Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil (Contemporary Issues) by Robert Zubrin (PDF)

Description

In this compelling argument for a new direction in US energy policy, world-renowned engineer and best-selling author Robert Zubrin lays out a bold plan for breaking the economic stranglehold that the OPEC oil cartel has on our country and the world. Zubrin presents persuasive evidence that our decades-long relationship with OPEC has resulted in the looting of our economy, the corruption of our political system, and now the funding and protection of terrorist regimes and movements that are committed to our destruction.Zubrin’s plan is straightforward and practical. He argues that if Congress passed a law requiring that all new cars sold in the USA be flex-fueled-that is, able to run on any combination of gasoline or alcohol fuels-this one action would destroy the monopoly that the oil cartel has maintained on the globe’s transportation fuel supply, opening it up to competition from alcohol fuels produced by farmers worldwide. According to Zubrin’s estimates, within three years of enactment, such a regulation would put 50 million cars on the road in the USA capable of running on high-alcohol fuels, and at least an equal number overseas. He further advocates tariff policies favoring alcohol over petroleum imports.Energy Victory offers an exciting vision for a dynamic, new energy policy, which will not only go a long way toward safeguarding homeland security in the future but will also provide solutions for global warming and Third World development.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Robert Zubrin (Indian Hills, CO) is president of Pioneer Astronautics and also president of the Mars Society. For many years he worked as a senior engineer for Lockheed Martin. In addition, he is the author of the critically acclaimed nonfiction books The Case for Mars, Entering Space, Mars on Earth; the science fiction novels The Holy Land and First Landing; and articles in Scientific American, The New Atlantis, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mechanical Engineering, and The American Enterprise. He has appeared on major media including CNN, CSPAN, the BBC, the Discovery Channel, NBC, ABC, and NPR.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Update:Since Energy Victory was published, Brazil’s full flex mandate has now gone into effect. As a result, new model-year gas-using cars sold in the USA, though they have the feature turned off, are already designed and certified to be fully flex. So a mandate here in America would no longer add anything to the price of a new car, not even the few hundred originally estimated. The car companies’ major stakeholders tend to own stakes in oil companies, too, so while they give lip service to fully flex fuel cars here, they will not switch the feature on for all new cars unless we force them. The software and hardware already exists and you are being deprived of a choice of fuel.Lester Brown and David Pimentel originated the claims that ethanol is bad for the environment and costs too much. As if the fact both their claims have been debunked now in peer-reviewed lit isn’t enough or that methanol is in many ways superior and would likely dominate the market, both of them want governments around the world engaged in population control. No joke. The left and Obama have been duped by a lot of phony claims being thrown around, including by academics who have no expertise in this field and have opinions decent people find objectionable.If a mandate happened today, the futures markets would adjust overnight in anticipation. Gas prices would begin falling to below $3/gal, as even now methanol can be produced at that energy-equivalent rate from natural gas. And that’s not even getting into new technologies or simple economies-of-scale that methanol currently does not enjoy. Flex fuel opens your vehicle to all alcohols, certain synthetics, in addition to the gas it now burns.Support the Open Fuel Standard Act.Original Review:Energy Victory outlines the first step towards an energy solution for the United States, the path to energy development for the world, and a 1-2 punch to the Gulf States that are funding terror against us. Bob Zubrin has shown us the way in one swoop. He’s totally convinced me. It’s not everyday you read a book that changes your mind on so many key issues and leaves little to disagree on of import. I understood the situation with Saudi Arabia & the rest of the OPEC “cartel” states, terrorism, etc, as well as the stinking red-herring of hydrogen. But alcohols and mandating flex-fuel cars at an additional cost of almost zero on the consumer end? Potentially allowing the poor of the world to also pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (or sandal straps, in this case) by participating in a world alcohol economy? This is just downright genius. Really, I don’t know how else to put it.Fusion power, probably from a massive Manhattan Project-level effort, will need government funding at some point to free us of fossil fuels for power generation in general. I still believe that and Zubrin does not attempt to refute Fusion or the eventual desirability of pure electric cars. However, he’s convinced me to be realistic about the engineering hurdles of Fusion and pure electric’s unrealistic short-term prospects in the marketplace, especially