Energy Independence | USAEnergyIndependence.com

Energy Independence | USAEnergyIndependence.com

Thank You. Mr. President

October 12, 2006

“I really appreciate that. Thank you.”

With true earnestness and heart-felt sincerity I did not think I’d get or warrant, I had simple phatic communion with the President yesterday. We were in a receiving line at the Advancing Renewable Energy Conference in St. Louis. “We” were about 200 or so conference-goers composed of DOE and USDA PHD economists, agronomists and staffers, renewable energy industry association members, business leaders and others who were fortunate to be close to the podium. There were about 1000 conferees in the Hall whose expertise covered Wind, Solar, Ethanol, E85, Biodiesel, and other abstracts and permutations of bioenergy.

Mike Johanns, Secretary of USDA, Sam Bodman, Secretary of DOE were there too.
(How often do you get the President and 2 Cabinet Level members in the same space at the same time?) I don’t think anyone can quibble about the Administration’s commitment to our Energy Independence, not with these guys passionately pushing the Agenda.

Concern for the future of Renewable Energy from an Oil Man, as the President described himself, was refreshing. But like others in the audience, including Partner Keith Sanderson and I whose careers started in the Mining business 30 years ago, it was important to share the same communion and passion. There were others in the audience there who had been working on the Renewable Energy “experiment” for the last 30 years who never gave up the hope for a brighter, less oil-dependent future. Their time for recognition had come. We are grateful to them.

When I reached out to shake the President’s hand, I said “Thank you for all you’ve done for us sir.” Distracted by the line-of-hands, he first looked forward to the next person in the receiving line, then looked back to me and said, “I really appreciate that. Thank you.” He then looked ahead, looked back at me again with a quick glance, smiled and moved on.

OPEC’S GREED ANOTHER REASON FOR ALTERNATIVE FUEL !

During the recent spike in oil prices the members of the OPEC Cartel saw an interesting phenomenon reinforced. Oil Consuming nations are willing and seemingly able to pay increasingly higher prices for oil.

Now that demand has lessened for oil and oil prices have returned to more moderate levels, it seems OPEC plans to hold a meeting of its members and make a decision to reduce oil production in to prevent oil prices from continuing their current downward trend.

I want to thank the members of OPEC for being greedy and showing the world their true colors. Perhaps your greed will be like a cold dose of reality. Maybe more Americans will wake up to the fact that when one is dependent on a substance, be it oil, or drugs, and a cartel controls the supply, price is a matter of how greedy the cartel wishes to be. The brutal truth is a cartel will gladly hike its prices as the substance it controls becomes in shorter supply or the consumer becomes more and more addicted; OPEC is no different.

The conference for Advancing Renewable Energy is being held in St. Louis on October 10-12. USA Energy Independence is proud to be a sponsor of this event. Members of our staff look forward to listening to the speakers and interviewing some of them. Some leading companies will be exhibiting at the conference and we plan to visit their exhibit booths, as well talk with other attendees.

We will then post what we heard, saw and learned on www.usaenergyindpendence.com in order to provide our visitors with information about what is going on in the quest for Advancing Renewable Energy. We believe it is activity such as advancing renewable energy that will reduce this nation’s dependency on the OPEC Cartel and move us closer to USA Energy Independence.

Keith Sanderson
Cofounder USA Energy Independence
President and Editorial Director