"If Brazil can do it, we can do it; it's as simple as that." Needless to say, Fox News' demagogue-in-chief Bill O'Reilly made this asinine assertion on energy independence while berating a couple of news blonds with his usual steam-roller-like tact, anti-intellectual insights and megalomaniacal aplomb. Ignoring differences in climate (Brazil's ethanol production is based on sugar cane), speaking over pictures of a Chevy FlexFuel Tahoe, Bill O told his acolytes (repeatedly) that we "have to get away from this oil-based economy." Why Brazil's just itching to rescue us from the oil thugs with cheap imported ethanol. But evil Congress is placing restrictive tariffs on our liquid salvation on behalf of… Big Oil. Sooooo close Mr. Bill (correct answer: the farm lobby). One of the news blonds almost dared challenge O'Reilly on the ethanol front– more energy in than out, dependence on oil to create it, deforestation, boondoggles, etc.– but didn't. Hey Bill. If you want a real fight on this issue, drop us a line.
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So, when will O’Reilly demand that the US invade Brazil in the hunt for that precious sugar syrup?
Thursday.
what an asshole.
no i mean really.
There are few (perhaps B.Boxer) who can rival OReilly in their ignorance about both ethanol and the energy industry. His grade school economics class must have been a challenge. Comments of the orginal post are more accurate what I might add.
I wish I could have 1/2 hour with the duffas in the front of a class. It would be easy to show his contractions. He has become a victim of his own myth.
Clearly Mr O’Reilly hasn’t researched the links between ethanol use and skyrocketing falafel prices. Otherwise…
Clearly Mr O’Reilly hasn’t researched the links between ethanol use and skyrocketing falafel prices
Of all the buffoons inflicted on us by the media, Bill O’Reilly is the worst (in addition to being a pervert). Actually Edward, he did do the research but instead looked up loofahs and saw no connection.
The point made on his radio show today was to move us away from an oil based economy and giving money to people who ultimately want to kill us. He is just misinformed about the E85 car angle. Had he touted Hydrogen as the magic bullet, it would have been more on target.
The truth is that Brazils oil independence is a result of drilling for more oil. They have hugely increased their reserves and production and are exploring and drilling offshore which would never be allowed in the USA.
He doesn’t mention Canada’s oil independence which is a result of the oilsands and offshore drilling while oil shales, ANWAR and offshore drilling are not allowed in the USA. Canada even drills in the Great Lakes which is verboeten in the US and the only new drilling off the US coast is by Cuba in concert with the Chinese.
Canada even drills in the Great Lakes
Where?
bluecon,
Canada’s oil independence comes from being a country of thirty million people. The US, with only slightly less land mass, supports three hundred million. That’s a whole order of magnitude more people using fuel and petroleum-based products.
I think there’s a demand-versus-supply issue you may have overlooked, here.
Even if the US sucked ANWR dry, you still have the issue of demand. To quote wikipedia: The U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels (3,200,000 m³) daily. If the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil reserves were used to supply 5% of the U.S. daily consumption — most is imported from Canada (19%), Mexico (15%), Saudi Arabia (11.5%), Nigeria (10.5%) and Venezuela (10.5%)[12] — the reserves, using the low figure of 4.3 billion barrels (680,000,000 m³), would last approximately 4300 days, or almost 12 years.
It gets worse. If you want use ANWR as a substitute for furrin’ oil: that 12 years supply figure is at 5% demand. Replace Saudi Arabia and Venezuela with ANWR and we’re suddenly at 25%, or three to four years of supply. Wow, hardly seems worth the wholesale destruction of the environment, doesn’t it? Well, unless you’re an oil exec, in which case it’s three to four years of heavy profit, likely subsidized by the government.
By that metric, it’d be more economical to invade Canada.
The truth is that Brazils oil independence is a result of drilling for more oil.
This is absolutely true. The following link, in a few paragraphs, destroys the myth that Brazil is energy independent due to ethanol:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/5/31/175512/149
The article even has citations. Don’t you love it when people back up their arguments with solid data?
The bottom line is that Brazil uses MUCH less oil per capita that we do in the US. Combined with the fact that they greatly increased offshore drilling, they are energy independent.
For a point of reference, if the US had the same per-capita oil use as Brazil, we would be a net *exporter* of oil. We would be awash in domestic oil. This isn’t feasible, but it shows these claims to be the BS that they are.
While I’m on a roll here, let me point out some interesting facts:
US oil consumption: 20.6 million barrels per day. That’s 865 million gallons per day. That’s 10,000 gallons per second, every second, all year. About a swimming pool per second.
Transportation accounts for 69% of US oil consumption. Automobiles account for 45% of all US oil consumption. Industrial processes are the next largest at 24%.
The US imports 58.2% of all oil we use. This is about 12 million barrels per day.
The US strategic petroleum reserve contains only about a 33 day supply of oil.
Texas produces more oil than any other state. Alaska is second, then California third.
And if you’re wondering about the price of oil, this should explain a part of it:
Total world oil production: 82.5 million barrels/day (2005)
Total world oil consumption: 83.6 million barrels/day (2005)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html
“The US imports 58.2% of all oil we use. This is about 12 million barrels per day.”
Doing the math at $130/barrel works out to $1.56 BILLION dollars PER DAY. That is a staggering amount of money to be lighting a match to every day.
In response to importing from where ever and invading whoever…
The US imports most of it’s oil for numerous reasons:
-so that the dollar will remain the only currency used to purchase oil (and look what happens to countries like Iraq that decide to use Euros)
-so foreign countries will purchase the huge debt that the American govt runs up, without which the dollar would free fall
-so the foreign countries have the money to purchase American made weapons (an industry with huge influence in Washington)
And O’Reilly is an asshole.
As a slightly off-topic aside, for all us Canadian motorists, Canadian Tire (allegedly) doesn’t use ethanol in their gas. Just FYI.
Thoughts:
Bill O’Reilly, as muckraking journalist (that’s how he sees himself), hates the oil companies. He thinks they are the root of most evil. That’s why he supports anything that will in his mind take away their power, damned if it’s feasible or not.
ANWR. ANWR is not about energy independence. It was never meant to provide all the oil the US economy needs (although it may have a lot more oil than we know about). When we drill for oil here it gives us more oil, not ALL our oil. So what? So what if ANWR makes our imports go down from 58% to 53%, who cares? Well you should, because that small addition will stabilise prices. Any added production of a product with an inelastic demand like oil will a have greater effect on the pricing structure than just it’s percent increase. More importantly, it will enable us to import the SAME amount of oil from friendly countries like Canada, and LESS oil from unfriendly countries. If you add the oil from offshore and other sources you might get the imports below %50.
Saying we should only dirll for oil in ANWR if it will supply all of our needs is like leaving $5 you find buried in your couch cushion because it’s not enough to pay for a meal at a restaurant, so why bother?
How many of you actually watch O’Reilly or listen to him on a regular basis ? or do you simply take people like Keith Olbermans word for it (this guy is the real asshole)
80% of the time the guy makes sense because he doesn’t bow down and felate the wackos on the far left and far right—-he actually challenges them.
For example, no single person in the media has done more for the rights of sexually abused kids than O’Reilly through exposing judges who let off friggin scum with a slap on the wirst…for this reason alone…I like the guy.
Look past the bombastic personality and you might challenge your thinking. Sorry about the rant but could not hold back.
BTW—I do agree—he is dead wrong on the ethanol thing.
umterp85…do a search on the net and read the text of his conversations with the woman who sued Fox and him. He is disgusting.
Also, he is not right 80% of the time…his factual errors are famous. There are whole websites dedicated to desconstructing his drivel.
He goes not challenge the far left and far right…he is a mindless shill for the far right.
He should go back to the Current Affair where he can spout idle speculation about who is sleeping with who.
Nick R
Canada even drills in the Great Lakes
Where?
In Lake Erie. Ontario has been drilling in Lake Erie for decades. The rule was if you hit the gas zone only you could produce the gas and if you hit the oil you would cap the well. So now they are drilling from shore out to the known oil pools.
