Wouldn't it be nice if there were more land where Big Oil could drill?
What? There is land where they can already drill without disrupting the environment off the coast of Florida or ANWAR? What the? There are 68 million acres of untapped land with oil and gas reserves that’s not being used? Surely Republicans and John McCain wouldn’t be promoting new drilling just for political reasons, would they? Big Oil wouldn’t do this to divert attention from the country detesting them with every bone in their body, would they? Let’s see how everyone reacts to Congressman Rahall’s "use it or lose it" legislation.
The 68 million acres of leased but inactive federal land have the potential to produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day. This would nearly double total U.S. oil production, and increase natural gas production by 75 percent. It would also cut U.S. oil imports by more than one-third, reducing America’s dependency on foreign oil.
Point made @ Americablog
http://www.americablog.com/2008/06/if-only-there-was-us-land-where-big-oil.html
Read about the legislation:
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=389&Itemid=1
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
As long as the Commodities Futures Modernization Act goes unchanged nothing anyone does will matter. You can drill your little hearts out and completely destroy the environment, but nothing will change as long as speculators are allowed to run amok.
Simply adding the words "and energy" to the Commodities Futures Modernization Act would bring gas prices down overnight.
80% of all known oil off the continental shelf of the United States have already been granted permits to drill, but those that would do the drilling are sitting on those permits. Ask yourself why.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
No.
Because Democrats Want Higher Gas Prices.
Check out how many Millions of Dollars that Environmentalist Organizations are giving the Democrat Party to ban Drilling.
Democrat Voters don’t care how High gas gets.
They don’t drive to work…..
Because they Don’t Work.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Groovy idea, but I don’t see one liberal saying we should do it because they’re in bed with the environmentalists: loyal to money, not the people.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
They should be going for it immediately. We’ll be forced to drill there eventually anyway. It’d help much quicker than the ten year window the democrats keep rambling on about.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Yeah, right. Like they still wouldnt have a reason to make more money than ever before. Get a clue, sugar.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
So we drill everywhere and deplete those fields. Then what?
"Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask how you can drive less for your country"
- JFK
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Conservatives think we can drill our way out of this mess. But we can’t. In a lot of ways we are our own worst enemy. We drive big SUV’s and have raised the speed limits in almost every state. Someone once said: "We have met the enemy and it is ourselves". Part of that can apply to the oil situation. Working on the supply side alone won’t fix this problem. We need to work on the demand side as well.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Why don’t they drill on the land already leased to them instead of screaming about ANWR?
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
No it wouldn’t "be nice". Drilling is not the answer. And it is ANWR not Anwar.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
NO need for more open land. YES, it is only for political reasons, because anyone with half a brain knows this is the problem:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=USDEUR=X#chart1:symbol=usdeur=x;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
not supply.
They are crying about it for poitical reasons, when it is more profitable at the same time to allow things to reamin the same as they are while blaming environmentlaists and Democrats for record profits.
Can you picture oil company CEOS sitting in their office just crying over their record profits because they really want to drill more and reduce their profit margins just to be nice to you and I?
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Oil companies are enjoying record profits, what incentive is there for them to drill?
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your question?
Yep, the more the conservatives try to push the talking point about ANWR, the more people who are ignorant on the subject are going to hear the pushback and facts about the amount of oil they’re sitting on and NOT pumping out of the ground.
True dat.
…. also, I note a lot of people missed the entire point of the body of your question. Don’t be discouraged by that, and, please, don’t dumb it down in the future.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
after they’ve raped the alaska wilderness and tapped it dry, they’re going to open up yellowstone for geothermal.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
I can understand one’s criticism of the government but not of big oil. It is the goal of a firm to maximise profits (just as it is the goal of any living organism, uncluding humankind, to maximise satisifaction). It’s a very economical path to lobby politicians to sway their way, and not in the direction of environmental lobbyists.
But there is only enough oil in ANWAR to create that 1/3 reduction in foreign imports for 18 weeks (can’t remember the source but it’s on the eia.gov’s database). You would also have to realise that ANWAR and other offshore drilling would only distract the nation’s ambitions to find long term solutions that reduce the aggregate consumption of oil.
In other words, that 18 week period will be 18 weeks without preparing for future growths and shortages. And what would happen if terrorists or a currupt government suddenly blockaded our supply-lines? The straign of Hormuz is in a very hostile location, the Persian Gulf. We might be better off waiting to drill in ANWAR to replace any reserves accessed incase of an outbreak of violence.
I gave up on politicans and environmentalists. I’m in the training processs of replacing about 4 miles of driving a day with bicycling, and I’ve been hooked on the futures markets for oil. Use your brain and don’t let your laziness suck you in- there are pleanty of cheap ways to reduce YOUR consumption and even profit off of other people’s laziness.
March 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
The government should hire J.D. Clampett.