Set America Free Notes&Comments

…who just signed on to S.2025, The Vehicle and Fuel Choices for American Security Act, based on the Set America Free blueprint for energy security. Is your Senator on board yet?

About 4% of U.S. oil demand is due to home heating. These lists offer a great way to save on heating oil (and natural gas) use:
Things You Can Do to Make Your Household Energy Dollar Go Further
Home Energy Checklist

An important step on the road to fuel choice. We encourage Florida to follow!

Have a hybrid? Want the option of plugging it in? You’re not the only one:

“it has the same Prius ingredients – an efficient petrol engine, automatic gearbox, electric motor and additional battery pack. However, this Prius returns in excess of 100mpg in petrol-powered mode [...] At the rear bumper of the Plug-in is a flap which covers a socket. Unlike a standard Prius, you boost the batteries overnight on cheap-rate electricity, and that is the key to its remarkable urban performance.” Go forth and read it all.

EDrive Systems is doing similar conversions in the U.S.

In case you’re wondering what electricity in the U.S. is generated from, click here. (Hint: almost totally not from oil.)
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1. Weekly energy-security oped roundup

2. University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute’s Auto News Service

Gal Luft will be speaking about oil dependence and national security at UD at 7:30 p.m. this Wednesday as part of the Global Agenda lecture series, ?Hidden Dangers: Global Challenges Below the Radar?.

UPDATE: article about the event. Note there is one error in the article – instead of methane (a gas), it should have said methanol (a liquid fuel).

“Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear program, with help from Pakistani experts, the German magazine Cicero reported in its latest edition [..] Cicero, which will appear on newstands tomorrow, also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons ‘because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear program.’” AFX

Indeed. As Gal Luft and Anne Korin wrote in March 2004:

“If the Saudis opted to acquire their own bomb, they would likely become the first nuclear power to have bought one off the shelf. Were this to happen, it would represent the culmination of a Sino- Saudi-Pakistani nuclear project that began in May 1974 when, following India’s ascension to the nuclear club, China sent scientists to assist Pakistan in developing that country’s own nuclear program. By the early 1980′s, China had supplied the Pakistanis with enough enriched uranium to build a few weapons. In 2001, the CIA reported that China was continuing to lend “extensive support” to Pakistan’s program. Today, Pakistan is estimated to have an arsenal of between 35 and 60 nuclear weapons.

“How did Pakistan, with its grinding poverty, pay for this expensive project? Some of the costs were undoubtedly carried by the Chinese in pursuit of their own interests, including their rivalry with India. But considerable evidence suggests that Saudi Arabia played a part as well. In May 1999, a year after Pakistan’s first nuclear test, Prince Sultan, escorted by then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif, toured the country’s uranium-enrichment and missile-production facilities at Kahuta – the only foreign dignitary allowed into a facility that was off-limits even to then-president Benazir Bhutto. There he was briefed by Abdul Qader Khan, the controversial father of Pakistan’s “Islamic bomb.” In 2002, Khan, in turn, led a delegation of Pakistanis to Saudi Arabia as personal guests of Prince Sultan. All told, according to Robert Baer, Saudi Arabia has poured over $1 billion into Pakistan’s nuclear program. ”

To Rep Duncan, John J., Jr. [TN-2], Rep Ford, Harold E., Jr. [TN-9], Rep McKeon, Howard P. (Buck) [CA-25], Rep Schiff, Adam B. [CA-29], Rep Fortuno, Luis G. [PR], and Rep Evans, Lane [IL-17], for becoming cosponsors of HR. 4409 The Fuel Choices for American Security Act!

Moves toward nationalization of the oil and gas sectors in Bolivia and Venezuela are bad news for hemispheric energy security. Venezuela is nationalizing 32 oil fields. For some context, read Anne Korin’s testimony in front of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the House International Relations Committee: Energy Security in the Western Hemisphere.

Another sign of the times. We wonder what a government that is willing to kill its own people for oil theft?be willing to do to people of nations critical to its oil supply who attempt a similar offense.