June 17th, 2008
Investor’s Business Daily reports:
Mideast investors relish the fact that China doesn’t raise ideological issues like human rights
with its trading partners — unlike America. They also aren’t keen on big U.S. investments
since Congress blocked a Dubai-owned firm from taking over major U.S. port facilities in
2006.
Anne Korin, the director of policy and strategic planning at the Institute for the Analysis of
Global Security, sees a darker side to Chinese ties with the Middle East.
“The Chinese align their development aid and foreign policy with their energy needs,” Korin
said.
She cites China’s willingness to use its veto in the U.N. Security Council to shield Sudan and
Iran from sanctions. Korin also warns that political factors could weigh more heavily than
market ones in future oil shipments.
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is shipping generous supplies of crude to Cuba to
tweak the U.S. Back in the 1970s, the Arab oil embargo to protest U.S. support for Israel also
was about politics.
Given such precedents, she says it’s possible that oil could be used as a political weapon in
the future.
“As U.S. relations with the Muslim world continue to deteriorate and we continue to see
tightness of supply, we’re heading for a situation in a couple of decades where five or six
nations in the Middle East control the economic health of the world,” Korin said. “China
wants to make sure it has strong bilateral relationships with these countries.”
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June 10th, 2008
Bill O’Reilly: “Congress must mandate by law – by law – that American auto companies begin mass producing flex fuel vehicles and quickly phase out gas only products”
UPDATE: Thanks Glenn.
Sign up for Set America Free Coalition updates and alerts here.
Posted in Flex fuel vehicles, biofuel | Comments Closed
June 3rd, 2008
Posted in Flex fuel vehicles, biofuel | Comments Closed
May 20th, 2008
Friends;
I’ve just published an article entitled “In defense of biofuels” in The New Atlantis. It is a comprehensive refutation of the current PR campaign being waged against biofuels by the oil cartel.
You can read it here:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-defense-of-biofuels
Robert Zubrin
author; “Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil.”
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May 20th, 2008
Gal Luft will be testifying in front of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on May 21 on “The Rise of Sovereign Wealth Funds: Impacts on U.S. Foreign Policy and Economic Interests”.
Anne Korin will be testifying in front of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on May 22 on “Rising Oil Prices, Declining National Security”
We’ll post the testimonies after the hearings.
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May 20th, 2008
Set America Free Coalition member Robert Zubrin writes in the New Atlantis:
n the world markets, the cost of a barrel of oil is, at this writing, over $120. In the United States, a gallon of gasoline now costs, on average, roughly $3.50. Even when adjusted for inflation, both of those figures are now higher than they have ever been—higher than during the 1973 oil embargo, higher than during any subsequent peak. And yet, bizarrely, instead of focusing their attention on the staggering cost of oil and its ruinous implications for global growth and economic wellbeing, American policymakers and energy analysts have begun to decry a different fuel—one that holds the key to ending our dependency on expensive oil purchased from countries with interests inimical to our own.
Read the whole thing.
Posted in biofuel | Comments Closed
May 20th, 2008
originally posted by Set America Free Coalition member Gal Luft on MESH on May 16:
Four months and thirty extra dollars a barrel later, President Bush is again in Saudi Arabia trying to persuade the Saudis to open the spigot and increase OPEC production. Last time the answer was a resounding no. Not even a gift of 900 precision-guided bombs helped convince the Saudis to show more oomph at the pump. The lesson for the Administration: speak softer and wave a bigger gift. This time the United States has agreed to help Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, develop “civilian†nuclear power.
Of course the Saudi interest in nuclear power has nothing to do with energy production but with Iran and the Sunnis’ fears of Iranian hegemony. Does President Bush really believe that helping the Saudis with nuclear technologies would cause Tehran to pull the plug on its nuclear program?
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi insists that the oil market is well supplied, blaming the high prices on hedge funds and speculators. Considering the fact that OPEC production level is not much higher than its level thirty years ago and that Saudi output is lower than it was two years ago, putting the entire blame on speculators is utter nonsense.
The Saudis have always taken pride in their role as swing producers, claiming to own over 2mbd in spare capacity. But what good is this liquidity mechanism if they are not prepared to use it? When last month Nigeria’s production fell by 330,000 bpd, OPEC did not lift a finger to compensate for the loss. At what level will they provide us with liquidity? $200? $300?
