NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, June 22, 2001

"In 20 years, energy demand is expected to increase by 32 percent," USGS executive director Charles Groat said at a meeting of energy executives Thursday. "We have to develop additional sources of energy without doubt to meet these future increases in demand."

The U.S. Geological Survey, the sole science agency for the Department of the Interior, "does science, and does not make policy," Groat said. Part of that science is finding energy in hard-to-find places.

"The amount of methane hydrates, for instance, in the ground deep under the sea, dwarfs all known hydrocarbon resources and is definitely a future fuel resource we must look at now," Groat said.

Energy sources such as coal, traditionally taboo to environmental activists, can also provide immediate relief, said Vicki Cowart, director of the Colorado Geological Survey in Denver.

"More than 90 percent of our electricity production in Colorado comes from coal," Cowart said. "Our northwest corner has 12 coal mines."

Cowart explained that coal comes in several varieties, low and high in sulfur and ash. Burning cleaner coals is an innovative technique that can reduce the nation's reliance on oil and safeguard the environment, she said.

"Other states buy Western coal to mix with their own coals for cleaner burning," Cowart said at the conference. "The National Coal Quality Inventory shows that Utah and Colorado have the lowest sulfur-containing coal in the nation."

Created by an act of Congress in 1879, the U.S. Geological Survey is an independent fact-finding agency that provides scientific understanding about natural resource conditions. It may also prove key to surviving this century's energy demands, said Exxon-Mobil exploratory geologist Dick Bishop.

"No organization anywhere, even the energy industry itself, documents assessments as well as the U.S. Geological Survey," Bishop said. "We must pay particularly close attention to their techniques and results of assessing unconventional hydrocarbon resources, such as tight [difficult to access] gas, and oil that needs to be squeezed out of rock."

Sounding the cry to action on the energy crisis in the West, House member Ralph Hall, D-Texas, told the group "we've got to save California. For years up here on the Hill, Henry Waxman did exactly what California wanted and kept all the energy out." Waxman is a House Democrat from California.

"We absolutely have to save California, which affects over half the people in this country, in the stock market, agriculture, in too many ways to mention," Hall said.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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