There are no magical sources of petroleum, no secret gusher that will save the day and re-enable the days of cheap gas. The vast amounts of hydrocarbons locked in oil shale will not be removed without huge investments and the net return, in terms of energy retrieved minus energy expended will be small. The Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Montana will demand a huge number of wells, and, the net addition of that supply to the US will be no more than 100,000 to 200,000 bbls a day. Coal conversion faces the same problems as oil shale in any large scale synthetic oil program. The Anwr Reserve in Alaska when drilled out will provide in the 800,000 to 1,000,000 bbls of oil a day range. Tertiary recovery of the Texas, Louisiana, and California fields will not make up for their drawdown. Additional Bering Sea and Gulf Coast reserves might produce an extra 1,000,000 bbls a day. Remember the US uses some 20,000,000 bbls of oil per day, of which over 12,000,000 bbls are imported (mostly from Canada, Mexico, and, Venezuela), so, if these additional reserves were on tap today, we would reduce our imports by 20-30 percent, max.

So, what to do for energy? First, recognize that the US will have to vastly increase it's electrical capacity while simultaneously radically reducing the use of energy in heating, transportation, farming, and, manufacturing. Either we expand our use of coal, and/or increase the number nuclear reactors to get the extra energy. Secondly, recognize that the true price of hyrocarbons will rise, and, that due to the law of supply and demand the cost of all other forms of energy will also. Consequently, regardless of whether the additions come through solar, geothermal, biofuels, fission, fusion, hydrocarbon, or coal, the cost will rise in constant dollars.

Ok, what about railroad transportation? Railroads move goods efficiently over long distances. We need to make railroads better handle medium distance shipments. Secondly, with the country becoming poorer, we need to make thousands of small changes in lengthening the rail grid, rather than making huge additions. We need many more sidings on single track lines, and, faster routes around metropolitan areas. We need to use braking energy in trains, like hybrids do. We need to think in terms of average passenger train speeds between cities of 60 miles per hour and give up trying to compete with Europe and Asia's dream lines. We need to hook up our passenger rail grid with airports and concentrate on passenger trips under, say, 250 miles.

We need to think humbly and get things done....