Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Fossil Fuels: Energy from the Past
Energy is eternal delight.
—William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: The Voice of the Devil ,
1793
We Americans want it all: endless and secure energy supplies; low prices; no
pollution; less global warming; no new power plants (or oil and gas drilling,
either) near people or pristine places. This is a wonderful wish list, whose only
shortcoming is the minor inconvenience of massive inconsistency.
—Robert J. Samuelson, columnist, 2007
Presidents going back to Richard Nixon have been talking about energy
independence. It has an appeal to the American public equal to world
peace, mom, and apple pie. It gives people a feeling of control, or pos-
sible control, of our energy future. And energy supplies are critical to
the nation's continued development. But the concept of self-suffi ciency
for the United States is an illusion. It is unlikely to happen during the
lifetime of anyone now living.
Petroleum: Can We Live without It?
Oil is the dominant fuel in the U.S. energy market, meeting 37 percent
of our total energy needs. American oil production peaked in 1970 at
3.5 billion barrels per year and has since declined to 1.8 billion barrels
per year. Imports of oil, our major energy source, have been increasing
for many decades as our domestic sources have declined and our energy
needs have increased. We use about one-quarter of the world's oil but
have only 2.4 percent of global reserves (fi gure 6.1). 1 Imports have been
increasing for decades and are now more than 60 percent of the oil we
use, and the percentage is projected to increase into the future. The
United States is an old oil province whose fi elds are in decline. Nothing
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