T Boone Pickens is not pleased with the energy policies of any candidate. He claims that Clinton (who he calls the cripple for some reason) wants to simply lower the price to $60 gallon, which he says reveals a lack of understanding of the reality that we have to buy it from foreign producers. ExxonMobil produces only 2% of the 85 million barrels we use.

Pickens notes that Obama talks about biofuels, which he says gets a lot of applause but will at most address 5% of our needs. He sees a place for ethanol, calling it an ugly child, but our ugly child. Pickens did not acknowledge Obama's cautious mentions of conservation. But then, he can't make money on conservation.

He's says he's a McCain supporter, but on the summer gas tax holiday issue, he said that, "I don't know what he has in mind there."

Essentially, Boone's pitch is that we should stop spending $600 billion a year to buy oil from our enemies, and seek energy independence with what we can produce domestically. He is pushing the NGV (natural gas vehicle) industry for transportation, and advocates turning to nuclear, wind and solar for electrical generation.

Audio here.

For a discussion of the futility of pursuing energy independence, look into Robert Bryce's book Gusher of Lies. NY Times review and first chapter - subscription required.

Monday on CNBC, energy advisor to government and industry Robert Hirsch, predicted $12-15/gallon gasoline followed by rationing: (video here)

"There's no single thing that's going to solve this problem because it's as massive as one can possibly imagine. And the prices that we're paying at the pump today I think are going to be the good old days because others who watch this very closely forecast that we are going to be hitting $12 and $15 per gallon. And then, after that, when world oil production goes into decline, we're going to talk about rationing. In other words, not only are we going to be paying high prices and have considerable economic problems, in addition to that, we're not going to be able to get the fuel when we want it."

Then T Boone Pickens weighed in: (video here)

"... 85 million a day is all the world can produce and the demand is at 87 million and it's that simple. It doesn't have anything to do with the value of the dollar, it's just the fact of supply and demand. ... The Russians are starting to decline now, the Saudis are claiming they have more oil - they don't. The President wasted his time to go to Saudi Arabia and say give us more oil. They can't give any more oil, they're giving all they have now. ... And not one of the politicians running for president has anything to say about it. I don't know whether they don't know it, or don't want to mention it. ... Only one fuel can compete - it's natural gas. No others can do it. You talk about ethanol, it's a joke."

Pickens claims we have plenty of natural gas (which runs counter to everything I've heard) and can reduce oil imports by 40%. He's also building the largest US wind farm to provide energy so NGas can be used for transportation instead of electrical power generation. Also recommends solar. He predicts $150 barrel this year.

"We're crippled as far as energy is concerned and we've allowed this to happen, and the reason is a lack of leadership."

When asked if the prices were due to speculators, new people in the oil markets, Pickens responded:

"That doesn't have anything to do with it. 85 million barrels is all they have and the world is using more than that."

As we've seen recently, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is no longer willing to be the swing producer of oil. With the rapid rise in oil prices, even the previously-dismissed Peak Oil theory is being debated in the mainstream media. Believers cite a physical peak of oil production while skeptics like CERA blame speculation, but there is a geopolitical factor as well.

A few years ago, Jeffrey (westexas) Brown  and Samuel (khebab) Foucher proposed their Export Land Model, both on The Oil Drum blog and on their own blog, Graphoilogy. The ELM sought to extrapolate how oil-producing countries would react when their wells were clearly in decline. Simply put, they believed that when faced with the loss of their cash cows, and with rising domestic demand, OPEC nations would choose to restrict the amount of oil they were pumping and exporting. The idea that they would save something for the future was largely neglected in previous extrapolations.

In fact these countries have begun to limit exports at a much steeper rate than the production declines extrapolated by other Peak Oil theorists. From our perspective as consumers of oil, what OPEC is willing to export matters much more than what they can produce. Hence the Export Land Model is now also being discussed in some media outlets. This recent article concerns the implications that the Export Land Model has for commodity investors.

More technical explanations can be found on Brown and Foucher's blog, here and here.

Sen. Barack Obama became the first American presidential candidate to visit the reservation of the Crow Nation, and in doing so was adopted into the nation under the Crow name "One Who Helps People Throughout the Land."

McCain, on the other hand, would be "Old One Who Bends With the Wind."

Claiming that America's economy is lurching ever more quickly from economic bubble to economic bubble, Eric Janszen, the founder of iTulip, predicted a surge in alternative energy and infrastructure spending - sort of a green bubble. Writing for Harper's, he defined the main economic drivers of "the cleantech bubble:" the need to recover from recession, weakness in the dollar, loss of petrodollar liquidity, loss of energy security and peak cheap oil. As a result, he said, consumers will be faced with a bewildering array of fuels and vehicles: biofuels, electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells, photovoltaics, wind turbines, ocean wave energy, geothermal energy, clean coal and even nukes. Janszen saw these technologies becoming the hot, overvalued commodities of the new bubble. At the same time, he predicted corporations will plan and implement the new energy infrastructure to power expensive new vehicles and public transit.

Responding in the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas - USA newsletter, commentator Dave Cohen noted that venture capitalists are already looking to invest in what they call “the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”

So while I have great respect for Bucky Fuller's push for greater efficiency, I think that such efficiency must work hand-in-hand with practical conservation. Otherwise, taxpayers will be stuck paying for a lot of greenwashed pork projects like Clean Coal and Ethanol subsidies.