Wind Farms and Oil Wells

Posted on May 22, 2008

Yesterday I drove through Kansas and got a chance to see close up the comparison between traditional energy production and alternative energy production.

Visually the new has a much greater impact - the towers looked to be around 100 feet tall and the blades probably 60 feet. The 100 or so visible from I-70 extend from about mile marker 220 through 235. In that 15 miles there is not a lot else to look at and there are no high prices oceanfront properties to complain about the disruption of their viewscape (is that a real word?). In fact the only actual local “resident” I saw were a live coyote, several dead deer and a couple live hawks.

Now I am not sure of the cost benefit analysis on these wind turbines but they seem pretty expensive at least on the upfront construction side. I couldn’t see the underground foundations but they had to be significant to hold those towers upright in high winds.

As a reminder that the area does see high winds and sometimes violent storms was underscored when I saw the specially designed tornado chase car heading east - I was heading west. Seeing the building storm to the west I was wondering - were they leaving because that storm did not have tornado potential or because it had too much potential!

But the towers have to be designed to withstand those winds - maybe not the tornadoes but winds in the storms that pass through the area seemingly daily in the summer often approach 60 to 80 mph.

Each tower seems to have disrupted an area of farm land that looked to be about a quarter acre and the existence of the tower precludes any irrigation systems. So it looks like all the area around the towers can only be used for grazing cattle.

Would be curious to see how much taxpayer money is involved in the construction of these wind machines. Are taxpayers guaranteeing the construction costs? Are the owners of the land collecting farm Bill payments for not using the land to grow some crop or other? Are these really generating significant amounts of energy or are they more involved in generating carbon credits for Algore to use in assuaging his conscience for jetting around the world and heating his mansion.

The other thing to see when driving through Kansas on I-70 are the oil wells. And there are a lot of them. The “grasshoppers” bobbing up and down, pumping the oil out of the ground and into a small nearby storage tank. It used to be most of these little pumps would sit idle, some sort of quota - only so many barrels a month. That no longer seems to be the system, perhaps the price of oil made a difference.

As for the visual impact, theses oil wells are perhaps not as stylish as the wind turbines but they are much smaller. Even with the storage tank, which is often shared by several wells, the disruption of the land is less per well than per wind tower.

Each oil well has a net cash flow into the government coffers, not out. They are taxed by the state and or county as property. The state may have a severance tax on the oil extracted, the feds do have taxes all along the line on the profit seen by the land owner, the company that owns the well itself, the company that transports it, again on the company that refines it and, the biggest taxes of all by the state and the feds on the final refined fuel dispensed into the tanks of cars like mine.

Our country runs on energy. We need it or our standard of living will fall. We should be using the energy available to us, all the sources. Wind energy seems to be a coming thing at least in Kansas. It will probably not be a viable source everywhere. Not everyone wants these massive towers blocking their view (ask Sen. Kennedy). Today, the electricity they produce cannot be uses to move people and products as efficiently as petroleum based fuels. Turning valuable crops into fuel (ethanol) is not viable, never will be - food will win that battle. Nuclear should be pursued, green peace and their ilk must be defeated for that to happen.

At this time the most obvious solution to our energy dependence on other countries is to fully develop those resources we have. That includes hydro, wind, geothermal, coal, oil and nuclear. The only ones that can be expanded quickly and with proven technology are oil, gas and coal. We can drill more wells in more places and dig more coal. We have known reserves of each of these sources but they have been placed off limits by legislative and judicial action.

Get Congress and the courts out of the way and we would be far less reliant on foreign suppliers and our economy would flourish. Stay this course and our economy will be even more dependent on foreign tyrants.

» Filed Under disorder in the courts, McCain, Democrats, Media Bias, Global Warming, World politics, National Politics