considering car companies resistance to the latter. That is a global climate change solution. Yes, biofuels still produce some carbon. Certainly it is an improvement in the right direction. This, however, is a strategic security & economic issue, and flex-fuel can deliver.Bringing the troops home, invading the west coast of the Persian Gulf, saving the rain forest, hybrid cars, and yes, even health care…everything else is frankly secondary. FLEX-FUEL VEHICALS MUST BE MANDATED AS OUTLINED BY ZUBRIN. You want a flex-fuel plug-in hybrid-electric? Great, but voluntary. Have the money and want to buy a Tesla-motor full electric sports car? Be my guest! Love the kick standard petrol gives? Fine! Again, totally optional. But the competition that results from a simple flex-fuel mandate on liquid fuel cars, which would still be the vast majority of those people can afford, will put us on our way towards this victory, a victory for the entire world against terror and the cartel. Get this book, read it, spread the word. If it doesn’t get you excited about this solution in an era of growing despondence and despair, either you’re an idiot or you’re part of the elites of this country (or another) who are benefiting from the current oil monopoly.Post Scripts:There’s been a lot of talk lately about biofuel subsidies. The crux here is that all subsidies & tariffs artificially affect the marketplace. Subsidies are counterproductive and will never allow market forces and innovation to move things forward naturally. Tariffs are usually only appropriate to counteract another country’s poor behavior, such as inadequate worker rights or…you guessed it…subsidies. Oh, but the oil companies (such as BP) love subsidies, even the biofuel ones. Take a moment to think about why they might be in favor of corn growers taking perfectly good edible corn, converting it to ethanol, causing the price of food to rise (actually most of this is caused by over-fishing & the move to more grains or meat in coastal areas, people around the world eating more, and higher oil prices), and getting essentially a kick back for doing this. Hmm…why might BP like that, and then go out and fund research on biofuel’s effects on food prices? Subsidies are not the free market in action, and don’t let anyone tell you different. Do we even need to get into the psychology for why the U.S. farm lobby might like ethanol import tariffs?A Flex-Fuel Mandate plus ZERO Fuel Subsidies & fewer tariffs would allow things to work out on their own. Be wary of propaganda to the contrary.There is no need for mandating on the supply end. That’s supply-side economics. A form of demand-side economics is what Zubrin envisions here. Requiring gas stations to include at least one pump of alcohol or mandating gas contain a certain percentage of ethanol is an outdated mode of thinking. The brilliance of a single-mandate, demand-side strategy is how the inherent power of capitalism does the rest. Supply-side economics is actually not the free market at its best, which is why it’s so inefficient and ineffective. It’s closer to Marxism than capitalism, which is rather ironic if you think about it. It takes away choice from the consumer.At this very moment, states across America are mandating 10% ethanol in petrol. Some are about to ban the pure stuff. That is not the solution. Let the market decide. Let the consumers choose. BUT STANDARDIZE ON CAPABILITY. I talked to several gas station attendants and managers. Guess what? There are a massive number of small business owners who are wildly upset with alcohol fuels because their two-strokes and other small engines are malfunctioning on it. Some of them have to drive out of town to get the pure petrol. Soon they’ll have to either drive out of state or buy new lawnmowers and weedwhackers. All it’s doing is creating more dislike for biofuels and is a worthless nickel & diming technique, anyway.DO NOT REMOVE CHOICE. A flex-fuel mandate creates the opportunity for demand cheaply and simply by expanding on economy-of-scale levels the mass option to use alcohols, but it does not force the supply-side. Are there really any sane economists left who’d even attempt to promote Reaganomics in the 21st century? My understanding is the issue was debunked over a decade ago in a great many peer-reviewed journal articles, with games theory and numbers to back it up. Japan’s state-subsidized halcyon bubble popping was the final nail on voodoo economics’ coffin.Detroit, Detroit, Detroit! With all this talk about auto sales and the health of the Big Three, need I say more? Would this not give people an incentive to buy a new car?Speculation does cause prices to rise in the short and mid-term, but assuming everything else stays the same, it tends to help reduce prices in the long run compared to what they would have been otherwise (in the long run, that is) by “preparing” the supply to meet the expected demand.As soon as a mandate occurs, whatever the pre-mandate futures-induced part of that price was would almost immediately evaporate as speculators dump their hedges. You will only find out exactly how much of a speculation price increase there has been within the first few months of the mandate as it quickly disappears.Recently, I heard one guy on simhq.com go off on me about how people in Alaska wouldn’t be able to use methanol without it freezing and making