Crude Oil: The Ugly Truth(s)

                “There is a leak in the Gulf and gasoline is 2.50 a gallon! Someone sue big oil for the love of God! Tax carbon, stop drilling, drive electric cars, close all refineries, stop the presses and take all the holdings of any company involved!” I have your attention now, right? Good, now let me tell you why all of that is a bad idea.

“What the hell is crude oil anyway? It’s just used for fuel and we can replace that!” To put it simply, Crude oil is a mix of stuff pulled from the ground in liquid form and then processed at a refinery. (Check the API MPMS for an exact definition.)  It contains: liquid petroleum gas, gasoline (Petrol), naphtha, kerosene, diesel fuel, lube oils, sulfur, wax, asphalt, coke and various petrochemicals. (All this comes out during the processing)

“Well what does all that mean to me?!” It means we use crude oil for everything from plastics to fuel. It runs our vehicles, transports our goods, helps grow our food as fertilizer, lubricates our vehicles, puts our planes into the air, creates plastics and fuels our economy. It is engrained in the world economy so fully that it will take a very long time to extricate ourselves from its grasp. CRUDE = Products+money+energy+jobs.

Taxing the Crude or the Producers: Cap and Trade, Carbon taxes, suing the oilman

“We need to be green! No more crude usage at all in America and then the world!” Are you serious? “Yes, I am dead set against it! So what can we do besides tax it and make people change their habits?” What can you do? Well, if you were actually serious, you’d simply shut the valve off and deal with the consequences. You would stop driving, eating food grown using vehicles or transported by diesel burning trucks or buying products made anywhere outside of a five mile radius of your current location.  You would shut down your electricity and you would not use natural gas to fuel your stove. If you were serious about wanting to wean the country and indeed the world off of crude, you wouldn’t wean, you would go cold turkey. “That’s ridiculous! We have to wean ourselves off slowly, change habits and regulate our way to green!” Okay, so you aren’t really serious then.