“The gas prices we deserve
By George Will
Can a senator, with so many things on his mind, know so precisely how the price of gasoline would respond to that increase in the oil supply? Schumer does know that if you increase the supply of something, the price of it probably will fall. That is why he and 96 other senators recently voted to increase the supply of oil on the market by stopping the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which protects against major physical interruptions. Seventy-one of the 97 senators who voted to stop filling the reserve also oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. Seventy-two of today’s senators — including Schumer, of course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain — have voted to keep ANWR’s estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.
So Schumer, according to Schumer, is complicit in taking $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons of gasoline. “Democracy,” said H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” The common people of New York want Schumer to be their senator, so they should pipe down about gasoline prices, which are a predictable consequence of their political choice.
Also disqualified from complaining are all voters who sent to Washington senators and representatives who have voted to keep ANWR’s oil in the ground and who voted to put 85 percent of America’s offshore territory off-limits to drilling. The U.S. Minerals Management Service says that restricted area contains perhaps 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — 10 times as much oil and 20 times as much natural gas as Americans use in a year.”
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will060508.php3
“no spin zone” my ass – I gave up on watching corrupted egomaniacs.
Funny thing is that some people actually watch him as and tread every word as gospel and believe every word he says. Then there’s Nancy Grace and Rush Limbaugh. What’s funny after one of their diatribes on why they are right and it is proven wrong…the pains it takes for them to admit it (which they often never do).
Corn ethanol amounts to taxpayer subsidized food burning. Great for the farmer, bad for everyone else. Surely we can do better!
I’m all for lifting tariffs on Brazilian ethanol. It would instantly lower the price of fuel in the US, ease food prices, and make Bill O’Reilly turn a slightly deeper shade of purple.
Oh no!
Bill dared to speak out in favor of Ethanol! He is lucky he hasn’t been hung from the nearest tree by the drill nothing, grow nothing, you drive a Yugo while I fly my corporate jet – crowd.
Run Bill, run! Don’t you know that Ethanol is not fashionable anymore? It’s a boondoggle I tell you. BOONDOGGLE!
Bill O’Reilly isn’t a journalist, he’s a sensationalist whose appeal rests on his ability to go for the spleen and excite the viewer into the same rabid state he’s in when the camera is on him. It’s theater with the plot culled from news headlines, nothing more. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, except that he seems to believe his own bluster, and his credulous audience appears to take him seriously as well.
Time and again he’s been called out for factual and errors and outright lies. He’s just another blow-hard with no credibility as a journalist. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to matter much in today’s media environment.
Ever see that youtube video of him flipping out between takes? Pretty much sums up O’Reilly for me.
NickR : “umterp85…do a search on the net and read the text of his conversations with the woman who sued Fox and him. He is disgusting”
Your are right Keith Olberman..O’Reilly is the worst person in the world !
That said—tell that to my friend who personally experienced one of the scum of the earth child molesters who benefited from a lenient judge giving him a slap on the wrist. BTW…O’Reilly has publically gone after said judge—not bad for one of the worst people in the world.
Also—O’Reilly is no shill for the far right. That job is left for Limbaugh and Hannity.
Nobody is always right. I give credit to Limbaugh for at least claiming a less than 100% correctness ratio.
Grace, Oberman, and O’Reilly never let facts, truth, or logic get in the way of a good rant. Limbaugh worked his way up being a much more sensible speaker, but somewhere he got to be predictable and a bombastic. (you can actually track the conservative voting success with Limbaugh’s career. It grew when he was being persuasive, and started failing when he went from popular to a household name by being more noisy).
O’Reilly has also gotten worse over the years. I blame all of the above on ratings mongering. Idiocy sells better than sensibility. (Windfall profits tax anyone?)
Hannity, being conservative, usually has the right conclusions, but no idea why. Seriously, I often agree with the guy until he tries to explain his position, then he loses me. I blame his errors on simple lack of intelligence. Not that he isn’t bright, just that he doesn’t really think things through enough. If you don’t understand the underlying principles of why something is correct, then you are easily confused when trying to make opinions on new issues.
landcrusher—I think you got it about right on all of them.
O’Reilly loses me when he goes down the populist route. I like him best when he is going after scumbags
Limbaugh lost me a long time ago
Hannity—although he is a shill for the Republican party most of the time—seems more grounded than the others—-doesn’t seem to take himself so seriously.
