Open Fuel Standard

Worldwide Change and the End of OPEC

2013-05-19T15:30:00.001-07:00

Homegrown Defense is a great little book about the impact of the oil monopoly on national security in America. It's a collection of essays by different authors — Wesley Clark, Frank Gaffney, Gal Luft, Burl Haigwood, and Robert Zubrin. The following is an excerpt from Frank Gaffney's chapter:

Over time, the Open Fuel Standard would transform America's transportation sector from what I call "gasoholic" vehicles to "omnivores." As new FFVs become ever more widely available and older, gas-only cars are phased out, the United States would create a vast new market for fuels that can be produced domestically, in the case of methanol derived from anything made up of carbon. Among such plentiful sources are switchgrass and other plants, wood pulp, used tires and trash.

In this fashion, at the cost of just $100 or less per newly manufactured vehicle, the United States can, over time, wean itself from what amounts to its present, utter dependency on a single source of transportation fuel — oil — most of which is supplied by members of the OPEC cartel. This will have a truly revolutionary strategic effect, especially if, as a practical matter, the US Open Fuel Standard winds up becoming an international standard. That would seem to be a predictable result since car companies, having retooled their production lines to make Flexible Fuel Vehicles, will find it more economical to manufacture basically the same vehicles for sale elsewhere.

As a result, within relatively short order, something like 120 countries around the world, many of them currently desperately poor and unable to afford high gas prices, will be able to produce their own transportation fuels from native vegetation or other sources. Some may even be able to become net energy exporters, offering them a way out of their state of impoverishment.

The result will be the end of OPEC's monopoly and, perhaps, of the cartel itself.

Fuel Competition and Mental Health

2013-05-11T19:54:00.000-07:00

I was talking with the director of a large mental health hospital a few months ago. They had just finished building a new wing of the hospital, and he said they've been extremely busy since the Great Recession began. He told me something I've never heard before — recessions always initiate a steep rise in mental health problems.

I must have looked surprised. He explained, "Well, people lose their jobs, which causes stress, and sometimes they lose their houses too. Under the strain, couples get divorced. Depression and anxiety increase. Anger and frustration rear their ugly heads. Sometimes people deal with it by drinking too much or taking drugs, and that causes even more problems. Sometimes the stress can trigger the onset of latent problems like psychosis and schizophrenia."

All of this got me to thinking. Since every time oil prices have spiked since WWII, we've had a recession in the United States, and since recessions cause more peoples' lives to fall apart, and since we could prevent rising oil prices from causing recessions if we had sufficient fuel competition, then it is not unreasonable to assert the following:

Oil's monopoly on transportation fuel
causes mental illness.

Or at least the oil monopoly plays a causative role in triggering a greater number of mental health problems than would otherwise have occurred.

So we can chalk this up as yet another good reason to stop the insanity of perpetuating a one-fuel economy. In addition to increasing our national security and boosting our economy, fuel competition can help keep our citizens mentally healthy. In addition to curtailing the money going to prop up dangerous women-oppressing regimes, lowering the amount of lobbying and influence the oil industry enjoys, helping to solve our garbage and landfill problem, helping people in developing nations rise out of poverty, and reducing the amount of pollution and greenhouse gases sent into the atmosphere, into the ocean, and into the ground, fuel competition can also literally make the world a saner place.

How Oil Prices Influence Employment

2013-05-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

There is an insidious side effect of rising gasoline prices. As people spend more money on gas, they spend less money on other things, and that causes the loss of jobs.

“Since consumer spending is the main driver of the U.S. economy,” says Mark Cooper, Research Director of the Consumer Federation of America, “when speculators, oil companies and OPEC rob consumers of that much spending power, the inevitable result is a dramatic reduction of economic activity and employment.”

In Cooper’s study of the effect of oil prices on jobs, he discovered that every time oil prices have spiked since World War II, we’ve had a recession in America. In his study, he showed that because oil was about $30 a barrel higher than “costs or historic trends justify,” gas prices rose by a dollar a gallon in one year (from the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2011), which drained about 200 billion dollars from the economy. This is about two percent of consumer spending. That doesn’t seem like much, but two percent less spending (200 billion dollars) created the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Another way to look at it is that because most of our cars are not warranted to burn anything but gasoline, we imported about $500 billion dollars per year of oil, sending that money out of the country. That would have paid five million workers $100,000 a year! But the money leaving our country just leaves — doing nothing for us. If the same money was paid to workers here, it would have a huge ripple effect in our economy because that money would then be used to buy other goods and services in America.

- Excerpted from the book, Fill Your Tank With Freedom.

Sustainable Competition

2013-05-07T12:51:00.002-07:00

"We need a competitor for oil," says John Hofmeister, former President of Shell Oil Company and founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy. "We need to open the market to replacement fuels like methanol, ethanol and natural gas. Competition will drive transportation fuel prices down, structurally and sustainably. These fuels are well within our reach, we can implement them into our existing system without the need to wait twenty years for fleet turnover. Fuel Freedom’s approach to opening the fuels market by breaking the oil monopoly is America’s next giant leap forward."

The above is excerpted from an article entitled, "Former president of Shell Oil calls for aggressive action on alternative fuels to break oil monopoly on transportation." Read the whole article here.

Watch a five minute interview with Hofmeister on CNN by clicking here.

The Best Thing to Happen to Fuel Competition Since the Invention of Flex Fuel Technology

2013-05-05T01:28:00.000-07:00

FFF co-founder Yossie Hollander

If you haven't yet signed up for the email updates at Fuel Freedom Foundation (FFF), we urge you to do so now. You can and should also "like" them on Facebook or Google Plus.

FFF is exactly what we've been hoping for since the first introduction of open fuel standard legislation in 2006. They've got money and they've put together a team with excellent credentials to execute a carefully crafted plan to create fuel competition in America. They are quickly gathering allies and supporters. Their Facebook page already has over 50,000 fans.

Please stay connected to them and give them all the support and publicity you can.

Click here to read more about Fuel Freedom Foundation.

Click here to sign up for their email updates.

Click here to like them on Facebook.

Click here to like them on Google Plus.

Watch a video of FFF co-founder Eyal Aronoff by clicking here.

Watch very short video by FFF called "Beat the Oil Addiction" by clicking here.

Oil's Monopoly Promotes Terrorism

2013-04-29T02:16:00.001-07:00

The mosque attended by the bombers.

Saudi oil money was used to fund the Boston mosque the two Boston bombers attended, according to this article in USA Today. It cost more than 15 million dollars to found the mosque. Over half of it came from Saudi sources, which gives them influence over what agenda is promoted in the mosque.

Saudi Wahhabis have used their oil money, which they are illegally obtaining by price-fixing, to fund over 90 percent of all Islamic institutions worldwide, promoting their fundamentalist, intolerant, and violent agenda around the world, including mosques all over the U.S.

The high price of oil is a direct result of Saudi Arabia's influence on OPEC, which is exploiting the fact that the United States is a one-fuel economy, which is held in place by automakers, who have so far been reluctant to make their cars capable of allowing fuel competition, something they could do easily and inexpensively.

The Open Fuel Standard would change that, and change the world.

Secretary of Energy Nominee Understands Fuel Competition

2013-04-28T02:04:00.001-07:00

In a recent report from the US Energy Security Council (read more about them here), we have some very good news for our cause:

Below see a portion of the record from the April 9th Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources hearing on the nomination of Dr. Ernest Moniz to be Secretary of Energy.

The answers reflect Dr. Moniz's understanding of the importance of tri-flexible-fuel vehicles and stronger penetration of natural gas-derived liquid fuels. The US Energy Security Council is looking forward to work with Dr. Moniz toward achieving these goals.

SEN. CANTWELL: As I understand it, today the U.S. produces roughly 280 million gallons of methanol, primarily from the steam reformation of natural gas, and by 2015 that number will increase to one billion gallons. On the ground that means three methanol plants will be reactivated in Texas and a fourth will be moved from Chile to Louisiana to take advantage of today’s lower natural gas costs. In a study published in 2010, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that methanol was the ‘liquid fuel most efficiently and inexpensively produced from natural gas,’ and they recommended methanol as the most effective way to integrate natural gas into our transportation economy.

Dr, Moniz, I would appreciate knowing if you were involved with this study and your personal views as to the potential of using methanol to power our transportation system given America’s now abundant supplies of cheap natural gas. I understand that at today’s natural gas prices methanol costs about 35 cents a gallon to produce, and for the past five years the wholesale price for natural gas-derived methanol has ranged between $1.05 and $1.15 a gallon. How do you think the price of methanol will change over the next decade as the price of natural gas changes?

DR. MONIZ: I was the co-director of this study. Its findings and recommendations were achieved by the consensus of the 19 faculty and senior researchers involved in the study. The U.S. has significantly increased domestic natural gas and oil production over the last several years, with important implications and possible opportunities for diversifying the nation’s transportation fuel mix. This diversification remains an economic and national security imperative. The President’s All-of-the-Above Energy policy supports more choices for Americans among available modes of transportation and types of fuel.

There are many conversion routes for deriving liquid fuels from natural gas.

Methanol is simplest and, like ethanol, needs modest engine modifications for flex fuel operation (possibly even tri-flex-fuel). More complex and costly conversion could yield “drop-in” fuels. If confirmed, I am committed to exploring the safe and environmentally sustainable development of all economically viable transportation fuels to increase consumer choice, reduce prices, improve our balance of trade, and enhance national security. Clearly higher natural gas prices would increase methanol costs, and conversely for lower prices. While I won’t speculate on the future price of methanol, I appreciate both the economic and diversity benefits of methanol as a transportation fuel, as well as the challenges it poses to both fueling infrastructure and vehicle design, especially in the context of ability to meet future environmental emissions standards over a wide range of tri-flex-fuel operation.

