Electric utilities are worried they might not be able to obtain enough coal this summer to power the country's air conditioners if railroads have to scramble to untangle the logistics of oil refineries making the switch to a cleaner gasoline additive."With the peak summer season for electricity approaching and rail deliveries of coal still not where we would like them to be, we are monitoring this situation carefully," said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association representing shareholder-owned electric companies.
Energy prices are high right now, and most of the attention is on increased demand and on instability or potential instability in some oil producing nations. What is ignored is that it doesn't have to be quite this bad. The fact of the matter is we face some serious capacity issues in this country. We could use more refineries, but we don't have them. We could drill more oil sources domestically, but we don't. We could use more trains and track to ship goods and energy supplies, but we won't build them. Things like this, plus attendent government regulations, are putting an artificial cap on domestic supplies of energy sources.
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