Few -- if any -- countries have done a better job than Brazil over the past years to address their domestic energy needs... New Rig Brings Brazil Oil Self-Sufficiency http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060421/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_oil_sufficiency RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, dressed in an orange jump suit, drenched his hand in oil as he flipped the switch Friday on a new oil rig that will usher in overall independence from foreign oil. The start of production at the P-50 rig off Brazil's south Atlantic coast puts Brazil on track to produce as much oil as it consumes. Silva showed off his oily hand to a crowd on the rig, a gesture imitating President Getulio Vargas when he created the government-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, in the early 1950s. The production milestone — coordinated to fall on a national holiday honoring 18th-century independence hero Tiradentes — marked an end to decades of dependence on foreign oil, and fuel bills that plunged Brazil into debt when oil prices soared in the 1970s. Petrobras said the huge P-50 rig will boost national oil production to an average of 1.9 million barrels a day this year, more than average consumption of 1.85 million barrels a day. "It's an important date for the country, and Petrobras has every right to be proud," said Luiz Broad, an oil analyst at the Agora Senior brokerage in Rio de Janeiro. As more offshore rigs come online, Petrobras expects to join the ranks of the world's net oil exporters, with production exceeding demand by nearly 300,000 barrels a day in 2010. Brazil still has to import light crude oil for the refined products it needs. The country produces — and exports — mostly heavy crude oil, which has to be mixed with the light oil in refineries. The net-exporter status will boost Brazil's trade surplus and help shield the country from oil-price shocks. Petrobras said it won't pass on the spikes in international oil prices to Brazilian consumers. Oil prices reached a record $73 a barrel on Tuesday It's quite a change from the 1970s, when Brazil imported 85 percent of the oil it consumed, deepening a foreign debt that raised inflation to four digits and pushed the country to the brink of bankruptcy. "We have the fastest-growing oil industry in the world," Petrobras Chief Executive Sergio Gabrielli said Thursday. Brazil still depends on natural gas imported from Bolivia, on its own nuclear power and on hydroelectric dams to produce electricity, and on an abundance of ethanol, an alternative fuel made from Brazilian sugar cane. Brazil produced only 2,700 barrels of oil a day when Petrobras was founded in 1953, and consumed 137,000 barrels a day. With the slogan "The oil is ours," the company set out to find oil in a country larger than the lower 48 U.S. states. In 1968, the company began searching offshore in the Campos Basin near Macae, 110 miles east of Rio de Janeiro. The big break came six years later, with the discovery of the Garoupa field. New discoveries followed, and Macae became an oil boomtown as the Campos Basin grew to become Brazil's top oil producer. Today, more than 80 percent of Brazil's oil comes from offshore fields. Petrobras also became a world leader in deep-water drilling, developing state-of-the-art equipment and setting world records for deep-water drilling. It is Brazil's biggest and the 14th-largest oil company in the world, with operations in 15 countries. After the government broke the company's oil monopoly in 1995, Petrobras remained a top player in the market. The company snapped up exploration zones that Brazil put up for auction to international bidders. "The company did its homework, did what was possible," said Victor Martins, an oil analyst with Safra Bank. Martins said Petrobras would have to raise oil output to keep pace with demand, which is growing despite the expansion of ethanol, and the rising sales of flex-fuel cars that run on both gasoline and ethanol. "The important thing is the flexibility we have now," he said. "We can produce here or buy abroad, whichever is cheaper."
Congrats to Brazil. Your women are freaking hot, but unfortunately, they will be enslaved in my house after we go to war with them for their oil. Personally, i rather go to war with them for the rights to their women.
So is the only reason the U.S. could not do something like this is because we consume way more oil than we could possibly produce by ourself?
Brazil also has what has now become a success story with their ethanol-powered transportation fleet. If you can reduce the number of gasoline powered cars on the roads, that's where you really decrease oil/gasoline consumption. However, they had a brutal and expensive path to reach where they stand today. Their ethanol project was widely considered a major flop for 20+ years until it's finally become viable today. Not sure how that would sit with America's extremely short term focused society. They wouldn't be willing to sit through 20 years of anything that doesn't show immediate results. I think it would be a wise investment, myself.
