmental damage from drilling and acid rain, the health effects from air pollution and the tax breaks and subsidies for the oil industry. If all of those costs were passed on to the user at the pump, we would find that we actually are paying between $5 and $15 per gallon.
The oil industry maintains that solar cells, fuel cells, wind and other renewables aren't economically feasible and must be subsidized, whereas oil stands on its own. But many of the costs of our oil addiction are hidden. When we look at the true costs involved, alternative energy suddenly starts to look a lot more competitive.
We now import more than 55 percent of our oil. Through conservation and the use of alternative energy, we could cut our consumption in half, reduce our imports accordingly and greatly improve our balance of payments, all without harming our domestic producing industry. Of course, that assumes the transnational oil interests that profit from those imports wouldn't block such a policy.
A logical energy policy for the 21st century must start with an open and honest dialogue on such issues. Informed citizens and consumers will look to the Railroad Commission to lead the way toward an energy-secure future, not to persist in drilling dry holes in once-prolific, now-depleted fields.
