American Oil and Gas Reporter - September 2016 - 113

Quotas And Education
Daniel Fine described the Panhandle
Import Reduction Initiative as a grassroots movement of oil field workers motivated by protecting their jobs. He emphasized the PIRI did not seek to align
itself directly with industry associations,
although it has been endorsed by the
Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.
Formed in the wake of the failed meeting in April in Doha, Qatar, by 18 oil
producing nations to freeze production
levels, Fine said PIRI's goal was to revive
the 1950s oil import quota system imposed
by President Dwight Eisenhower.
Recalling a visit by the U.S. secretary
of the treasury to Beijing to ask the
Chinese to quit flooding the world market
with steel, Fine said a PIRI delegation
from New Mexico, North Dakota and
Texas would present its request to the
next president of the United States in
March.
Under the program PIRI envisions,
he outlined, refiners would be issued
tradeable allotments to import crude oil
and petroleum products. Light, sweet
oil imports would be totally banned,
while heavy, sour oil imports would be
limited to 10-12 percent of annual U.S.

Outgoing Independent Petroleum Association of New
Mexico President Mitch
Krakauskas (right) congratulates incoming President
Tom Mullins during the association's annual meeting,
Aug. 1-3 in Santa Fe. Krakauskas is land manager
for Strata Production Co.
in Roswell, N.M., while
Mullins is engineering manager at Synergy Operating
in Farmington.

demand.
In her presentation, Spruill reported
NEED conducted between 600 and 700
workshops in the past year, and has placed
its curricula in 75,000 classrooms worldwide. "We have had a program in all 50
states in the past two years. That includes
U.S. territories such as Guam, the Virgin
Islands and Puerto Rico," she remarked.
Through its relationship with the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Spruill
added, NEED has taken its program

global, conducting workshops on four
continents last year.
NEED has hosted six teacher workshops in New Mexico thus far in 2016,
she continued, including-for the first
time-one on the opening day of IPANM's
convention that allowed association members to teach a session on New Mexico
oil and gas. NEED has held two workshops
in Farmington and three in Albuquerque,
with more to come, Spruill said.
❒

Scarcity Mentality Drives Energy Policy
SANTA FE, N.M.-A scarcity mentality
in a world of energy abundance combined
with climate alarmism is leading to illogical policies to accomplish impossible
goals, journalist and author Robert Bryce
suggested to the Independent Petroleum
Association of New Mexico.
The keynote speaker at IPANM's annual meeting in Santa Fe talked on four
topics he labeled scarcity ideology, Paris
and Pakistan, how shale killed OPEC,
and 80 by 50 and the specter of government enforced energy scarcity.
Regarding the first, Bryce, who is a
senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,
recited numerous predictions from such
sources as former Exxon Chairman Lee
Raymond and various government agencies about the expiration of fossil fuels.
One example of the consequences of
these inaccurate predictions, he recalled,
was President Jimmy Carter halting construction of natural gas-fired electric generating facilities in the 1970s. "So utilities
built lots of coal-fired plants that today
the Environmental Protection Agency is
trying to shut down," he laughed.
Turning to Paris and Pakistan, Bryce
called the November 2015 U.N. climate
meeting meaningless. "First, there was
no binding legal requirement on any of

the participating countries," he reasoned.
"Second, there was no methodology to
determine the base-lines from which
counties were to cut their carbon dioxide
emissions. Third, the cuts pledged were
not nearly enough to attain (the stated
goal) of limiting temperature increases
to 2 degrees Celsius.
"The Paris meeting was just another
example of kicking the can down the
road," Bryce insisted.
He used Pakistan-a country of 200 million people where per capita power consumption is less than that of a single U.S.
refrigerator-to illustrate why Paris failed.
Before the climate summit, he related,
Pakistan-along with many other countries-filed what it called an intended national
determined contribution document.
He said the one-page document read,
"Pakistan is committed to reduce its emissions after reaching peak levels, to the
extent possible, subject to affordability,
the provision of international climate finance,
transfer of technology, and capacity restraints
. . . As such, Pakistan will be able to make
a specific commitment only once reliable
data on our peak emissions are available."
"In other words," Bryce paraphrased,
"We will get back to you."
He asked, "Why would the Pakistanis,

the Chinese, Indians, or any leaders in developing countries agree to any limits on
their CO2 emissions when they know to do
so means keeping their people in the dark?"
Enforced Scarcity
On this third point, Bryce contended
the Thanksgiving Day 2014 decision by
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Counties to defend market share signaled
the end of OPEC as an effective entity
for controlling petroleum supply, and
therefore price.
The reason, he said simply, is U.S.
shale. He pointed out that between 2009
and 2015, U.S. oil production increased
3.9 million barrels a day. U.S. natural
gas production has increased 30 billion
cubic feet a day since 2006.
Despite that, he noted, a huge swath
of U.S. politics has embraced the concept
of cutting the country's CO2 emissions
80 percent by 2050. It has been endorsed
repeatedly by President Obama, is referenced in both the Democratic National
Platform, and Hillary Clinton's energy
plan, he said.
One frequently cited scheme, Bryce
said, was devised by Stanford professor
Mark Jacobson and calls for building nearly
2.5 terawatts of wind energy. Bryce put
SEPTEMBER 2016 113

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