We’ve almost tripled land-based oil & gas rigs in the U.S. since 2002. Why did prices still rise? Demand?
This from an article on U.S. Oilfield Deaths:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080911/ap_on_re_us/oilfield_deaths;_ylt=Aut7FWxCweTuflAVBY9AtV9H2ocA
"A dramatic increase in drilling, spurred by record-breaking oil and natural gas prices. The number of workers in oil and gas jobs shot up from 290,000 in 2002 to 428,000 in 2007. In July 2002, 740 land-based oil and gas rigs were operating in the United States; today, there are about 2,000."
The Republican plan is to drill more. They even acknowledge that it would take seven to ten years for the oil to hit the market, but claim a psychological effect would lower prices. That doesn’t seem to be supported by what’s happening today.
Matt A: Republicans are saying by simply stating to drill prices will drop. We have started to drill and prices from 2002 to today haven’t dropped.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Law of Economics supply and Demand…we use too much oil
oil is the lifeblood of te world..
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
sure it does, oil is almost at $100 a barrel, down from $140
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
The Republicans acknowledge no such thing. It would be more like one year.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Seven to ten years is reasonable. That was the same excuse the Democrats gave ten years ago for not wanting to open up more drilling on the North Slope.
Just because it won’t have an immediate effect it no reason to not do it. Politicians need to stop looking past their next re-election.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
The largest reserves of U.S. oil are off limits to drilling. It does not take 7 years to get oil out of the ground where infrastructure is in place. The environmentalists keep things tied up in court, but to actually get oil will not take that long. And the Republicans aren’t saying that, the Democrats that don’t want to drill are.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Wall Strteet speculators have manipulated the oil market with the blessing of the White House.
Demand has fallen.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Something doesn’t add up. You say it takes 7-10 years to get online, but we are to believe that since 2002 there are 2000 more wells online. That’s only 6 years. So what are you or this article lieing about?
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Well for one thing you can’t put oil in your gas tank, so unless we build more refineries, which we haven’t built any more of, there won’t be any higher supply of gas, just a higher supple, thu lower cost for oil, so the market effect will be somewhat limited by this.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Most of the oil we get comes from offshore not land. So if you had one land rig, tripling it would only make it 3 (just an example). Also keep in mind that the US is an extremely small producer when compared to arab countries and OPEC in general so it would take a lot for us to affect world supply (where oil is priced – on the world market).
It may take 7 to 10 years to bring new oil to market but we’ll be using oil for much longer than that so we should start now. We see psychological affects everyday. Why do you think the price of oil goes up every time someone bombs a pipeline in Nigeria?