Shell Head Talks About Energy Crisis

The president of Shell Oil was in Atlanta Wednesday night on the last stop of a 50 city tour to talk about the energy crisis, and what Americans plan to do about it.

Just nine years ago, oil was at $8 per barrel, and gas was half of what it is now. The president of Shell, John Hofmeister, is warning Americans the next ten years could bring an economic nightmare if something is not done.

Every second, Americans use enough oil to fill a swimming pool -- 840 million gallons. Eighty percent of the gas in most cars generates heat and fumes, not motion. In jets, it is even worse, with more than 90 percent of all fuel lost because of inefficient engines. And by every measure, the price of fuel is only going up.

Hofmeister has been on a tour, making the case that the county needs to begin using its own 100 billion barrel oil reserves.

"A lot of the weakness of the dollar has to do with the shipping of cash out of this country to the oil exporting countries in -- trillions of dollars in the last several years," Hofmeister said. "The question is do we want to continue that without developing our own domestic resources where we could be putting trillions of dollars into the development of our own natural resources?"

Hofmeister pointed out the last time the government had an energy strategy was in World War II, and it was called rationing.

"What does tomorrow bring? One hundred dollar oil? Does it bring $4 gasoline? What is the nation's energy security strategy to deal with this conundrum of a ten-fold increase in crude oil price in less than a decade? Imagine if the next decade carries another ten-fold increase in crude oil price," he said.

Shell is also looking into alternative fuel research, like liquefied natural gas, coal gasification, bio-fuel 2.0, wind farms, and nanotech solar power.

But that's long-range. And the company's president said that America has to act now.