Senator Cantwell, who sponsored
the OFS bill last Congress.

SEN. CANTWELL: The seminal Massachusetts Institute of Technology Institute report entitled “The Future of Natural Gas 2011” found that “methanol could be used in tri-flexible-fuel, light-duty (and heavy-duty) vehicles in a manner similar to present ethanol-gasoline flex fuel vehicles, with modest incremental vehicle cost. These tri-flex-fuel vehicles could be operated on a wide range of mixtures of methanol, ethanol and gasoline. For long distance driving, gasoline could be used in the flex-fuel engine to maximize range. Present ethanol-gasoline flex-fuel vehicles in the U.S. are sold at the same price as their gasoline counterparts. Adding methanol capability to a factory 85% ethanol blend (E85) vehicle, to create tri-flex fuel capability, would require an air/fuel mixture control to accommodate an expanded fuel/air range with addition of an alcohol sensor and would result in an extra cost of $100 to $200, most likely at the lower end of that range with sufficient production.” Dr. Moniz, were you involved with this study and do you generally agree with its conclusions? What can DOE do to promote greater adoption of tri-flexible-fuel vehicles?

DR. MONIZ: I was the co-director of this study. Its findings and recommendations were achieved by the consensus of the 19 faculty and senior researchers involved in the study. Flex fuel vehicles were also a topic discussed in detail at a MIT symposium last year. Such vehicles may help enhance US energy security by diversifying our sources of liquid fuels. If confirmed, I would recommend that this technology pathway be examined in the Quadrennial Energy Review.

Somebody Has to Be First

2013-04-22T01:42:00.001-07:00

We watched "42" today — the movie about Jackie Robinson, the first African American baseball player in the major leagues. It was a great movie. The reason Robinson is remembered with so much respect today is not just because he was an extraordinarily talented ball player, and not just because he was first, but because he took all the hostility and discrimination the world could throw at him and he didn't fight back with hostility or discrimination. He fought back by being gracious and gentlemanly in the face of intense racism (and by being an outstanding athlete).

I see great posts on the Fuel Freedom Facebook page, but often they get hostile responses. The same thing happens on the Open Fuel Standard web site and Facebook page. The hostility is mild compared to what Robinson had to endure, but it still it sometimes discourages me. I somehow keep foolishly expecting it to be easy. I keep expecting people to instantly recognize the beauty and practicality of fuel competition and rally to the cause. But it doesn't usually happen that way.

When you talk to people about fuel competition, what do you get back? I'll bet sometimes you get hostility. People will tell you that ethanol will cause food shortages, methanol is poisonous, or that we need to solve the oil monopoly by drilling even more oil, and so on. And many more people have this point of view than those who understand the foolishness of maintaining a monopoly for the most vital commodity on earth (transportation fuel).

The Australian oil man, John Masters, said, "You have to recognize that every 'out front' maneuver is going to be lonely. But if you feel entirely comfortable, then you’re not far enough ahead to do any good. That warm sense of everything going well is usually the body temperature at the center of the herd."

When you run up against resistance, when it seems everyone is ignorant and you feel alone in your understanding about the promise and potential of breaking oil's monopoly in America, please recognize that you are simply out front — far enough ahead to do some good — and press on.

Many people were against African Americans playing in the major leagues. But now that seems backward and pathetic. Many people (and powerful monied interests) were against women getting the vote in America. But now that also seems backward and pathetic. And some day people will remember back when almost all our cars were built to run on only one fuel and it will also seem backward and pathetic. People will look back and wonder what we were thinking. Why would we ever do something so self-defeating?

Let us commit ourselves to making that great day come as soon as possible. If you're ready to get to work, start here.

Elephant? What Elephant?

2013-04-06T23:31:00.000-07:00

In The Week Magazine, they often excerpt the opinions of the most well-known pundits around the country on a single issue. A few weeks ago, the issue was gas prices. There were quotes from famous pundits from NationalReview.com, NationalJournal.com, The New York Times, The Post, Mother Jones, and The Washington Post.

Lots of talk about the cause of high gas prices. But not one word about OPEC!

Have you ever been to a family gathering where people talk about everything except the trumpeting elephant in the middle of the room?

OPEC is a large enough cartel that its output determines the world price of oil. If they agree among each other to lower their collective production, oil becomes scarce on the world market and prices rise. When discussing the rising price of oil, it would be understandable if every once in awhile someone didn't mention OPEC. But for all of them to talk about everything but OPEC seems surreal.

I'm sure there are many reasons why such an obvious cause is not being addressed, but one of these days we're going to have to come out and say it. I've been wondering why all these well-informed and well-respected pundits did not mention OPEC or the Open Fuel Standard. Here are some possibilities:

1. Oil companies advertise in newspapers and magazines. I know of at least one direct intervention by an oil company to block public knowledge of an alternative fuel (read about it here). So I suppose it's possible this is happening routinely, and any stories that might mention the bare facts of the issue might not make it into print.

