Los Angeles Moves To Phase Out New Oil And Gas Drilling, Exposing Lack Of Understanding Of Crude Oil’s Contributions To Civilization – OpEd
By Ronald Stein
The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously January 26th to continue their anti-crude oil agenda to tinker with the supply chain of crude oil via restrictions on exploration, fracking, and oil well setbacks, to focus on electricity generation from breezes and sunshine, but that effort is an oxymoron, as crude oil is seldom ever used for the generation of electricity.
California has increased imported crude oil from foreign countries from 5 percent in 1992 to 58 percent today of total consumption. The Los Angeles City Council remains supportive of huge emissions from polluting foreign oil tankers and creating a national security risk for all of America, as California’s dependency on foreign suppliers for California’s crude oil needs, as well as the West Coast military operations, continues to grow.
The decarbonization efforts of the Green New Deal (GND) are well under way attempting to utilize breezes and sunshine to replace 2 of the fossil fuels – coal and natural gas – that have been used for generating continuous uninterruptible electricity.
Crude oil is caught on the chopping block efforts to eliminate ALL 3 fossil fuels, but crude oil is seldom ever used for electricity generation! Energy realism requires that the legislators, policymakers, and media that demonstrate pervasive ignorance about crude oil usage understand the staggering scale of the decarbonization challenge.
It’s inconceivable that we would divest away from crude oil, just because 2 of the products manufactured from crude oil are gasoline and diesel fuels for the short-range and light-weight equipment like cars and trucks. EV technology is making progress to replace those two products from oil. EV owners have demonstrated that their usage of EV’s for approximately 5,000 miles per year represents a real opportunity to meet that short-range need with EV’s.
The LA City Council and Governor Newsom must be oblivious to the consequences of their plan as efforts to cease the use of crude oil could be the greatest threat to civilization, not climate change.
Under the LA City Council and Governor Newsom’s plan to rid California of crude oil and all its products, such a plan would ground the military, and mothball the airlines, cruise ships and merchant ships, as well as eliminate the medical industry that is totally reliant on the products made from petroleum derivatives that are manufactured out of crude oil.
As environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors climb up the agenda there is a lost reality that the primary usage of crude oil is NOT for the generation of electricity, but to manufacture derivatives and fuels which are the ingredients of everything needed by economies and lifestyles to exist and prosper.
Instead of pursuing a GND green electricity policy that will achieve nothing but skyrocketing electricity prices and more inflation, the LA City Council might want to consider taking steps that will benefit Californians, such as increasing in-state crude oil production to support the manufacturing of thousands of products that lifestyles, infrastructures, and economies are based upon.