their life miserable in the long winter. I’ll address the logic of this statement separate from the facts. If this were a centrally-controlled communist government in their infinite wisdom mandating that every pump in America stock something that froze in that region & season, then indeed it would be a problem. But in a free market system where only the capability has been mandated on the demand-end, pumps can stock whatever they think people will want to buy. If a pump manager were dumb enough to stock only fuel that people didn’t want that time of year when there were other alternatives, him going out of business would be good for the market. The market is smart. A government controlling it on the supply-end is inherently stupid and inefficient in comparison. However, the equally good news here is that alcohols in fact have lower melting/freezing points than petrol. Methanol, after all, is commonly used in antifreeze. It also has a safer, higher flash point, which is why it is so commonly used in racing.There are two other issues being brought against alcohols and alcohol-petrol mixes. The first is methanol’s corrosive properties. But it is primarily a problem with aluminum and certain polymers. Cheaper fuel lines & seals are actually immune to it and aluminum is already diminishing in use in engines and fuel tanks. Again, methanol is already used in antifreezes. Any tri-fuel flexible car that is sold new on the market will already be easily anti-corrosive. Certainly any gas station investing in more alcohol fuels would be doing so at their own expense, that is, the station’s. This as the market creates economic incentive through natural profit expectations as demand increases with more of these vehicles on the road, that is, as a result of the mandate. Such station infrastructure improvements are therefore not a hurdle since they are carried out voluntarily and corrosion resistance is an understood necessity. Again, pretty much just no rubber and aluminum. Many racing circuits around the world rely on methanol already without much complaint. For the record, IndyCar switched to ethanol from methanol because they got a special marketing deal in 2006.Then we have T. Boone Pickens’ Liquid or Compressed Natural Gas idea (LNG/CNG). It’s in the right direction, but natural gas is not liquid at room temperatures or normal pressures. LNG requires cryogenics. CNG requires pressurized canisters. It costs extra to have your vehicle outfitted with this capability and you have to deal with either canisters or a cooling system, usually filling up your trunk. The thought consumers would have to go through to choose that upgrade route, refuel, and mechanically flip a switch between petrol and natural gas lacks the transparency & elegance of the flex-fuel mandate. With Zubrin, new cars under the mandate happen to give you the option of using the cheapest fuel at the local pump…whatever that may be. Keep it simple. Furthermore, the most common means of producing methanol is already from natural gas. So even before methanol-producing microbes come on-line or ethanol from the developing world is produced in quantity, methanol from natural gas is already competitive with petrol RIGHT NOW. Thus natural gas already has a role in flex-fuel without needing compression canisters, cryogenics, or relying on the education of consumers on the subject.And did I actually hear Pickens mention his LNG idea as a “bridge” to hydrogen fuel-cells? Exsqueeze me? I hope he’s planning himself on paying for those $100,000 cars for all of us, the expensive required hydrogen infrastructure since you again wouldn’t have fuel choice, and offsetting the fact that it is far more wasteful than just using batteries to store energy. Space vehicles often use hydrogen fuel cells because price is no object in such exotic situations and they need as much energy as they can carry. Personally, I think Pickens’ ideas on powering the electrical grid are more promising than his fuel proposals.

⭐Having thought about ENERGY VICTORY some more and done some additional research, I have to report there may be several problems with Zubrin’s book. This should not be construed that I feel Zubrin’s overall strategy is not solid.Zubrin says on page 75: “Fortunately, however, the claim that the world is running out of oil has no foundation whatsoever.” Then on page 76 he says: “The argument that we are threatened with near-term oil exhaustion is simply untrue.”Zubrin seems to be addressing people like Matthew Simmons here yet his book fails to mention the proceeds of Simmon’s exhaustive study as reported in his book, TWILIGHT IN THE DESERT. This book was released in 2005, two years prior to Zubrin’s book, ENERGY VICTORY, so it’s unlikely this was a simple oversight. I first began to be suspicious that Zubrin’s book may be biased against Arab-Muslims and/or Saudi Arabia when I looked over the index, and saw no entries for either Simmons, his book or even Dr. M. King Hubbert. I don’t see how one can write a book about OIL and not mention these two guys — Simmons and Hubbert, if even to curse them.Simmon’s makes a case that there is strong evidence supporting the theory that we HAVE reached worldwide peak oil — or are very close. As Hubbert demonstrated, there is a relationship between NEW DISCOVERIES and PEAK OIL (the moment when production begins to fall every year even though