Hold up cowboys. Before every direct flight from the state of Texas to Costa Rica is filled (well atleast the first class seats I dont know if big oil Texan boys will sit in coach) let me explain what Oil in Costa Rica means? Yes, It means energy but ufortunately for all you money sucking capatlist idiots this is a little something we call White Oil. By now I probably lost 90% of my readers that I attracted by the title of this blog. Costa Rica does not have oil and no random blogger like myself would be the first to blurt to the world that a country of 5 million with no army just struck oil.
If you didnt already know Costa Rica lends itself to a number of different sources of generating energy. Costa Rica is a narrow country with two coast, high mountains, and a lot of rain. If you use your imagination with what I just said you should be able to see that rivers go racing down from these high mountains at a very high speed because the country is narrow and full of water because of the rains. Costa Rica also has some areas where they have generated energy through wind. Well this blog is not about either of those. This blog is about $White-Oil$.I had never heard the term white oil until an official from ICE (Costa Rican Institute for Electricity) used it when interviewed about Costa Rica's Geo-Thermal Energy. He was being interviewed because ICE can only tap into 23% of Costa Rica's Geo-Thermal energy and the rest of it is located in protected areas and national parks. The reported asked this ICE official what he thought of this restriction: "It is a shame we cant tap into the national parks for geothermal energy it is the white oil of this country". Now tapping into Natoinal Parks just sounds wrong but their is a nice little ring to white oil, so I will say he had me for about 3 seconds.
There are many benefits to Geo-Thermal Energy for Costa Rica which now runs 15% of its lights of this type of energy and can only tap into 23% of its resources. The "White Oil" is also a lot cheaper. It cost about 4 cents for each KW as compared to gas which is 46 cents for each KW. So the cost is a no brainer. The second benefit which Im sure ICE plans to use on their side is that GeoThermal is much nicer to the environment. With gas each megavolt burns 1,000kilos of CO2 and with Geothermal it reduces to 59 kilos of CO2.
Image via WikipediaNow the question starts should the energy company be able to tap into the national parks. They had a deal in 2008 that said if they did the National Parks would get land that was 5% larger that the area used by the energy company to compensate for the area lost. So the final result would be that the National Park would be the same size even a bit larger. I know there are two sides to this story and I look forward to following it. This is just the basic info now that the energy company has used all 23% of the resources outside of the National Park we should start to see true colors fly with environmentalist and ICE officials as the debates begin. If you comments or thoughts on this we would love to hear. Also I dont know why but Jorge W. Bush the ExPresidenta of the USA uses GeoThermal energy to run his house in Texas according to this site click here. We feel this is a very interesting subject area for tourist that will be visiting and we would love to inform them the best we possibly can?Source: http://www.nacion.com/2010-09-12/ElPais/NotasSecundarias/ElPais2516365.aspx
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