Intersting though that all three plug / advertise for GM….just one more thing for some on this site to hate them even more !
umterp85 :
O’Reilly…Limbaugh…Hannity…
Intersting though that all three plug / advertise for GM….just one more thing for some on this site to hate them even more!
What? Just because I’ve sworn off GM for my own safety, that doesn’t mean that I should hate them for advertising The General’s products. I’m confused by that comment…in a free nation with a (mostly) capitalistic economy, aren’t people are allowed to advertise for whomever they wish?
As long as the check doesn’t bounce, I say more power to ’em.
psarhjinian :
…Even if the US sucked ANWR dry, you still have the issue of demand. To quote wikipedia: The U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels (3,200,000 m³) daily. If the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil reserves were used to supply 5% of the U.S. daily consumption — most is imported from Canada (19%), Mexico (15%), Saudi Arabia (11.5%), Nigeria (10.5%) and Venezuela (10.5%)[12] — the reserves, using the low figure of 4.3 billion barrels (680,000,000 m³), would last approximately 4300 days, or almost 12 years.
It gets worse. If you want use ANWR as a substitute for furrin’ oil: that 12 years supply figure is at 5% demand. Replace Saudi Arabia and Venezuela with ANWR and we’re suddenly at 25%, or three to four years of supply. Wow, hardly seems worth the wholesale destruction of the environment, doesn’t it?
Oh, please…THAT tired old saw? Let’s give it a rest about oil exploration and extraction “destroying” the environment! We are getting oil from the Gulf of Mexico, and there’s no “wholesale destruction” happening there.
Furthermore, no oil was spilt even during the hurricanes!
PLEASE let’s not use the environmnent as an excuse for not getting some of the oil that is trapped underground in such a desolate, remote region of OUR OWN COUNTRY. And it IS desolate and remote. The caribou and elk don’t even live that far North, anyhow.
O’Reilly is wrong on Ethanol and Flexfuel vehicles, chemistry and economics decides that, but this does not make him wrong on everything else. Or right either. His program is billed as news analysis and commentary so if you don’t agree change channels.
I like how his rant promoted more discussion about the issue, can’t say that about everyone.
On a fantastic show called Fast Money, the host Dylan Ratigan was saying one gallon of ethanol requires 3200 gallons of water to make the conversion from corn. This is a ludicrous fuel that should not be pushed down our throats. Ethanol is a scam, and Bill O’ Reilly is a fool for buying into it.
ZoomZoom – read up on the “dead zone” in the gulf of mexico from all the runoff of pesticides and fertilizer from Mississippi river from the heartland. The area is as large as New Jersey. There is complete destruction of an entire ecosystem there (not unlike New Jersey).
jaje:
And the last time an oil derrick in the Gulf put pesticides and fertilizer into the Mississippi River was when? I don’t see how the sins of modern agriculture are the fault of oil drilling.
Not that drilling for oil is without consequences, but that isn’t one of them.
Yeah, O’Reilly certainly isn’t the worst of the above-mentioned commentators.
He does get off track when he tries to explain oil markets. During a previous spike in oil prices he was looking for “Charley over there” who sets gasoline prices, to expose him on national TV! LOL! Best part was that he apparently concluded such a person must exist from one conversation with his local gas station owner. Nothing like an in-depth investigation, eh?
Furthermore, no oil was spilt even during the hurricanes!
Are you merely willfully ignorant, or are you actively lying? A modicum of research would have shown:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/sep/16/usnews.hurricanekatrina
“Katrina oil spills may be among worst on record”
http://skytruth.mediatools.org/objects/view.acs?object_id=7230
Plenty of satellite pictures
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9365607/ – 4 million gallons!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9175553
http://www.katrinadestruction.com/images/v/damaged+energy+facilities/
There’s no excuse for not being aware of the basic facts before spouting off.
Wow Farrago, I think you completely misunderstood what O’Reilly is saying. He’s NOT claiming we can reach energy indpendecence, in fact he’s explicitly calling for Ethanol/Methanol imports from Latin America to displace oil imports from elsewhere. He’s supporting the plan of Bob Zubrin to madate Flex-Fuel vehicles so that the market has the option of moving from gasoline to Methanol and Ethanol, which would be supplied largely by Brazil and the Carribean from growing sugar cane (not corn).
