Links tagged “oil”

"The Jones Act comes into play. Passed nearly a century ago to protect U.S. shipbuilders, the law requires that ships carrying goods from one American port to another must be American-built, must be American-flagged, and must have a crew that's at least 75 percent American. Right now, no icebreaking, LNG-carrying freighters in the entire world meet the Jones Act's archaic requirements. As a result, it will be perfectly legal for ships from other countries to pick up liquid natural gas from the new production facility in northern Alaska—as long as they don't stop at any other American ports to unload."

"Were it not for the hydrocarbon-fueled industrial and agricultural revolutions, you and I, along with all the whales that provided blubber oil for lamps, wouldn’t likely be around today.But since we are already here, what if that petroleum and coal we in America and the rest of the world now depend upon for about 80% of our energy were, for whatever unfathomable reason, to be taken away?"

"Until some entirely revolutionary new source is discovered, humankind has yet to invent anything so remarkable as oil and natural gas in terms of combined energy density, efficiency, portability, reliability, and yes, environmental responsibility too."