Leave the SPR alone already
Posted by Yankee on August 22, 2005 - 10:29am
I thought this was just Schumer's pipe dream, but no, now Sen. Patrick Leahy of VT is advocating it too. I find this so frustrating, because it means that (some) politicians are so fundamentally uninformed about why oil prices are high right now (which Peter Maass also noted in the NYTimes piece this weekend), and delusional about how to solve the problem. Even worse, by promoting this kind of solution, they make it even harder for the public to understand what the real problem is, since it makes people think that high prices will go away just by opening up the SPR and putting a little more oil out there.
"What good does it do to release oil from the reserve," said Rep. John Olver, D-Mass. "The real problem is we are using more oil every year."
Hmmm. Maybe this is a function of being in the Senate vs. the House of Representatives. Could it be that Bartlett has rubbed off on his House colleagues? Now we just need a preacher in the Senate, too.
If your senator is one of the ones calling for opening the SPR, please consider sending (a personalized version of) my letter to Schumer to your own senator. (Not that I've heard anything back from Schumer, of course.)
(This article also appeared in Energy Bulletin.)
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I have a house in the Hudson Valley, and switched from HO to propane last year. When I made my deal for this coming winter (last week), my supplier accused me of having prophetic insight, as the moderate propane price increase is way under the significant HO increase contemplated - in fact, they haven't set the HO price yet, as they are that concerned about customer acceptance.
I know that I have always focussed on vehicles in relation to oil, but in reality getting people off of home heating oil is likely to be somewhat easier. There aren't the technical obstacles that there are with vehicles. I haven't even thought about what the optimum types of heating systems would be, really.
I have this idea rattling around in my brain like a loose marble - that if fuel prices reach a certain point (not sure what that point is), that governments would institute rationing in an attempt to hold down demand, and thereby control inflation. The problem is of course that this would almost need to be instituted on an international level first or otherwise prices would never stabilize. What would make this even harder is coming up with an equitable way determining who gets how much. Just like everything else, people would try and figure out ways to game the system to get more than the system intended.
In this graph, as far as I can tell, residential and commercial heating oil is represented by the white bar in the distillate category. Overall, that's not very much, especially compared to the giant blue bar in motor gasoline.
I don't know how much proportional use has changed since 2002, but probably not too much.
It would almost certainly be true that you get more bang for the buck by targetting transportation. I guess I am thinking that you might have elderly folks out there who don't drive much and still have oil heat, and these people are going to be in a real fix if heating oil prices go up.
For the rest of us though, vehicles are probably where we need to focus our attention.
Seriously though, there's a lot of low hanging fruit in increasing a home's thermal efficiency. Checking weather stripping on doors and replacing it where necessary is a good place to start. Making a cheap frame out of 3/4"x3/4" wood to fit in the inside and/or outside window well, stretching and stapling clear plastic across the frame, and tacking the whole structure in place with finishing nails (so you can remove it come spring) gets you a fair buck for the bang too. This worked surprisingly well on my basement windows. A day later the basement was comfortable rather than chilly. But natural gas would have to get pretty darned expensive before my wife would accept such "window treatments" on our more visible windows.
It won't change the big picture like focusing on transportation, but it's still worth doing. I don't think a retired couple that turns off the heat in February so that they can afford March's medication is thinking much about that big picture. (And I've consoled several members of such couples at the bus stop the last two winters.)
HO is a minor portion of total usage, but it is a true life-and-death use.
warning: that links to a PDF
i just sent him a letter through the auto-form on his website urging him to spend some time familarizing himself more with what underlies high gas prices. hopefully he'll get the note
(ps, good work on moving to the new site)
One trouble with the transportation sector is --as Kunstler points out-- the physical structuring of our living arrangements demands a certain expenditure of fuel just to function (in terms of work, schooling, and shopping, plus shipping of course). Fuel efficiency would certainly help. But the politicians seem to be terrified of displeasing either the USA auto giants or the labor unions. Duh!
Cameron