So, you don’t like governments picking winners and losers? If only we had it so good. Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Popular Mechanics, Feb.3, 2011 –
Shell Oil has canceled its plans to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska in 2011, but will now set its sights on the summer of 2012. The company has run into repeated regulatory hurdles in its attempts to explore for oil in America’s slice of the Arctic Ocean. Most recently, in late December 2010, the Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) sent air quality permits granted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) back to regulators for revision. Pete Slaiby, the VP of Shell Alaska, cited “tremendous uncertainty”—and frustration—during a press conference in Anchorage to announce the decision. The company has been seeking the required permits for the past five years.
Washington Examiner, Feb.2, 2011 –
To turn wood chips into ethanol fuel, George W. Bush’s Department of Energy in February 2007 announced a $76 million grant to Range Fuels for a cutting-edge refinery. A few months later, the refinery opened in the piney woods of Treutlen County, Ga., as the taxpayers of Georgia piled on another $6 million. In 2008, the ethanol plant was the first beneficiary of the Biorefinery Assistance Program, pocketing a loan for $80 million guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayers.
Last month, the refinery closed down, having failed to squeeze even a drop of ethanol out of its pine chips.
Bbbbbut.
How can that be?
They know better than us how to spend our money.
Because you don’t get ethanol from wood, you get methanol. Hence the other name, “wood alcohol”…
Nice juxtapose. A heavily government subsidized refinery for a fuel product that the free markets aren’t interested in is built in a matter of months.
Yet, an entirely private oil concern cannot overcome regulatory hurdles for five full years to explore/drill for oil, creating jobs, wealth and tax revenues.
Yep, sounds like government SOP (standard operating procedure).
Think of all those poor bureaucrats that have lost their jobs administrating this boondoggle.
And pity the Georgia lumberjack,leaping from tree to tree, as they float down the mighty Chattahoochee River. The Georgia Pine. The Larch. The Fir! The mighty Scots Pine! The lofty flowering Cherry! The plucky little Apsen! The limping Roo tree of Nigeria. The towering Wattle of Aldershot! The Maidenhead Weeping Water Plant! The naughty Leicestershire Flashing Oak! The flatulent Elm of West Ruislip! The Quercus Maximus Bamber Gascoigni! The Epigillus! The Barter Hughius Greenus!
(Cue the Mountie Chorus…)
Yeah, $GREEN$ energy is right.
Wouldn’t that be called a forest subsidy?
Eadline says, “subsidies”.
Tarnslation?
Taxpayer dies in a sub, si?
Ead between the leftist MSM/politician’s ears.
Maybe there were tree octopi in the trees and this had an adverse effect on the distillation process?
It would explain where all the tree octopi have gone as well.
its straight out of atlas shrugged.
Will someone please advise on how to best send this information to PMSH. Should it be sent direct or through the Conservative Party of Canada? Cheers;
p.s. Well done Texas Canuck it is enough to make one a weeping willow. Cheers;
Next up . . . the good taxpayers of Ontario getting sucked in Dulton’s “Feed In Tariff” vortex of subsidies, stupidities and political spin.
We need the next Ice Age to start as soon as possible so we can finally put all this Greenie AGW hysteria to rest, once and for all.
Ho hum, just another green scam pays off for some and shafts the taxpayer. We should be getting used to them by now.
Money well spent. At least now they know what doesn’t work.
Suzuki honoured for environmental legacy but says planet has gone ‘backwards’, Feb.4, 2011
Cheer up, David!!! You have the government on your side, if not the science
If we could heat our homes and drive our cars on utopian good intentions the Lib-left would be filling our energy needs with their airy-fairy happy time ideas.
But reality never works the way it does in a daydream.
Even if the plant had been able to produce ethanol, most people don’t want to burn it in their cars because it damages them.
So the Warmists want a carbon tax to fund alternate energy projects that don’t work… to supply a product that people don’t want… to ameliorate a problem that doesn’t exist… in an economy that can’t afford it.
Because you don’t get ethanol from wood, you get methanol. Hence the other name, “wood alcohol”…
Posted by: mojo at February 8, 2011 10:29 AM
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Maybe the idiots should have used the money to build a “Wood Gas Generator” instead!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator
Whenever the economy is rolling well the greenies come out of their trenches to extract tax dollars to fund them. Rather than earn their cash they want public money and can extract it through fear. The world economic slowdown has put a kink in their schemes so they have to increase their volume of BS
PMSH has been humoring them but hasn’t completely fallen for everything they have thrown out thank goodness.
Who in their right mind would openly say the environment doesn’t matter?
The Peter Principle rules all.
This is the flip side of the AOL/HuffPoo saga.
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2011/02/more-proof-of-peter-principle-as-if.html
Difference between the morons in the US federal government and the morons at AOL who spent 43 times earnings on Huff-Po? The AOL morons lose their jobs when AOL goes bankrupt. The government morons get promoted when Range Fuels goes bankrupt.
Because you don’t get ethanol from wood, you get methanol. Hence the other name, “wood alcohol”…
I thought this was a chemistry test! You mean that spelling counts, too?
I heard of this booze from wood chips before….think they called it Forest Gump!!!!
Texas Canuck: “Think of all those poor bureaucrats that have lost their jobs administrating this boondoggle.”
You’re joking, right? Right?
Shell should know by now that any off-shore oil drilling is going to be under extreme scrutiny ever since the gulf spill especially in the US. It doesn’t take a brainiac to figure that out. Also, there will be huge pressure for the various US gov’ts to actually stop drilling in the Artic. Shell has been delayed a year – they have not (yet) been shutdown – they are lucky.
According to the Examiner article, the commentator says that a Texas company, KiOR, is planning to make synthetic crude oil from wood. This is not synthetic crude in the way that crude from the oil sands are considered synthetic. The claim is that it can directly substitute for ‘real’ oil to make gas and deisel from the existing infrastructure. Therefore the existing infrastucture, refineries, engines, etc. can be used. It will reduce and elimate foreign oil dependency and greatly reduce green-house gases and of course is completely renewable. It has been proven to work in a lab environment. KiOR will receive a 1B loan guarantee from Obama to bring the technology to commercial fruition. On paper, this is the way to go, but making something commercial is tough which is what happened to Range Fuels because the engineering/technical costs were much greater than anticipated and they ran out of money. However, Range did create a working commecial plant in Georgia and did produce methonol briefly. Cellulose is the way to go – corn feed and stuff like that in NA is moving by the wayside. Range is bankrupt, but not dead yet – they are trying to raise more money and convert to ethanol production from methanol. I suspect that KiOR will have technical issues as well – it will be interesting to see them pull something like this out of the bag.
Oh, Texas Canuck…
Look- until an alternative fuel source which is both practical and affordable can be found, you’re stuck with oil. Tap into it.
Mao Stlong* Lepolt:
How much you wan fol AB’s crean oir?
Send bid to Bob Rae, Moi nephew, Canada’s Liberal leader, @lib.caca.
Tata, Mo Strong* in Cjiainahjkihng, China.
…-
>>> “When it comes to Canada’s oilsands, Birol said they will have an important role to play in helping diversify the world’s dependence away from the Middle East for oil.
>>> Despite the criticism of the environmental impact of the oil sands, Birol said increasing output to 3-million barrels a day would only boost Carbon Dioxide emissions by 0.1%, the equivalent of one and a half days of China’s emissions.”
“Global warming targets almost out of reach: IEA”
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Environment/2011/02/08/17199091.html
They did squeeze blood from the tax payer though!