Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Clandestine
Two words: ethanol refineries.

Producing the refineries would produce local jobs, maintaining the refineries would sustain local jobs, and active development in these refineries would encourage investment in an unsaturated ethanol market. One way or another, we're eventually going to need to stop relying on foreign markets for our oil needs.

Either more money needs to be spent on ethanol production and technology, or we're going to need to start tapping into some of our reserves. Until people quit whining about the damage drilling would do, we're going to need to find a better alternative to crude oil. With the price per barrel being what it is, I'm surprised we haven't seen more thought going into this...
Everybody knew about this in the 70s, yet nobody *DID* anything about it. Gasohol was readily available then and I bought it instead of regular gas. The folks in power are just now starting to figure out what I been saying for years...Use the old military air bases to build new refineries on....the infrastructure is already in place....you don't think they are gonna haul millions of gallons of jet fuel to those bases by truck do you?? It will also take those bases off the EPA Superfund Clean-up list and save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The folks in the surrounding areas didn't have a problem with the conventional, biological, nuclear, and chemical weapons that were stored there, so why would they have a problem with a refinery?? The new refineries would also bring back a lot of the money and jobs that were lost when the bases were shut down. Its all good.

As far as the oil, there are 10s of thousands of wells in the gulf oil patch that are simply capped off because it wasn't "profitable" to use them when oil was $30/barrel. Then there are the northern slope fields that the tree huggers have their panties in a wad over, yet they still drive their SUVs.

I dunno...the solutions are out there, and have been for many years...the only thing thats stopping it, is the oil companies greed.