How To Solve the Oil "Crisis"

224 Mission Accomplished

Want to solve the oil “crisis?” Then let ExxonMobil and its co-religionists do the r&d.

If they can figure out a way to make a profit, they’ll be all over it.

Forget these cutsie university based studies, development by government agencies, farmers cooking hemp fuels. Put the potential for money in it, and you’d better believe we’ll have synthetics or some other substitute for gasoline pouring out of the ground or the sky or the ocean inside five years.

The oil people aren’t interested in oil, they’re interested in money. Figure out a way to help their bottom lines, and they’ll roll over like basset hounds getting their bellies scratched.

Figure it this way. Joe and Mary Chemistry graduate from Pompous U and they’re ready to teach, to work for the EPA or the municipal hospital center for – oh say – 60 or 70 grand a year.

Maybe they’re working for the Save the Planet Society for, 40 or 50 a year. Along comes BP or Royal Dutch Shell and waves a quarter million in their faces, tells them they’re still saving the planet, don’t have to worry about grant writing or academic or non-profit politics which make the presidential race look like a Sunday morning croquet match for fourth graders.

The best lab, the best computers, no real watching, plenty of pay…. Presto, there’s your oil substitute.

Some with the marketing. John and Melissa Pyramid-Scheme graduate with advanced degrees in marketing. They want to do the world some good. (Don’t all marketing majors want to show other people what’s good for them?) So, should they join some big ad agency as junior account executives, or should they get behind the big push to show you how to save the planet (with or without the Save the Planet Society,) and earn big bucks while they do it?

The only way you’re going to stop reliance on foreign oil is to make sure the oil companies can turn a better buck with something else. Like, maybe they can sell whatever they come up with for, oh, say a buck thirty or a buck fifty a gallon, but it only costs them 39 cents to make and ship and advertise?

The hybrids are good but they’re not going to do it. Hydrogen is good, but there’s so much developing left to be done, many of us won’t see it in our lifetimes. Ethanol is not going to do it.

But somewhere on this earth there has to be something…. Or some combination of somethings that you can stick in the tank and make the motor run without wrecking it.

This would change the face of the transportation manufacturing industry as well. Everyone would eventually need to replace their vehicles with ones that work with the new fuel.

That means jobs jobs jobs in Detroit, Tokyo, Seoul, and maybe even here.

That means technicians will have to be hired and trained. That means big investment by the retailers – both for cars and fuel. That means big business for lenders.

And it means the planet gets to stay the planet for awhile longer.

Make it profitable, and you’ve made it.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR