FRANKLIN COUNTY –- Do we have a problem in the towns of say Kingfield, Carrabassett Valley, Stratton and other surrounding communities? Do we have a problem in Franklin County, the State of Maine, and the country or do we have a problem of global magnitude?

Three distinguished energy experts came to the Herbert Grand Hotel last month to conduct an energy forum to inform people of “the crisis” or as some say “the panic” of what’s ahead. It is these experts, along with local Franklin County inventor, Jim LaBrecque, who’ll provide the substance for a multi-part series dedicated to the issues of energy and our future here in Maine.

Part I is a spotlight on identifying some of the problems. Future articles will look at the magnitude of the issue, the impacts that could result and possible solutions for Maine residents.

Dr. Thomas E. Eastler, from the University Maine Farmington, Professor Richard C. Hill Emeritus and Dr. George Markowsky both from the University of Maine Orono presented, as they have for the past 30 years, eye-opening and provocative lectures to what’s behind the high cost of energy and raised questions and solutions for what we can expect in the future.

LaBrecque moderated the afternoon program and opened the session quoting some Maine statistics from Former Governor King’s recent MPBN lecture.

He noted that King started his speech off with the three Cs: “Concern, Crisis and Catastrophe.”

King said Maine’s family energy budget consists of 10 percent electricity, 40 percent home heating and 50 percent auto fuel. And that 80 percent of Maine homes heat with oil whereas the U.S. average is only 9 percent.
“Maine is possibly the most dependent state on fossil fuels in the country with 87 percent of Maine's total energy bill consisting of fossil fuels, not a good position for Mainers to be in,” LaBrecque explained.

In 1998, four percent of Mainers’ income went to their energy budget; recently it jumped to 20 percent when oil hit $114 a barrel in April. Today oil is nearing $145 a barrel and climbing rapidly.

“Forty-five percent of our income will go to energy when oil hits $300 a barrel requiring $200 to fill your automobile and $2,000 to fill your oil tank,” LaBrecque said.

King stated that for every $1 increase in the price of fuel oil we ship $1.2 billion out of the State of Maine.
Since 1998, fuel price increases have pushed $2.5 billion out of the state and “we’re getting nothing for it,” said King.

Increased energy costs amount to more than our income and property tax combined, said the former Governor.

Over the decades the world has become increasingly more dependant on oil. The annual word production of 31 billion barrels of oil annually (85 million barrels per day) started diminishing in December 2005, according to Dr. Eastler. “Keep that in mind when someone says we just found a million barrels or maybe we’ll find four or five million … we use 31 billion a year,” Dr. Eastler stated. He cited references from the book “The View from Hubbert’s Peak” and papers written by Kenneth S. Deffeyes.

Dr. Eastler spoke a bit about Deffeyes’ theory of oil reaching $300 barrels. “It will reach such a high percentage of the world’s gross product that we’ll be overlooking the shambles of modern society.” In essence, Eastler explained that Deffeyes says modern day society will collapse at $300 a barrel.

Dr. Eastler explained that we use 1,680 gallons per person per year of oil or petroleum-based products, or 8,400 gallons for a family of five.

Oil is not only used for transportation, but when petroleum goes up so does medicine, clothing, building materials, everyday appliances, tools and fertilizer, not to mention food.

Agriculture is petroleum energy-intensive. Energy is the key to food production as transportation plays a huge part in what we see on our shelves, not to mention the packages we see most food in.

“If we had done something about this 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are now,” Eastler explained.

Dr. Eastler is a well-known and controversial professor of geology and pulled his 1970s lecture out of archives, which shows the realities of the challenges he spoke of 35 years ago on the problems we face today. “I’m not here to say I told you so, but we must start acting now,” said Eastler.

“China now has a trillion dollars and a population of over 1-1/2 billion and is soon to be exceeded by India. We’ll soon see two countries with 3 billion people. “By the year 2030 China alone will want to use 99 million barrels per day, which is quite exciting because we’re only producing 84 million barrels a day for the whole world of which we (the U.S.A.) use 25 percent or about 20 million barrels of oil a day … the bottom line here is we’ve got a lot of problems.”

Dr. Eastler showed several slides of all the books written back in the 1970s time period which discussed the world running out of fossil fuel, the world becoming overpopulated and how societies may or may not survive.

“What would we do in the U.S.A. today if tomorrow the price of oil did the same thing it did in 1973. What was that? It went from $3 a barrel to $12 -– literally overnight. Most of you were here. It didn’t affect the gas pumps all that much, but still it went from $3 to $12,” Dr Eastler explained. He then asked what would happen if oil today went from $140 a barrel today to $300 or even $500. If the rate of change --and it’s that rate that’s going to kill us-- was gradual, we could handle that,” Dr Eastler said. He referred to our quality of life and view of life and that we could acclimate to gradual change with declining oil availability. He went on to explain that we’re now starting to experience a downward slope of drastic change, not gradual change with oil prices at a similar quadrupling factor as history has shown. “It’s going that way and we really don’t even know it’s happening,” said Eastler.

According to reports, OPEC President Chakib Khelil told a French television station the awful news that American consumers don’t want to hear. That news is that he sees oil prices between $150 and $170 this summer.

Will a weak U.S. dollar and slumping U.S. economy reduce the amount of oil consumption as indicated in a five-percent drop in the first two months of 2008? And based theories of supply and demand will prices go down? “Not at all,” according to the energy experts, “it’s going to get worse.” Every drop of oil that we don’t use either here in Maine or throughout the country will be sucked up by oil-dependent China. Reports indicate that in China’s booming economy, there are 6.6 million new car owners hitting the road this year alone. With this growth they’ll use over 45 million barrels of crude making up for any reduction in U.S. consumption. Coupled with the troubles in oil-rich Nigeria where civil war is on the forefront and with reduced production coming from Mexico, supply and demand will not benefit the U.S. market. During the 1973 crisis and 1979, the U.S.A. was an economic powerhouse and consumption declines affected worldwide markets. Today, this may not be the case.

Dr. Eastler reminds us of Shell Oil Company geophysicist M. King Hubbert who in 1956 predicted the year oil production would meet its max. Laughed at by his colleagues at the time, what’s known as Hubbert’s Peak called for the maximum production of oil in the world to be in 1970. The cumulative bell-shaped graph showed rapid decline of oil, marking the end of the fossil fuel era.

Hubbert said the petroleum age would be short-lived based on his research and mathematical formulation of how much sedimentary rock exists on the globe. Some 20 to 30 years passed before scientists came back to Hubbert’s theory and realized he may be right. Some unforeseen drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico increased the production of oil for a few more years, but experts now consider Hubbert’s Peak, or sometimes called Peak Oil, a present-day reality. Others believe that Peak Oil will never happen due to technological advances and some say world production will be at 118 million barrels per day by 2030 and meet the demand.

Oil has driven everything up from local school budgets to food and local services here in Franklin County. Residents may need to plan on paying $6 and more for heating fuel, high costs for groceries and according to some experts we may need to prepare for some hard times ahead.

The MSAD #58 School Board is setting the pace for many of us by converting Mt. Abram High School from oil heat to wood heat this fall.

The giant oil companies see the writing on the wall as they explore alternate energy options. Many of these options might take decades to fully develop.

Our government is spending much time and effort on wind energy, natural gas and liquefied natural gas, solar, geothermal, and hydro and tidal options for Maine. Some of which might only represent a small percentage of energy and not meet the magnitude of this problem. (Watch for future articles on this topic.)

Something we’ve talked about for the past 30 years might be something that will impact us all this winter is here in Maine.

Around the 1970s, many books were written about the future of our planet, changes in our cultures and how increased population, pollution and how society as we know it will change. Not receiving favorable reviews was the book, “The Limits of Growth” which was written by four MIT graduate students. These individuals put together the first ever computer model of the earth using several variables.
Everyway they manipulated the variables (pollution, population and various other things) the systems all failed by the year 2025.

Dr. Craig Bond Hatfield, professor at the University of Toledo summarizes the problem and the need for action by stating: “The coming decline in petroleum production rate presents an ominous economic problem with potentially catastrophic consequences. Serious and unflagging efforts to deal with this intractable difficulty are overdue.”




THE EXPERTS

The following are the experts who will be consulted in the Original Irregular’s multi-part series “Maine energy and the future.”

JIM LABRECQUE

A Franklin County inventor and regular lecturer on energy, LaBrecque holds a number of patents on energy systems including one co-authored with Professor Hill. A technology integrator, LaBrecque has been an advisor and consultant to the University of Maine Mechanical Engineering Departments since the mid-eighties and oversees advance Capstone development programs in both the School of Engineering and Engineering Technology.

Self-described as a determined man, LaBrecque says he models himself after inventor Thomas Edison who once said, “I have not yet failed, I have only discovered 57 ways that haven’t worked.”


DR. THOMAS EASTLER

U.S. geologists have been in the forefront of advancing discoveries of oil and other minerals around the world. Dr. Eastler has been on that forefront as a professor of geology at the University of Maine Farmington since the first oil embargo in 1973. Dr. Eastler has made presentations around the world to multi-national corporations, foreign governments, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense.

Eastler has been an early believer of M. King Hubbert’s peak oil theory and has been beating the wakeup drum for 35 years. Eastler’s recent peak oil presentation is the same as it was since the early seventies except for the new line he’s recently added that says, “I told you so.”


PROFESSOR RICHARD C. HILL

After five years in the aircraft gas turbine industry, Hill was appointed (1946) to the staff of the mechanical engineering department of the University of Maine. His field—thermodynamics, fluid mechanics heat transfer, etc. By 1960 he had served a stint as director of the university industrial research and as Dean of the College of Engineering. In the summer of 1953 he worked for Westinghouse in Pittsburg on the design of the first commercial nuclear power plant at Shippingport, Penn. He holds several patents in the field of wood combustion and refrigeration.

Born in 1918, he will be ninety yeas old next year. He claims the key to a vigorous old age is “a half aspirin per day, a low-fat diet, lots of exercise, and living in a state of constant outrage.” He will tell us what he is outraged about—energy futures, global warming, and all that stuff.


DR. GEORGE MARKOWSKY

Dr. George Markowsky Has a PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University. He spent 10 years at IBM Research and has been at the University of Maine since 1984, where he has chaired both the Computer Science and Mathematics Departments. He has been interested in energy for several years and believes that computers must play a critical role in building the intelligent energy systems of the future. He believes that nuclear power will be a key component of a modern energy solution, and he has visited Chernobyl, Ukraine, site of the world's worst nuclear power plant accident.

He has lectured on energy and on the lessons of Chernobyl, and he is interested in finding solutions to our current energy dilemma. He is currently Professor of Computer Science and Cooperating Professor of the School of Policy and International Affairs at the University of Maine.