We could produce enough (especially if you count Canada as part of the US), but it wouldn't be cheap. The reason we import so much (60% of what we use) is because it's so cheap from other sources. You can drill just under all that sand in the middle east and cheaply extract oil, while in the US we're drilling wells thousands of feet below the water in the Gulf of Mexico to get the same thing. The US needs to move away from a gasoline powered transportation fleet. Electric cars and ethanol seem to be the solutions closest to making it happen.
Glad we are in agreement here, texxx. Having a tax code full of loopholes for gas-guzzling SUVs is not a way to move into that direction, though.
The tax code around large work trucks is a ridiculously tiny piece of the puzzle that liberals love to hype up. The real problem is the fact that nobody has an economic incentive to give up our cheap gasoline (yes, it's still extremely cheap at $2.75/gallon) when they drive their cars everywhere. I'm not sure what the solution is. I think some kind of increased tax rebates for more fuel efficient cars would be a step in the right direction, but I would not support taxing gasoline further due to the negative effects on the economy that would result.
I usually don't agree with what you say in the D&D but I agree with you here. How do we make this happen and how close are we to actually making it happen?
And why exactly would you consider Canada as part of the US for these purposes? Surely you don’t believe that you some right to our oil other than the right to buy it on the open market like everyone else, do you? You may even effectively have less rights than other countries. China has been investing in the oil sands for years and in the Canadian petrochemical industry in general. Plans are in the works now to build at least one 400,000 barrel per day pipeline to the coast to facilitate shipping oil to China. China is a preferred customer in a lot of ways. The US (this administration anyway) doesn’t honour its trade agreements and is otherwise in a state of economic and dare I say moral decline. Canada is always trying to lessen its trade reliance on the US and oil is a good way to form stronger ties with China, an economy that is very much on the rise, and other Asian markets are attractive for the same reasons as well. There is already a large Asian population in Canada and western Canada in particular so these growing ties are very natural.
A large problem is with the American ethanol industry. Unlike Brazil, we produce corn ethanol. They produce sugar ethanol which is cheaper, more efficient, and pollutes less. What made no sense was that the American farm lobby actually lobbied the federal government to omit any tax incentives to produce sugar ethanol in the last energy bill. Even the ethanol lobby is messing things up. We could take a cue from Brazil and try making the better ethanol but instead we're stuck with the least efficient ethanol on the global market today because a bunch of farmers won't have it any other way. Another thing to note is that Brazil started this project in the 70s after the initial OPEC oil shocks and never looked back. They only got commercially viable and efficient ethanol motors for all its cars about a decade ago and finally became self-sufficient. They already researched the technology so there's nothing left to do but thankfully we found a way to mess this one up too.
The Defense Department contracted the Rocky Mountain Institute for a study on ending oil dependence. It's surprisingly doable and could save us hundreds of billions after spending around 18 billion a year for 10 years. Summary article
LOL...just a quick snipe at Canada for being America, Jr. I'm aware that they're building that pipleline to the west coast, but I think your personal dislike of the US is grossly overstating any role that China might play with Canada's oil. Look where it goes now, and where all the pipelines run: South.
...and look at where they’re being built, west. China isn’t dumping billions into the oil sands for nothing. But since you brought out the tried and true neocon excuse for avoiding an issue, “they hate America,” I guess you know that. Or maybe you don’t know it and this is just some Pavlovian response neocons have to being challenged to think? Most here in Canada know that the US has a history of operating in a very short sighted, self-interested way, but for those that may have forgotten the softwood lumber issue and the recent closing of the boarder to Canadian beef, along with other agricultural subsidies, have been strong reminders. Because of this tendency we have always been looking for ways to increase trade with Europe and Asia and reduce our reliance on trade with the US, where most of our exports go now, and oil can be a very important part of opening up much stronger trade relations with the Asia, a new cornerstone even. Demand in China is only going to go up and they have money and the willingness to forge stronger trade ties. Even neocons can add 2 + 2, can’t they? http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cnn61422.htm
I've often thought about that. Canada is twice the size of America and only has around 35 million people. They must have tons of uncharted oil supplies that they haven't even found yet. It seems it would be a good idea not to piss them off too much.