2. Oil companies have also spent a lot of money publicizing information about alternative fuels that makes it appear unattractive or unworthy of considering, and perhaps they've done such a good job trying to complicate and confuse the issue that these pundits really and truly have no idea OPEC is the wizard behind the curtain.

I'm sure there are more possibilities. What do you think?

When Oil Has a Monopoly on Transportation Fuel

2013-04-05T20:16:00.002-07:00

In an article on The Oil Drum, Perk Earl clarifies the connection between high oil prices and the U.S. economy. Here are some excerpts:

It's been going on a long time.

Spikes in oil prices tend to be associated with recessions.

Economist James Hamilton has shown that 10 out of the last 11 US recessions were associated with oil price spikes.

When oil prices rise, consumers tend to cut back on discretionary spending, so as to have enough money for basics, such as food and gasoline for commuting. These cut-backs in spending lead to lay-offs in discretionary sectors of the economy, such as vacation travel and visits to restaurants. The lay-offs in these sectors lead to more cutbacks in spending, and to more debt defaults.

Airline Industry as an Example of Impacts on Discretionary Industries

High oil prices can be expected to cause discretionary sectors to shrink back in size. In many respects, the airline industry is the “canary in the coal mine,” showing how discretionary sectors can be forced to shrink.

In the case of commercial air lines, when oil prices are high, consumers have less money to spend on vacation travel, so demand for airline tickets falls. At the same time, the price of fuel to operate airplanes rises, making the cost of operating airplanes higher. Business travel is less affected, but still is affected to some extent, because some long-distance business travel is discretionary.

Airlines respond by consolidating and cutting back in whatever ways they can. Salaries of pilots and stewardesses are reduced. Pension plans are scaled back. New more fuel-efficient aircraft are purchased, and less fuel-efficient aircraft are phased out. Less profitable routes are closed. The industry still experiences bankruptcy after bankruptcy, and merger after merger. If oil prices stabilize for a while, this process stabilizes a bit, but doesn’t really stop. Eventually, the commercial airline industry may shrink to such an extent that necessary business flights become difficult.

There are many discretionary sectors besides the airline industry waiting in the wings to shrink. While oil prices have been high for several years, their effects have not yet been fully incorporated into discretionary sectors. This is the case because governments have been able to use deficit spending and artificially low interest rates to shield consumers from the “real” impacts of high-priced oil.

Governments are now finding that debt cannot be ramped up indefinitely. As taxes need to be raised and benefits decreased, and as interest rates are forced higher, consumers will again see discretionary income squeezed. New cutbacks are likely to hit additional discretionary sectors, such as restaurants, the “arts,” higher education, and medicine for the elderly.

It would be very helpful if new unconventional oil developments would fix the problem of high-cost oil, but it is difficult to see how they will. They are high-cost to develop and slow to ramp up. Governments are in such poor financial condition that they need taxes from wherever they can get them–revenue of oil and gas operators is a likely target. To the extent that unconventional oil and gas production does ramp up, my expectation is that it will be too little, too late, and too high-priced.

The answer to a high-priced monopoly is competition. You can help bring it about. Start here.

The Real Reason Gas is So Expensive

2013-03-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

Click image to see it larger.

In a recent article in The National Interest, Gal Luft points out that even though domestic drilling is up, fuel efficiency has improved, and America's oil imports are down, gas prices are still high. This is because the price of gas is not controlled by market forces. The price is controlled by OPEC. Luft writes:

Saudi Arabia’s story is more or less the story of the other eleven members of OPEC. The cartel’s modus operandi has been to throttle down supply to drive prices back up while adjusting the definition of a “fair” price. In 2004, OPEC’s “fair” price was $25 a barrel. Two years later, $50 was considered “ideal.” Now the fair price is $100. With the onset of the American oil boomlet, the organization is sure to go down the same path. In fact it already has reined in its supply continuously for six months and is currently producing 30 million b/d, the exact number of barrels it produced forty years ago. Over the past four decades the world GDP grew fourteen-fold; the number of cars quadrupled; global crude consumption doubled. Yet OPEC, which sits on top of three quarters of the world’s conventional crude reserves, has kept its contribution to the oil market the same. Realistically, we cannot defeat the cartel in the courts or with diplomacy. What we can do is deploy what it fears most: competition with our cheap and abundant natural gas.

By opening vehicles to a variety of natural gas-derived fuels, we will be able to pit a cheap and abundant commodity against one whose price is inflated and controlled by a cartel. This is true for compressed natural gas; electricity, which can power pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; or methanol, a liquid fuel sold today for a dollar less than gasoline on an energy-equivalency basis that can power flexible-fuel vehicles that cost manufacturers an extra $100 to make compared to gas-only cars.

