Opening traditions:

  Chief Pat McKinley opened the meeting and asked Mark McGee to lead the club in the pledge, which he performed very capably. This was immediately followed by Howard Wood, Kathy Gach, Randy McFarland and Greg Hickman leading the club in singing “School Days, School Days” and “Smile”. David Schoen caused some consternation by inviting us to sit down for the invocation, but in fact, the prayer was one of the shortest in club history. This was preceded with David encouraging each of us to adapt the Prayer of Jabez as needed for the next 30 days. 

Welcome to guests

Drew Napolin welcomed Teresa Prado, Deacon J Milam, Kevin Mo-Wong, Kevin Staniec, guests of Greg Hickman, Chief Pat, Leroy Fulton and Zoot Velasco respectively. Russ Moore of Orange Rotary and Larry Bennett of Fullerton Sunrise also joined us.

Announcements

Rick Crane told us of

• Car show benefiting Crittenden on October 4 contact Joyce Capelle
• YWCA Feb 27  contact Diane Masseth-Jones
• Masquerade at the Muck October 26 contact Zoot
• Fullerton Chamber Golf Tournament Oct.20 contact Theresa Harvey

Jay Kremer announced that there will be a program meeting Thursday at 7:30AM at Carrows. He also announced that the program next week would be about early intervention against substance abuse.

Jim Williams informed us that there would be an orientation for new members next Wednesday at 11:00AM.

Bob Jahncke encouraged members to respond to the letter regarding to donating towards the community investment awards so their wishes can be reflected in the upcoming billing cycle.

Don Ludwig confirmed that three separate checks are requested from members to assure clear and proper accounting for the respective entities: 1) Fullerton Rotary Foundation 2) Club Dues 3) Rotary International Foundation.

Recognitions

Someone gave Dick Daybell free reign to access fines willy nilly left and right. After last week’s record setting take, attendance seemed inexplicably lighter today, including several birthday celebrants. Dick even recognized birthdays from last week, but this week included Pat Frank, Kathy Allred (who didn’t jump out of a plane this year), Sandy Hayes, Terri Grassi, Chris Meyer.

Program

Jay Kremer introduced Mike Utt, who had a couple of engineering degrees. Mike enlightened us on some ins and outs of energy needs and pointed the significant role that politics play in the grand scheme of things. He started off by saying that our problems are because “no one checked the oil” because the oil is elsewhere and “the dipsticks are in Washington DC”!

Interesting information he imparted included:

• It takes an average of 8 years to go from oil discovery to production from an oil field.
• After the first 4 years of maximum production, oil yields decreases about 12% per year from an oil field.
• Energy independence is not feasible in the USA
• 60% of the world’s oil is in the Middle East.
• Oil prices are currently dictated by the forces of supply and demand.
• Most aspects of oil production have little profit, explaining why there have been no new US oil refineries for 30 years
• We are at the peak of world oil production
• Ethanol is purely a political invention. It is not efficient way to create energy.
• The USA has 5% of the world’s population and uses 25% of the world’s oil supply.
• We should use nuclear energy to meet much of our electricity needs.

Quote of the Day

“None of the four wars in my lifetime came about due to the USA being too strong” . . . Ronald Reagan.