If the Saudis are right and it’s all about the speculators, why not put this to test? This is exactly what Bush should have suggested: pour some oil into the market for a limited period of time and let’s measure the effect on prices so we can determine who is the culprit. With projected revenues of $400 billion this year, the Saudis can surely afford to embark on such an experiment and clear their name once and for all. But as I wrote here in January, we’d rather beg than blame.
The spectacle of an American president begging for oil every few months only to be rewarded with a slap in the face is getting a bit tedious. What’s next? Naming one of our aircraft carriers USS Ibn Saud?
Posted in Saudi Arabia | Comments Closed
May 20th, 2008
Set America Free chair Anne Korin writes in the Miami Herald:
the best way to address the oil price increases is to steer a course toward stripping OPEC of its hold on the world’s unmentionables by stripping oil of its strategic value, which derives from its domination of the transportation sector (contrary to beliefs mysteriously held by many politicians, we hardly use any oil to generate electricity these days).
Doing so requires choice at the pump. It costs less than $100 per car to make this choice possible. Flex fuel vehicles, that can run on any combination of gasoline and a variety of alcohol fuels (not just ethanol, and not just agriculture based) look and perform exactly like gasoline only cars, with the added benefit of letting drivers choose what to fill up with. Every new car sold in America should be a flex fuel vehicle.
What would be the impact of this?
More than 90 percent of new cars sold in Brazil this year are flex fuel, driving fuel competition at the pump to the point where the Brazilian oil industry has had to keep gasoline prices sufficiently low to compete with ethanol and not lose even more market share. So low that it actually just received a government subsidy to do so. Competition in Brazil is working so well that a big Brazillian sugar and ethanol firm just bought out the distribution assets of Exxon in Brazil. Think of it: in Brazil, farmers took on oil, and won. Don’t Americans deserve to have a choice too?
She’ll be testifying in front of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the impact of increasing oil prices on national security on May 22.
Posted in biofuel, ethanol | Comments Closed
May 7th, 2008
Set America Free Coalition member Cliff May fires a strong salvo in the direction of those that haven’t learned that teaching someone to fish so he can feed himself is always better than giving him a fish:
It’s become the conventional wisdom and William Tucker, writing in The Weekly Standard, expressed it most eloquently: “Right now, we’re trying to run our cars on corn ethanol instead of gasoline. As a result, we suddenly find ourselves taking food out of the mouths of children in developing nations. That may sound harsh, but it also happens to be true.”
Give this a little thought: The suggestion is that American farmers are growing corn primarily to feed children in the Third World. And since people in these nations lack not only food but also money, it assumes that American taxpayers must buy this corn for them and pay to ship it across the ocean to them.
In other words, implicit in this argument is the notion that developing nations are not developing at all, and never will be. Instead, they must depend on Americans for their basic subsistence. Is this what we believe? Is this the model — the Third World as permanent American ward and welfare recipient — that we accept and envision for the future?
Cliff discuss the difference between relief (give a fish) and development (teach to fish) and notes:
the moment you send in free food, you collapse local prices and pauperize those farmers who have managed to raise crops and who want to sell them, make money, improve their farms and increase their production in the future.
In Africa, where I once served as a New York Times bureau chief, people are not poor because they are unwilling to work hard or because they can’t master agricultural skills, or because the land lacks the potential to produce bounty. They are poor largely because they are oppressed by governments that range from the inept to the tyrannical.
He discusses the real drivers of famine and food price increase, that have nothing to do with biofuels, and explains how biofuels can help lift the world’s poor from poverty:
[developing countries] could use indigenous crops, crop residue, weeds and, possibly, bio-engineered plants developed specifically to produce fuels for their own use and to sell overseas. Instead of importing American food as charity, they could be importing American farm equipment at market prices, the better to both feed themselves and produce additional products for export.
But the regimes that profit most from high oil prices want none of this. Most of all, they want no competition. So they are selling the notion that alternative fuels are impractical or environmentally disastrous or “take food out of the mouths of children in developing nations.”
Read the whole thing, for it is good.
Posted in Africa, biofuel | Comments Closed
May 7th, 2008
Tom Friedman writes:
I’ve long argued that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation — which I call: “The First Law of Petro-Politics.” As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up.
“There are 23 countries in the world that derive at least 60 percent of their exports from oil and gas and not a single one is a real democracy,” explains [Larry Diamond, a Stanford University political scientist]. “Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Nigeria are the poster children” for this trend, where leaders grab the oil tap to ensconce themselves in power.
Friedman’s call for action: We “need to do everything possible to develop alternatives to oil to weaken the petro-dictators.”
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