That plan may or may not work out, but it’s not unworthy of serious consideration, and it’s not from the Iowa corn lobby.
“I wish I could have 1/2 hour with the duffas in the front of a class. It would be easy to show his contractions. He has become a victim of his own myth.”
From O’Reilly.com-“Bill O’Reilly was born in Manhattan, and raised on Long Island. His Bachelor’s degree is in History from Marist College, and he has a Master’s in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University and another Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
OK. When does your 1/2 hour commence?
I like Bill.
But on this one, he pulled a real boner.
I like Bill also. I especially like Mark Levin (The Great One). I dislike that smirking meathead Keith Olberman. A true jerk.
If this doesn’t convince people that O’Reilly is a blathering ignoramus, nothing will. Perhaps we can channel his hot air into the flux capacitor and solve our energy problems.
As for ANWR, what is the point of making a special place that is, by designation, a preserve and then allow it to be raped for so little in return. Say a new “mega” dam could be built in the US, but it had serious repercussions on a variety of local ecosystems. It still might make sense because the payoff would be a lot of clean energy for decades. The tradeoff between environmental damage and energy production makes sense. ANWR make no sense because the energy that is said to be available is too small to make the likely damage worth the risk. This is our last major area of unmolested sensitive land. I think we should have much higher efficiency standards in place before we even think of touching ANWR. Drilling here will make a few fat cats fatter and do nothing for the average American. What would help is encouraging investment in sensible alternatives. Oh, wait, the Republicans just shot that down today, after allowing Big Oil to keep their unneeded tax breaks. The selfish shit just never ends…
One of the last times I watched O’reilly was about a year ago. He had on one of the financial guru’s from one of Fox’s financial shows. The guy was trying to explain to him about the oil companies and O’Reilly just refused to listen to him. He didn’t care about the facts, only about making a stand for the little guy.
It’s not admirable, it’s pathetic. It’s like the luxury tax that the liberals put on yachts. They got almost no revenue, but destroyed all the nice boat companies and put their employees on the street.
golden2husky,
I can tell you as a fact that the oil companies of today are better stewards of the land than either the general public, or the government.
Before you yell rape, you should do some research. Start by going to a popular national park. Look for signs of damage. Then, go to some federal lands where there has been drilling, and the pump jacks or well heads are still on site.
See how much harder it is to find the evidence the oil companies are there. Come back and share what you have learned with the group.
I can’t stand Fox News or Bill O’Reilly, but I wish RF or someone would tell us how we are to mitigate the decline in oil supply if we do not use ethanol.
Are we all going to buy a new Prius? I don’t think so.
Ethanol is not perfect, but oil importers can not be choosers. Peak Oil is here. Get real.
The car industry is on the ropes. Cut out ethanol and it’s flat on its back.
Oh wait, maybe that is what TTAC readers want.
Ethanol is not perfect, but oil importers can not be choosers. Peak Oil is here. Get real.
Ethanol is not imperfect, it’s insane to use it. And Peak Oil fears drives the 3rd axis of commodity price, speculation. The other 2 are demand and currency rates. By all rights we should be at 45 a barrel, reflecting consumption and supply. But the price of a barrel goes up when our dollar goes down because since 2004 oil has shifted to Euros instead of US dollars for the base price. Thanks Europe, the EU treaty was not in our best interests and the middle east figured out they could use it to hammer the US economy on energy price. The rest of the world used to see a huge increase in energy costs when the dollar went down, now not so much as before.
Really the only solutions we have in the short term is to announce drilling and production domestically to push back the speculators and raise interest rates to get the dollar back up. But until we bail out the banks and delinquent home buyers they will keep the rate low.
The Left should thank GWB, they always wanted high gas prices and work on alternatives to go forward and they are. It’s funny to watch them rail about high gas prices when they wanted high gas prices for years to spurn development of windmill powered cars. I guess they have a problem with OPEC cashing in instead of the federal government, it’s hard to spend gas taxes on useless s#it when Dubai is building Disneyland on the Persian Gulf.