Do conservatives think ANWR affects oil prices more than Bush wars & kowtowing to big oil?
Conservatives are starting to say that if only we opened ANWR to drilling, oil prices would come down.
They must have missed the Department of Energy study that said opening it would only lower the cost 50 cents a barrel after several years, and maybe a penny of savings would make it to the pump.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4542853/
They seem to ignore a much larger reason for the price jump: Bush’s war in Iraq and threatened war with Iran give speculators an excuse to drive up the prices.
Worse, while oil was the true motive for the Iraq War, the goal was not to get an endless supply of cheap oil for the US, but rather to keep the price HIGH.
In 2002, Oil & Gas Journal said that without a war on Iraq, when sanctions came off, Saddam would pump too much and drive prices down. Oil execs admitted this to the BBC, and Bush reassured Russia before the war that it wouldn’t lower prices.
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2007/03/oil-too-cheap-if-no-iraq-war-says-oil.html
I worked in Alaska cleaning oil off beaches after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and now live in Southern California. After I swim in the ocean near Santa Barbara where you can see the offshore oil rigs, I have patches of oil on my skin.
This is not a wacko environmental concern. We eat fish from the ocean and we have already polluted it enough that we have to limit how much fish we eat because of the mercury content.
You also assume that if we open more areas for drilling, the oil companies would thank us by lowering prices. They will not.
March 13th, 2010 at 10:40 am
just ask any hillbilly that’s gotten ripped off by bushes buddies cause the know they can and then ask your self why the poor need lawyers to protect them from those greedy conservative pigs.
Landowners getting trampled in gas rights rush
Wednesday May 28, 3:39 am ET
By Tim Huber, AP Business Writer
Landowners say they’re getting trampled by corporations rushing to secure gas drilling rights
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Unsuspecting property owners around the country are getting trampled in an old-fashioned land rush by natural gas companies and speculators trying to lock up long-ignored drilling rights quickly and cheaply.
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Stories of fast-talking industry representatives using scare tactics to strong-arm people into signing lowball leases are popping up in rural areas and suburbs from New York to West Virginia to parts of Indiana and Texas. All sit atop largely untapped natural gas deposits made suddenly viable — and valuable — by soaring prices and improved drilling techniques.
West Virginia farmer and convenience store owner Brad Castle is still smarting from his experience.
Castle and his father thought they were getting a windfall when they signed a $5-an-acre lease and promise of 12.5 percent royalties for the gas rights to 800 acres they own near Rowlesburg in northern West Virginia. The process started when a landman — an industry term for a person who secures mineral rights — knocked on their door.
"They’re very nice people, the ones that come around. You thought you could trust them," said Castle, who adds that he was warned to sign or drillers would siphon the gas beneath his property without paying him a dime.
His feelings of trust evaporated when rival companies started offering $350 an acre and royalties as high as 15 percent.
"They knew what they were doing when they come in, but we didn’t," said Castle, who’s hired a lawyer to look into breaking the lease. "There’s got to be a law broke somewhere."
Retired dairy farmer Dewey Decker heard similar pitches when landmen started showing up in New York’s Broome and Delaware counties.
"They were offering like $25, then $50," Decker said. "Quite a few people signed for $50."
But Decker held out and formed a pool with other landowners that has grown to more than 40,000 acres. The approach worked: Decker’s group agreed to a five-year deal that pays $2,411 an acre and a 15 percent royalty.
So, too, did entrepreneur and writer Tom Rodgers and much of his suburban Arlington, Texas, neighborhood, which sits atop a gas-rich formation called Barnett shale. Rodgers remembers the landmen’s spiel as almost exactly like oilman Daniel Plainview’s sweet-talking sales pitch in the movie "There Will be Blood."
"That original speech that guy makes to the rural property owners, it hasn’t changed much in 100 years," Rodgers said. And like Castle, Rodgers said landmen often warned that homeowners risked getting nothing if they didn’t sign. "These landmen do lie. They do exaggerate."
Gas companies such as Chesapeake Energy Corp. make no bones about their desire to lock up leasing rights. The Oklahoma City-based natural gas giant calls its aggressive lease acquisition program the "land grab" in its latest annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Chesapeake did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
While Rodgers said Chesapeake was aggressive in its efforts to secure rights in his neighborhood, he said the company quickly clamped down when residents complained about dishonest tactics by independent landmen hired by the company.
West Virginia lawyer David McMahon said such aggressive tactics are showing up across West Virginia counties with substantial Marcellus shale, a 6,000-foot-deep rock formation believed to hold 50 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas.
"Most everybody’s getting a lowball dollar offer and lots of people are getting rushed," McMahon said.
As for the kind of half-truths Castle was told — landowners can be reimbursed for gas sucked from beneath their property — McMahon said that’s not universal — and not true. "Some landmen are being fair, but sharp bargainers."
McMahon recently started a campaign to educate landowners about mineral leasing through the West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization. Among other things, McMahon advises landowners to take their time and refuse to be rushed into signing leases. He also suggests rejecting standard leases in favor of documents containing protections against roads, potential pollutants such as saltwater injections, and use of depleted wells for gas storage.
Herschel McDivitt, director of Indiana’s Division of Oil and Gas, offers similar advice. He hears from landowners often enough to suspect landmen are employing similar tactics as they try to secure rights to New Albany shale in the Illinois basin.
"There just aren’t a lot of savvy landowners out there," McDivitt said of the calls he gets regularly. "Some of them are just, ‘Hey, we just had some slick-talking guy who’s just been pounding on us, but we don’t understand.’"
March 13th, 2010 at 10:40 am
They want to drill in ANWR because it would set a precedent. In a few years they’d be drilling in every national park or preserve that might have oil.
March 13th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Stop getting your information from Blogs and You Tube. If you take time to research you will find this is the first time in history there has been an increase in the price of oil during a war. Even in the First Gulf War, the price went up durin Sadam’s invasion and setting fire to the oil fields but it fell as soon as UN troops went in. http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm
At $3.20 per Gallon you are paying $1.00 per liter for gas. Why don’t you get angry when you pay $1.30 for a liter of water?
Which is the easiest to find and process, oil or water? And you probably are also not aware the carbon foot print of Bottled water is much higher than oil. Manufacture of one ton of PET water bottles produces 2.5 million tons of CO2! That doesn’t count distribution or the disposal problem.
March 13th, 2010 at 10:40 am
It’s not just ANWR. It’s off shore California, the Gulf of Mexico, off shore Atlantic Ocean, no new refineries, oil shale. The environmental wackos have tied the hands of the oil industry and helped to create this problem. It’s time the American people remove all the congressmen and senators who kowtow to the wackos. Including my 2 senators who I will work hard to defeat. Enough is enough. Now they want to eliminate coal fired power plants which would be a disaster. These people who want to force us back into the caves need to be stopped.