The International Energy Agency predicts that by the end of the decade the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the biggest oil producer. This may happen, and there are many reasons to welcome the development. But we should not delude ourselves into thinking that the role of driller-in-chief will bring lower crude prices. It won’t. Unless we break oil’s virtual monopoly over transportation fuel it will be the disgruntled youth in Riyadh who will determine how much we pay at the pump.

Oil is a monopoly, and OPEC is exploiting it. The solution to a monopoly is competition. Click here to find out what you can do to encourage competition in the fuel market.

Putting E85 in a Gas-Only Car

2013-03-23T14:15:00.001-07:00

We recently tried it in our car and succeeded. Click here to read why we wanted to burn E85 in our car. This is what happened:

We'd read the letter by John Kolak on using E85 in regular cars, and then we read Marc Rauch's response. Rauch describes his ongoing experiments with E85 in non-flex-fuel vehicles (which you can read here). And we also read about Robert Zubrin's experiments with methanol and his discovery that non-flex fuel cars already have the components to be flex fuel cars.

But we were still skeptical and didn't want anything bad to happen to our beloved 2001 Prius, so we bought a conversion kit and installed it (which you can read about here).

In order to fix an unrelated problem with our car, we took off the conversion kit (temporarily, we thought) but in the process, we broke one of the conversion kit's plugs. So we decided to gather up some courage and try E85 without a kit just to see what would happen. We were watching David Blume's video where he says he once mentioned on a national talk show that anyone could put E85 in their regular car, and immediately the petroleum industry made it mandatory for all gas stations to put stickers on their E85 pumps warning people not to put E85 into non-flex-fuel cars. Watch Blume's video here. Blume's reassurance that you can put E85 into any car (and that it's perfectly legal) was the final straw for us.

We decided to do it. We thought we'd try it in stages. So first we waited until our tank was pretty empty and put in one gallon of E85. By our calculations, that meant we were running on 33% alcohol. We figured if there was a problem, we had plenty of room in the tank to fill up with regular gasoline and dilute the ethanol enough to stop whatever problem it was causing. But we didn't have any problems. We couldn't even tell the difference. Our 2001 Prius was successfully burning E33! This was encouraging.

The next phase of our experiment was to let the tank empty out some more. Then we put in three gallons of E85. By our calculations that made it E70 (70% ethanol in the tank). We still had enough room to add four more gallons of regular gasoline if there was a problem, which would have brought it back down to about E30, and we already knew the car could handle that.

But again, there was no problem. We couldn't tell any difference. The car was running perfectly! We drove around quite a bit, using up most of the tank. Everything was going smoothly.

This was great. Then we embarked on a 500-mile trip and on our way out of town, we filled up with E85, which put us at probably E80 or so. While we were at the station, we looked carefully at the little warning sticker. It said we should check with the clerk before putting E85 in our car. So we went in to see what the clerk would say. He said the warning was on there because E85 can damage engines. "Where did you hear that?" we asked. "The tow truck guy told me," he said, "apparently it burns too hot or something."

We straightened him out. Alcohol burns cooler than gasoline.

Anyway, with our tank full of E85, we drove up over the Cascade Mountains (in Washington State). No problems. The only thing that seemed different is that the car had a little more power than we were used to. This is not surprising. They use ethanol in the Indianapolis 500 because it is safer but also because it can give a car more horsepower (it's a higher-octane fuel).

Other than that, we couldn't tell any difference. So our non-flex-fuel Prius went up a long grade to a high elevation burning E80 with no problems. This was incredible. We were so happy. John Kolak and Marc Rauch and David Blume were right!

After about 90 miles, we stopped at a rest area and when we got back on the road, the engine light came on.

Uh oh.

But we already knew this was a possibility. Rauch said he has put straight E85 into many cars and in some of them, the engine light came on. Our car kept running fine. There wasn't really a problem. But the O2 sensor was detecting fewer emissions than expected, and the car's computer thought something must be wrong.

Rauch said he took his car into a shop and had them check why the engine light was on (without telling them he was burning E85). They told him his O2 sensor was broken. He said thanks, drove away, filled up on straight gasoline and after awhile, the engine light went off. He took the car to the shop again, told them the engine light was coming on intermittently and had them check it out. Nothing was wrong now. The sensor had healed! Not really. It was never broken in the first place.

So we decided on our trip to drive the Prius for awhile with the engine light on. The car ran perfectly. When it was time to fill up, we put in one gallon of regular gasoline to see if that would make the light go off. Apparently that wasn't enough. So we filled up on regular gasoline. Still the light stayed on. We thought we were going to have to take it to the shop to get it reset or something.

But before we headed for home, the light went off and has been off since!

Now we think we'll just burn E85 all the time and let the engine light shine like a badge of courage. We took a risk and discovered we can immediately stop sending our fuel dollars to OPEC and we can give it instead to American farmers and American workers where it can do some good for our economy and our air quality (ethanol produces fewer emissions that cause health problems).

