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Two New Reasons to Break Our Oil Addiction – Now
We’re getting two major reminders this week about how urgent it is for America to break its addiction to oil. First, Tropical Storm Ida came ashore along the Gulf Coast, cutting energy production:
Marathon Oil Corp (MRO.N) had shut its Ewing Bank production platform after evacuating workers, a spokeswoman said on Sunday. The Ewing Bank platform can produce 11,700 barrels of oil and 10.5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day.
The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP, which takes in an average of 1 million barrels of foreign crude from cargo ships daily, stopped offloading tankers shortly after noon CST Sunday (1800 GMT) due to deteriorating sea conditions, according to a spokeswoman.
The news sent already-jittery oil markets jumping, pushing prices up $2 a barrel. And the problem is only expected to get worse, as global warming fuels more intense hurricanes.
If all that wasn’t scary enough, the Guardian (UK) reported a whistleblower’s warning that the world doesn’t have nearly as much in oil reserves as we think:
The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.
The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.
Learn more about how you can protect our future — for our children and for America’s wildlife — at the National Wildlife Federation’s Climate Action Center.