'Peak Oil' Takes A Deadly Blow

I've never believed in "peak oil." (The notion held with religious conviction by many on the left here, that world production is topping out — and will soon slide, plunging the world into economic chaos.) There's plenty of oil, with the constraints, as always, being the cost of recovery. Witness the vast new North Dakota oil shale fields. I regard oil "shortages" as contrivances by the oil companies, allied brokers and middlemen to run up the price. I fill my aging fleet of 50s and 60s era Chryslers with a light heart. The 59 Imperial ragtop and the 62 Belevedere wagon get around 18 mpg, which is still way ahead of the SUVs.

Contrary to the lurid predictions of declining U.S. oil production, disastrous dependence on foreign oil and the need for new offshore drilling, not to mention the gloom-sodden predictions of the "peak oil" crowd, the big crisis for the U.S. oil companies can be summed up in a single word that drives an oil executive to panic like a lightning bolt striking a herd of snoozing Longhorns: glut.

Let me wheel on a very useful report, "Exporting Energy Security: Keystone XL Exposed," issued by Oil Change International, a "clean energy" advocate. The explosive sentences (underpinned by the latest figures from the government's Energy Information Administration) come on Pages 3 and 4: "For the last two years, and for the foreseeable future demand (for oil in the United States) is in decline, while domestic supply is rising ... Gasoline demand is declining due to increasing vehicle efficiency and slow economic growth;" meanwhile, "as a result of stagnant demand and the rise in both domestic (notably North Dakota) and Canadian oil production, there is a glut of oil in the U.S. market. Refiners have therefore identified the export market as their primary hope for growth and maximum profits."

By the way, I'm by no means endorsing the rest of Oil Change International's piously trendy "clean energy" platform. But I am full of admiration for whoever put this report together; in two pages they've brought out enough useful facts on the domestic oil situation to devastate a decade's worth of Stakhanovite propagandizing by Time, Newsweek, The Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the TV networks, the environmental mega-foundations and, of course, the entire spectrum of establishment think tanks from loony liberal to crazed conservative.

The current focus of debate on whether America is oil-rich or oil starved is the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline extension — a $7 billion project to bring heavy, "sour" crude oil extracted from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, down through Montana and the Plains states to refineries on the Gulf Coast, notably in Port Arthur, Texas. There were fierce protests outside the White House last month, led by Bill McKibben, about the proposed pipeline, which is prospectively guilty of many sins, led by its putative enhancement of the theory known as anthropogenic global warming. The protesters have now furled their banners and headed home, or maybe they're "occupying Wall Street," this month's whack at capitalism and greed.

Now the Obama administration will decide whether to issue a presidential permit for the object of last month's protests.

It's a sound bet that Obama will issue approval. Would the ductile president risk a thrashing from Republicans for putting birds ahead of jobs? Undoubtedly, the prime rationale put forward by the president will be security of supply and energy "independence," meaning in this instance supply from the fine, upstanding Calgary-based, Trans-Canada Corp., as opposed to "not secure and reliable sources of crude oil, including the Middle East, Africa, Mexico and South America."

We saw this bait-and-switch game a generation ago amid the battles over oil in Alaska, where the North Slope drilling and pipeline were approved by Congress only because the oil was intended to buttress America's energy independence. Congress required the oil companies operating on the North Slope to refine the crude in the United States, with no exports permitted.

In fact, the oil companies had as their long-term strategy the aim of exporting Alaska's crude to Asia, thus ensuring that home heating fuel prices in the Midwest in winter would stay high.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton, extended Lincoln bedroom sleeping privileges and a Rose Garden birthday party to Arco's former CEO Lodwrick Cook. In exchange for campaign cash, Clinton signed an executive order OK'ing foreign sales of Alaskan crude.

This time, there will be no 25-year pause. From day one of the Keystone XL scheme, the oil companies' plan has been to take the heavy crude from Alberta, refine it in Texas and then ship it out in the form of "middle distillates" — diesel, jet fuel, heating oil — primarily to Europe and Latin America.

Enter San Antonio based Valero Energy, the largest exporter of refined oil products in the United States and a big-time retailer of gasoline in this country through its Valero, Diamond Shamrock and Beacon stations. As Oil Change International's report emphasizes, the Keystone XL pipeline would "probably not have gotten off the drawing board" if it hadn't been for Valero. The company has the biggest commitment to the pipeline, guaranteeing a TransCanada Corp. purchase of at least 100,000 barrels a day, 20 percent of Keystone XL's capacity, until 2030.

Valero's CEO and chairman, Bill Klesse, doesn't keep his firm's business plan a secret. The big overseas market is diesel because Europeans, Latin Americans and others like the more fuel-efficient diesel engine. Valero's Port Arthur refinery can process cheap heavy crude from Canadian tar sands into high-value, ultra-low sulfur diesel. Better still, since the refinery operates as a "foreign trade zone," it won't pay tax and custom duties on exports or on any gasoline imports from its Welsh refinery.

In fact, there's no national need for the Keystone XL extension. It spares TransCanada the task of trying to send the tar sands oil to Canadian terminals through fractious First Nations north of the border. It feeds big oil's bottom line. It's an environmental nightmare — mainly because of the certainty of corporate penny-pinching in maintenance and the equally appalling (and deliberate) lack of government safety enforcement.

Money talks, of course. Obama received $884,000 from the oil and gas industry during the 2008 campaign, more than any other lawmaker except John McCain. Valero throws money around. Across 2008, 2010 and thus far in the 2012 campaign, it ranks in the top six contributors from the oil and gas industry — favoring Republicans by 80 percent or more. Between 1998 and 2010, Valero gave $147,895 to Rick Perry, outstripped only by Exxon. Surely, one way or the other, Bill Klesse can hope for a night in the Lincoln bedroom.