Maybe once in awhile when we get nervous about it, we will fill the tank with gasoline just to see the engine light go off again. But then again, maybe not. It feels too good to fill our tank with freedom.

Read more: Burning E85 Without a Conversion Kit.

Announcement: Event This Tuesday, You're Invited

2013-03-15T14:50:00.003-07:00

An important national security and transportation fuel briefing is scheduled to take place this coming Tuesday, March 19th in 2200 Rayburn HOB in Washington, DC, and you are invited.

The discussion will provide valuable information about:

How to free our nation of OPEC’s chokehold on our economy
How to stop the financing of terrorism via petrodollars
How to reduce the cost of gasoline
How to open up the transportation fuel market to competition, finally providing the American consumer a choice of fuels at the pump

Please take the time on Tuesday to attend the briefing and to have your questions about this issue answered.

The name of the event is "U.S. Energy Security Council Congressional Briefing." Here's the official description:

The United States Energy Security Council invites you to a congressional pizza lunch Tuesday, March 19 at Noon in Rayburn 2200 to discuss why oil prices have gone up while oil imports have gone down, the natural gas boom, the Arab Spring, and what can be done to improve U.S. energy security.

WHEN: TUESDAY, March 19 Noon

WHERE: Rayburn 2200

WHO: Dr. Gal Luft, Co-Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) and an adviser to the United States Energy Security Council (USESC). Dr. Luft has published numerous studies and articles on security and energy issues in various newspapers and publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, Commentary Magazine, Middle East Quarterly, LA Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He recently co-authored Petropoly: The Collapse of America's Energy Security Paradigm.

The United States Energy Security Council is the highest level extra-governmental group ever assembled to address the energy security challenge. The group includes former Cabinet officers, heads of companies, and military leaders. Learn more at usesc.org.

Renewable Methanol

2013-03-09T02:01:00.001-08:00

Potential clean fuel.

The Methanol Institute (MI) released a new white paper from California-based environmental consulting firm TIAX entitled Methanol as a Renewable Energy Resource.

Funded by MI, the report is designed to tell the story of methanol as a significant source of renewable transportation fuel. More specifically, the white paper highlights several key facts, including:

Renewable methanol can be produced via four primary pathways: municipal waste, industrial waste, biomass, and carbon dioxide;

Biomethanol is the subset of renewable methanol produced from biomass feedstocks;

In the case of renewable methanol, feedstock availability is not expected to be a limiting factor;

Renewable methanol has an advantage among alternative fuels in that it is one of few fuels actively seeking to use CO2 streams as its feedstock; and

The renewable methanol pathways being pursued today rely on feedstocks that have little value or would otherwise incur fees for their generators, which is advantageous for the economics of renewable methanol.

The white paper also highlights the work done by BioMCN, Enerkem, Chemrec; VärmlandsMetanol, Carbon Recycling International, Blue Fuel Energy, University of California Riverside, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Syntec Biofuel, Gas Technologies, Range Fuels, and Air Fuel Synthesis.

The report can be found here: Methanol as a Renewable Energy Resource.

Petroleum Sellers Would Have to Drastically Lower Their Prices to Compete

2013-03-08T15:15:00.000-08:00

Natural gas is hugely abundant in the United States, and as such, it is inexpensive. It could be easily converted to methanol and used as a liquid fuel, which could sell without subsidies for considerably less per mile than gasoline, creating real fuel competition and using market forces to lower fuel prices. That's what the Open Fuel Standard would accomplish.

The following are excerpts from a recent story in the Wall Street Journal about a railroad company taking advantage of the natural gas glut:

BNSF Railway Co., one of the country's biggest consumers of diesel fuel, plans this year to test using natural gas to power its locomotives instead. BNSF, the largest railroad in the U.S., estimates it is the second-biggest user of diesel in the country, after the U.S. Navy.

BNSF Chief Executive Matt Rose said his company would quickly move to a "retrofit of existing road locomotives" if the pilot locomotives prove reliable. The pilot trains are expected to get rolling this fall in the hopes retrofitting could begin about a year later.

A gallon of diesel fuel cost an average of $3.97 last year, according to federal statistics. The equivalent amount of energy in natural gas cost 48 cents at industrial prices. That gap doesn't accurately reflect the potential savings since the railroad will have to pay to cool natural gas into a dense, energy-packed liquid. Still, experts believe that natural gas has the potential to be significantly less expensive than diesel for years to come.

Preliminary tests indicated that LNG-powered trains could go farther before refueling than diesel trains and have comparable towing power.

The BNSF move is the latest step by companies and industries to use more natural gas, a fuel that is efficient, domestically produced and cleaner than alternatives. The growing supply of natural gas in North America has made it significantly less expensive than crude oil for each unit of energy delivered.