all state-of-the-art technology is brought to bear to increase production). To the laughter of many executives in the oil industry, Hubbert announced that Texas oil would peak between 1965 and 1970. It did and the laughter stopped. Subsequently Hubbert’s formula, and an extensive review of numerous technical reports by Simmons, have been applied to world peak. Simmons comes to the conclusion that if Saudi Arabia peaks, for all practical purposes, the world has peaked. This evidence, and the fact that the Saudis are very secretive about their projected production, doesn’t help make the case that there are “no foundations whatsoever” to suspect worldwide peak, as Zubrin maintains. On page 244, Simmons says:”The recent history of petroleum exploration throughout the world confirms that the French Petroleum Institute’s “Royal Hierarchy” theory of oil still applies. Saudi Arabia’s disappointing exploration efforts over the past 35 years provide no evidence to invalidate it. The chances of finding a great oil giant in Saudi Arabia that has eluded discovery so far must now be deemed remote. It can be said with great certainty, however, that those who think Aramaco(1) has not made a zealous effort to find new oil in Saudi Arabia are simply misinformed.”Simmons seems to be addressing people like Zubrin here.Zubrin, on the other hand maintains that people like Matt Simmons(2) are in on the cabal (my words) to stand down on world exploration/discovery so they can artificially suppress the supply, thus artificially driving up the demand. On page 77 Zubrin says:”At jacked-up prices of about $75 per barrel (the assumed price when Zubrin wrote the book), the world’s oil producers pulled in about $2 trillion during 2006, instead of the $500 billion or so they would have obtained in a free market. How much of the extra $1.5 trillion do you suppose they will put into exploration? No one knows for sure, but the answer is probably less than 2 percent.”In contrast, Simmons says on page 242 of TWILIGHT IN THE DESERT:”Aramaco is also indicating that it will step up its exploration efforts for 2005 and 2006. As reported by Kevin Morrison in a story titled “Saudi to Increase Oil Capacity” (Financial Times, February 11, 2005), Saudi Aramaco “plans to double the number of drilling rigs it operates in order to explore and develop new oil and gas fields.” Morrison quotes a “Saudi Aramaco official” as saying, “Saudi Aramaco’s target is to have 70-plus drilling rigs working by the end of 2005.” The increase is said to signal a “shift in strategy for Saudi Aramaco” toward EXPANDING PRODUCTION CAPACITY FROM SIMPLY MAINTAINING IT. Morrison also reports statements by an “oil executive who works in the region” to the effect that Saudi Aramaco has increased its exploration and development budget to $2.7 billion for 2005 from $2.3 billion in 2004, an increase of 17 percent.”Given the above nebulous statements made by several parties and the PUNY numbers for exploration, $2.7 billion, Zubrin may be correct:”If our goal were increased oil exploration, we would do much better to set up a program, funded at, say, $30 billion per year . . . “Spending only $2.7 billion per year out of gross revenues in excess of $1 trillion per year is evidence that “the OPEC-inflated oil price is simply a swindle,” as Zubrin suggests.Zubrin says that in 1999 the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, said that his country’s “all inclusive” cost to produce each barrel of oil was $1.50 and the cost for discovering each new barrel amounted to an additional 10 cents per barrel. So, given the world price of oil today is about $88 per barrel, this is a profit of over $85 per barrel. If OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, IS selling 72 million barrels of oil per day, their net profit would be $6.1 billion per day or the sum of $2.2 trillion per year, as of 2008. Were OPEC to place oil on the market under the “free market system,” they would generate a little more than $1.3 billion per day or about $475 billion per year.So I have to agree with Zubrin, there IS powerful incentive for OPEC to conspire to set prices by artificially limiting demand (i.e., under spending on exploration). The question is: what would be the incentive for Matt Simmons to misrepresent the situation as described above? Wouldn’t he as an investment banker make more money getting in on the ground floor of developing new energy companies, such as a universal system of flex-fuel cars based on ethanol and methanol?(3)—————–(1) Aramaco is Saudi Arabia’s main oil company.(2) Simmons is a veteran oil industry analyst, investment banker and CFR member. He is also the CEO of Simmons & Company, a Houston-based investment bank that specializes in the energy industry.(3) Is Saudi Arabia peaking or is it using people like Simmons to mislead the world in order sell oil at vast premiums? We all deserve an answer to this question because we pay for the oil and we are being asked to support Zubrin’s strategy of flex-fuel cars. I am not interested in supporting or vilifying any system just because that system is based on someone’s ideological view of Earth’s energy problem.

⭐Excellent analisis of how petroleum controls world economy and how to crush its dominance, and also how to give poor countries a better chance in the global economy

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