Column courtesy of Jim Gibbs:

Did you ever run out of gas and have to push your car to the nearest gas station? Up an incline? At night in the rain? Did you think about how much you’d pay someone to come along and give you a lift, fill your tank, or just help you push? My bet is that you’d have been happy to open your billfold or purse and empty the contents. On the other hand, have you ever considered how little gasoline it takes to power your car for miles at a time, up and down hills, at speeds of 70 mph or more?

The amazing fact is that with little more gasoline than would fill a coffee cup, you can cover a mile in less than a minute, at a cost of about a dime. (less than a tenth of what you’d pay for a cup of Starbucks). So much energy is contained in gasoline that few other available energy sources can match it.  Consider the following:

• Gasoline delivers 15 times the energy of an equal weight of TNT.
• Gasoline has 1000 times as much energy as an equal weight of flashlight batteries, and 100 times as much as an equal weight of expensive computer batteries.
• Liquid hydrogen, the key fuel for a future “hydrogen economy” has only about 20% of the energy per gallon that gasoline has. 

What about other energy sources? Here is a comparison with four important alternative fuels. For the same weight, gasoline delivers approximately:

• 2 times the energy of coal
• 2 times the energy of methanol (wood alcohol)
• 1.5 times the energy of ethanol (drinking alcohol)
• 1.1 times the energy of butanol (a likely future biofuel)

When thinking about alternatives to petroleum and other fossil fuels, it is important to know how the United States uses its current supplies. About 5% is used to manufacture materials such as fertilizer, chemicals, and plastics. The rest is used to generate energy. Here’s roughly how that breaks down for the U.S. use of fuel:

• 28% is used for transportation (gasoline and jet fuel).
• 40% is used to generate electric power.
• 20% is used for direct heating (natural gas, coal)
• 32% is used by industry.

These numbers add to more than 100% because of overlap; some of the electric power, for example, is used by industry.

Equally important is the broad spectrum of U.S. energy sources:

• 29% from imported oil
• 11% from domestic oil
• 24% from coal
• 19% from natural gas (methane)
• 8% from nuclear
• 8% from all others (solar, hydro, wind, biomass, geothermal)

Note that even doubling any of the alternative sources of fossil fuels does little to reduce our overall dependence on fossil fuels. 

What about energy costs? Not all energy sources are equally expensive; in fact for the same energy, coal in the United States is 20 times cheaper than gasoline. This is why coal reserves of the U.S., with an estimated 800 year supply, are likely to be an important source of our transportation and power requirements into the far distant future. 

The following list compares the cost of energy per kilowatt-hour from various sources. The list does not include the cost of the plants and the power lines that deliver the energy:

• Coal: 0.4-0.8 cents ($40-80 per ton)
• Natural gas: 3.4 cents ($10 per thousand cubic feet)
• Gasoline: 11 cents ($3.70 per gallon)
• Car battery: 21 cents ($50 per battery to replace)
• Computer battery: $4 ($100 per battery to replace)
• AAA battery: $1,000 ($1.50 per battery)  

Obviously, greatly increasing alternatives at the expense of fossil fuels will take time and substantially increase energy costs. In the meantime, it is in consumers’ best interests for U.S. energy producers to continue to develop all possible energy sources as rapidly and effectively as possible.

Proposed legislation in the U.S. Congress, such as the pending “Cap and trade” bill, will do little to change our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels or reduce carbon emissions, but will increase costs of energy, increase dependence on imported supplies, greatly inhibit producers’ ability to search for and produce energy, reduce employment of industry workers, and impose greater tax burdens on the consumer. 

For the statistics quoted herein, I am indebted to Dr. Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkley, for his excellent and readable recently published book, Physics for Future Presidents.      

James A. (Jim) Gibbs is the Chairman of the Board of Five States Energy Company, LLC. Jim established Five States Energy Company in 1985 to expand the scale of his ongoing business of purchasing producing oil and gas properties. Before forming Five States, Gibbs operated his business as an independent oil and gas producer and consulting geologist. In addition to his exploration activities, Gibbs actively sought opportunities to purchase quality, long-life producing oil and gas properties.