Electric utilities, which years ago essentially abandoned burning oil in favor of coal, have started shifting to natural gas-fired power plants. Chemical, steel and fertilizer makers are planning new facilities in the U.S. to take advantage of low natural gas prices.

Like municipal bus fleets, which have converted to engines running on compressed natural gas in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, trains are easier to fuel than other modes of transportation because they repeatedly travel on fixed routes. That makes it less cumbersome to build enough fueling depots.

Read the whole article here: Berkshire's BNSF Railway to Test Switch to Natural Gas.

Gas Prices Set Two Ugly Records In February

2013-03-06T11:31:00.001-08:00

The following was excerpted from Business Insider:

Dubious record alert: American gasoline prices just set an all-time high for February, according to AAA.

The average price of gas in February was $3.65 per gallon, 10 cents higher than the previous record for the month set just last year.

Today’s national average of $3.782 per gallon is five cents higher than the average a year ago.

We've also set a record for fastest price increase. We started out the year at $3.29 per gallon, and have climbed to a national average of $3.78 per gallon.

The previous record through the end of February was a rise of 46 cents per gallon in 2012.

A Monopoly Endangers Consumers

2013-03-01T00:43:00.001-08:00

The following was a recent email message from Fuel Freedom Foundation. If you'd like to sign up for their emails, click here.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said that “the great danger to the consumer is the monopoly.” True to his famous words, consumers are once again threatened by the oil monopoly and actions forced by its chokehold on our transportation.

One underreported factor contributing to unseasonably early, skyrocketing gas prices is oil companies abandoning their refinery operations to feed their drilling and exploration divisions. This development has alarming consequences for our economy and we have little power to respond to this issue as long as viable replacement fuels are barred from competing on an equal footing with oil.

Refinery closings lead to the immediate loss of direct and indirect jobs in the local economy.

Refinery closings in Hawaii and New Jersey are causing residents of those states to increasingly rely on imported gasoline and other refined petroleum products to meet demand.

Higher gasoline prices, as a result of tighter supplies, tax the already overburdened budgets of working Americans.

Since most food and consumer retail goods are transported throughout the country, higher gasoline prices increase inflationary pressure on the price of these items.

Friedman also said, "The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit." Surely, companies should be permitted to do what they can to succeed, but in a monopoly, the absence of free-market forces means that one side benefits all the time while the rest of the economy always loses. As long as the oil monopoly stays intact, the consumer and the economy at large will be put in danger by every action the oil industry takes.

Let’s bust this trust, once and for all, with replacement fuels. Ethanol, methanol, natural gas and electric vehicles will create a free market for transportation fuels and save us from the predatory pricings of big oil.

To find out what you can do to help, click here.

Create Your Own Educational Campaign on Facebook

2013-02-26T21:16:00.000-08:00

This is something very easy that won't take a lot of your time, but could really make a difference: Post things about the Open Fuel Standard on your Facebook page — things like this video or this article. Every day or so, post something. The best time is in the morning. And the very best times are Saturday and Sunday morning. More people will read what you post on those days.

The easiest way to do this is to join us on Facebook here, and then share some of our posts on your page. Here's how to share posts.

When someone gives you an objection or asks a question, that's good. It is an opportunity to clear up misconceptions and further educate people. If you don't know the answers, email us here or learn more so you can answer. Use it as an opportunity to find out more and share it.

One of the great things about Facebook is the possible growth within a network like that. When you share something on your page, one or two of your friends may share it on their page, and so on until thousands of people have seen it, have learned something, and perhaps are ready to take action. And all these people saw it because of your post. It has tremendous potential.

Gas Prices Rise For 32nd Consecutive Day

2013-02-19T12:45:00.001-08:00

The Wall Street Journal: "The national retail gasoline price has risen 43 cents, or 13%, to $3.73 a gallon since Jan. 17, according to the Automobile Association of America. Refinery shutdowns have 'led to tighter supply, which also has driven up prices,' said AAA spokeswoman Heather Hunter."

Whenever gas prices rise, rising unemployment rates follow:

As more money is spent on gas for the same amount of fuel, less money can spent for other goods and services. When less money is spent for American goods and services, American companies must let employees go.

None of this has to happen. We can strip oil of its strategic status and allow our economy to thrive by introducing fuel competition.

What do AT&T and Big Oil have in Common?

2013-02-18T19:06:00.002-08:00

The following was written by Zana Nesheiwat, originally published on Fuel Freedom. Republished with permission.

An expensive long-distance cell phone call in 1984.

When’s the last time you made a long-distance phone call? Do you even notice the difference between local and long-distance charges? Before 1984, only AT&T could sell long-distance telephone service, making a long-distance call to your great aunt cost $3.00 a minute. That monopoly and unfair pricing ended when a federal judge required AT&T to grant access to any carrier that wanted to sell long-distance services. Within three years, the price of a long-distance call decreased from the staggering $3.00 a minute to 30 cents a minute. Today it’s a mere 3 cents a minute, thanks to competition and an open market.

Without the breakup of that monopoly, which brought forth industry competition and consumer choice, we wouldn’t be enjoying rapid advancements in the communication industry and the ability to watch, listen, play, tweet and stream from one device.

Here’s a lesson from Economics 101: a monopoly has the power to set the price on a commodity. Although there is more than one oil company (Shell, Exxon, BP, etc.), the only fuel they sell to consumers is gasoline. The lack of fuel competition allows “big oil” to set the price. The wide-scale adoption of abundant, domestic fuel supplies (natural gas, methanol, ethanol and electricity) will boost competition and innovation (which we so desperately need), resulting in a wider fuel selection for consumers and lower prices at the pump. This is not to mention protection against resource and price volatility and improved air quality. A transition of this magnitude does not happen on its own. Businesses must invest in innovative ideas; policies must evolve to accommodate a changing world; and organizations must unite to educate, inform and involve the public.

Beneficiaries of an oil-addicted population and economy, or, as many call it, an oil monopoly, will do everything in their power to maintain a situation where they have sole custody over the transportation fuel market. Recent actions from the American Petroleum Institute (API) demonstrate this exact notion. Group Downstream director, Bob Greco, announced that API is “strongly considering” asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case regarding the sale of a high-ethanol fuel blend. Soon after, a press conference ignited news headlines with something along the lines of, “Ethanol destroys cars.” The claims that warn of the dangers of ethanol are based off a research study funded by – you guessed it – the API and automakers. This is yet another representation of API’s attempt to reverse rules and court decisions that are vital to free markets and competition.

Clearly, API is threatened by the “competition” and has good reason to be! The competition – natural gas, methanol and, in this case, ethanol, or any combination of alternative fuels, could cause the oil industry to lose profits, market shares and eventually, their dominant control over the fuel/energy market.

Moreover, the oil industry’s recent investments and interest in natural gas is no coincidence. Natural gas is abundant in America and has the potential to become a dominant transportation fuel. If that is going to be the case, API wants a piece of the pie.

The breakup of AT&T brought forth a new era of technology – multi-functioning phones and affordable long-distance phone calls. Breaking the oil monopoly would give us far more than that – relief at the pump and a thriving future for years to come.

About Zana Nesheiwat:

With a Master of Public Policy degree from Pepperdine University, Zana specializes in international relations, economics and managing cross-cultural relationships. She is an accomplished researcher and communications professional with experience in public relations, advocacy, and program management. Zana served as a policy researcher for Missile Defense and Advocacy Alliance and, more recently, as a public relations associate for Music180, where she designed successful business development strategies and prepared campaign material for press, print, broadcast and social media.

Imagine

2013-02-17T13:14:00.001-08:00

What does "oil's strategic status" mean?

FuelsAmerica Fights Back

2013-02-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

Anything that competes with oil is a target of oil's propaganda machine. One group is fighting back. Check out their first video, sarcastically poking fun at oil for fuel:

The biggest problem with oil is its monopolistic power. It is the responsibility of government to prevent monopolies or break them up. That's what the Open Fuel Standard will do. Read more about that here.

Breaking Our Oil Addiction With Fuel Freedom

2013-02-14T10:42:00.002-08:00

Dennis Prager speaks with Fuel Freedom co-founder Yossie Hollander on how we can end our addiction to oil by opening the fuel market to American replacement fuels that are cheaper and cleaner. Listen to the audio track here:

The Dennis Prager Show: Breaking Our Oil Addiction With Fuel Freedom

Time: 16 minutes and 23 seconds.

Videos to Share

2013-02-12T13:18:00.001-08:00

We thought you might be able to use the two short videos below to share with your friends and family through email or Facebook. They explain simply and clearly in conversational English what the Open Fuel Standard is and why it's important.

The OFS bill is going to be introduced into Congress again, and what we need are citizens who understand what it is. The more, the better. These are YouTube videos:

A Conspiracy to Rob the World
Our Lack of Fuel Choice is Outrageous

A Conspiracy to Rob the World

2013-02-08T12:56:00.001-08:00

OPEC made a trillion dollars in 2012

OPEC was created in order to raise world oil prices. Many conspiracies are only theories. This one is a fact. The OPEC nations do quite a bit of dissembling (to confuse the general public), but they act in the open and make no secret of their intentions. The oil ministers of the 12 OPEC nations meet at least twice a year to decide how much to limit their oil production in order to keep the world's price of oil high.

The result of high oil prices is the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world — from the free world to some of the worst regimes on Earth (and the wealthiest rulers in history).

The only thing keeping this whole game going is an artificial limit on our cars. Internal combustion engines can burn ethanol, methanol and gasoline in any proportion with a minor tweak to the fuel delivery system. The Open Fuel Standard would make that tweak mandatory, and thus create a free market and break the monopoly.

There may have never been such a small change that could bring about so many significant benefits.