Major Oil Market Shift of Colossal Importance to DOD and DOD Energy Planners

From this morning's WSJ.  You don't need my help to quickly understand how the shift described below will impact US and DOD policymakers in the years ahead.

The article is titled: Middle East Oil Fuels Fresh China-U.S. Tensions and here's an excerpt that boils is down to the essence:

The turnabout has added to tensions because it leaves the U.S. military securing China's growing oil shipments in the region at a time Beijing resists U.S. pressure on it to back American foreign policy in the Middle East.

For years, China and other oil-consuming nations have benefited as Washington spent billions of dollars a year to police choke points like the Strait of Hormuz and other volatile parts of the Middle East to ensure oil flowed around the globe. 

DOD Energy Follies Part 2: Middies, Zoomies, and Toilets in the Desert

Inside the Middie Dome

OK, I don't want to spend much more time on follies. Would much rather accentuate the positive. But based on feedback to the previous follies post, looks like one more is in order.

The most glaring contribution this week, pun intended, came from the Navy again, which for some reason decided to keep its stadium lights all the way on for Saturday's game vs USAFA. In the face of sequestration and the teeth of the partial government shutdown, the Air Force barely had the funds to get its folks to Annapolis.  The Navy, it seems, had money (and watts) to burn.

And Now for Something Completely Different: Navy Energy Follies

The DOD Energy Blog is loaded with posts documenting many cases of USN's forward-thinking energy savings strategies and actions. Now it's time to be fair and balanced. The stories you are about to hear are true (I'm pretty sure).  Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent. The sources of these anecdotes are in the witness protection program.

The Commander Navy Installations Command (CNIC) has implemented an energy savings policy that rewards program managers to implement game-changing energy conservation measures like:

• No charging of phones or other PDA’s is allowed in work spaces. (Where outdoor outlets are available, you can charge devices during smoke breaks)
• Only one coffee pot per building (depending on building size, this could cause catastrophic crew and other employee readiness failures)
• No air conditioning until it reaches 75F + in the barbershop (resulting in sweaty heads that reduce buzzer and clipper effectiveness)

With these changes in full effect, US and DOD energy autonomy is clearly within reach. Ahem.

USN: "Save Energy Unless You Can't"

Hat tip to CAPT Jim Goudreau, Dir Navy Energy Coordination Office, for the heads-up on this brief article and apologies for the latency in getting it posted.

The Navy continues to be active in tuning its policies to more fully account for the operational constraints of fuel dependency and the wins that can be derived from more energy efficient systems and energy conserving behaviors.

From the official "Navy Live" blog:

The key ... is that energy-saving practices must evolve from “Save energy when you can” to “Save energy unless you can’t.” Institutionalizing and codifying energy savings throughout the fleet will enable us to continue meeting our national defense mission and fulfilling combatant commander requirements, while conserving vital energy resources and conserving scarce defense dollars that the Navy can apply to other priorities, such as maintenance and modernization.

Short, sweet, and comprehensively applicable to all manner of lifecycle and strategy considerations. You can read the whole post HERE.

Geiss on Air Force Energy Progress - Sep 2013 Update

Hat tip to OSD's Ollie Fritz again (and again).

Straight up, here are highlights from an interview with Dr Kevin Geiss, DASAF for Energy, from a recent article: "A more fuel-efficient Air Force"

Eighty-four percent of the Air Force’s annual $9 billion energy budget pays for jet fuel, and of that 60 percent is for 900 mobility flights per day moving cargo and people.

Even though the service has no control over fuel costs or the missions it is called to serve, it aims to “get better [energy efficiency] at every flight,” says Kevin Geiss, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy.

Dr. Geiss outlined some of the service’s energy-saving efforts in a recent interview:

A New TET Offensive: Navy Transportation Efficiency Breakthrough

Thanks to OSD's Ollie Fritz for flagging this. With help from the forward looking Office of Naval Research (ONR), this new rather low-tech energy saving breakthrough is called the Transportation Exploitation Tool or TET for short.

Here's an example of how it works:

Imagine a scenario where a U.S. Navy ship in a foreign port urgently needs a particular engine part to complete its mission. TET allows the user to simply enter what cargo needs to be shipped and where it’s going, and then provides the planner with all available space on transports across military and commercial sectors, with recommendations for the most efficient routes. 

Previously, planners had to search multiple databases to access all civilian and military space availability, which could require hours or even days. In the worst cases, separate flights had to be chartered.

You can read the full piece HERE.

Photo credit: Marines.mil

Conference Alert: Defense Energy Summit

Haven't been this enthused about an energy conference since GovEnergy (RIP).  The line-up of speakers would be hard to beat. Though there's a caveat.

The vast majority of senior DOD and government speakers haven't yet confirmed, most likely due to frozen travel budgets (tagged with * below). Maybe some of them, like Senator Cornyn, even though Texas is a quite large, can simply drive. But the challenge is more significant for Washingtonians.

Listed Speakers

• Sharon Burke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy Plans and Programs US Department of Defense
• Jonathan Powers, Federal Environmental Executive, The White House
• Senator John Cornyn, State of Texas*
• Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense*
• Richard Kidd IV, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Energy & Sustainability, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army Installations, Energy & Environment, US Army*
• General Martin Dempsey, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff*
• Thomas Hicks, Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy/Deputy Chief Management Officer, US Navy*
• Kevin Geiss, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Energy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment and Logistics, US Air Force*
• John Lushetsky, Executive Director, Army Energy Initiatives Task Force, US Army*
• Honorable Katherine Hammack, Assistant Secretary of the Army (Installations, Energy & Environment), U.S. Army
• Chris Smith, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy US Department of Energy

Nevertheless, the program looks very strong with or without the keynotes. I'll be there for sure.*

Details

When: November 11-13, 2013
Where: Austin, TX
For more info and to register: www.defenseenergy.com