About 87 percent: That’s how much of America’s energy use comes from fossil fuels.

Oil, natural gas, coal and most anything in between makes up seven-eighths of our energy use. It does today. It did 35 years ago, when we had our first energy crisis inspired by one of the Israeli-Arab conflicts. And that’s not going to change anytime soon, according to Michael Economides, a leading domestic expert on energy and geopolitics. He spoke to this week’s gathering of the West Virginia Independent Oil & Gas Association in Charleston.

The University of Houston professor and consultant to energy explorers in 70 nations during his career bombarded the crowd with information – some a surprise and some not so much.

• Economides sees any sort of cap-and-trade legislation as dead in the U.S. Congress and compares the current health care reform debate to kindergarten compared to trying to raise the price of the nation’s energy.

• The fact is, as much as mainstream media seem to gin up hate for big oil, the vast majority of the world’s unproduced oil lies in the hands of state oil concerns in places like Iran or Venezuela. The big multinationals like Exxon just can’t replace reserves cheaply and are beginning to shift to natural gas for BTU replacement.

• One third of humans on Earth have no access to fossil fuels of any kind and still only have plant matter or waste to burn for heat or cooking. Their use of fossil fuels can go nowhere but up.

• The 35th largest coal mine in America, located in Kentucky, produces as much energy every year as all the current U.S. solar installations.

• Natural gas as a transportation fuel is future, so Boone Pickens has been to some degree right thus far. But the current infrastructure for diesel/gasoline is 100 years old and will not go away. Someplace like China will have an easier time switching to NG for transports.

• In many places in Europe where wind power has been installed, local natural gas use for electricity has actually gone up. Wind simply doesn’t blow when you need it to do so. And until battery technology moves along a few more decades, the capacity to store energy for electricity long term just isn’t there.

• Carbon capture and its variants are “the last refuge of the energy scoundrel” – false and certain to fail. Twenty-five years of CO2 injection from a plant like John Amos or Mountaineer would fill an underground well space equal to the area of Rhode Island. Most places in the U. S. don’t have the proper geology to allow that anyway.

• American natural gas production and possible export will become a critical part of the world energy puzzle. Russian gas production is as corrupt and backward as the oil industry in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The Russians and Canadians have need for more gas than they will be able to produce, quite possibly as soon as 2013. Any major supply overhangs we have worldwide should dissipate by somewhere between 2011 and 2013.

• Iraq currently produces maybe two million barrels of oil a day but could produce anywhere from five million to 11 million with some investment and government stability. Don’t necessarily expect the latter.

• China is buying energy everywhere, in every form, and can’t believe no one in the west is stepping in to stop it. They have looked at deepest Africa, Argentina and the oil sands of western Canada just for starters to get oil. China’s “biggest fear is the West pushing the price of oil back to $150.”

• To remain great as a nation, America needs to “Do what’s good for you, and ignore all this climate rhetoric … the Chinese need our spirit of innovation … they are much more similar as a society to us than we are with the sclerotic nations of Europe.”

• “Alarmism pays,” said Economides, of the global warming movement. But he went on to say that he believes they already have failed and thinks the various iterations of climategate have done in that issue for the short term. We need only worry about the unfettered power of the EPA. “No legislature now wants anything to do with that.”

Rob Cornelius of Parkersburg writes a column for The State Journal. His e-mail address is robcwv@gmail.com.