Is Obama Pandering on Offshore Drilling

So what do you think we should do? Would like to hear what you think we should do.

I think Obama is probably not in the best position to make an informed decision about the matter unless he relies on his advice. I'm not sure how much Obama would rely on advice, and perhaps take us down the wrong road?

Certainly agree that oil should be priced better but also recognize oil has created ,and provided jobs/income for a large population of US citizens. All those oil people working accounts receivable, or in the surveying dept are still real nice people that need to work, and deserve to work. Perhaps there should be a realignment of the money somehow, but we need to have a long term strategy that keeps us going forward, embraces other options, but still keeps us in the mix with the other big oil players of the world. It's not going away tomorrow.

So no we can't just turn our backs on oil, the same way mfg has taken a hit in the US..but we do have an support structure that needs to help the commoner in the oil business while phasing out of that business.

Maybe along the way fry anyone that looks like this:

 

He's definitely kowtowing the issue to Republicans because he knows gas prices will rise a lot more in the next 3 months.

Unfortunately, it won't mean a damn thing since he won't be able to maximize his role in a Republican stance and Republicans will find something else oil related to burn him on to reinforce perceptions against him ("high regulation", anwr, EPA, other usual tripe)

I want to say "awww forgive him, wait till next term and judge him", but I doubt we'll see a 180 on all his pseudo-centrist BS maneuvers.

Gotta accept who he is. Not a visionary, but one who's trying to improve the status quo from witihin.

 

How would a visionary handle this issue?

 

I believe if, for example, Milton Friedman were president, he would scrap subsidies to dirty fuel, implement cap and trade, and legalize mar1juana while he was at it.

that's a free market visionary.

Would these moves be unpopular? yes. would they plummet his approval ratings? yes.

would they be right for the country and the world? yes.

a visionary is someone who doesn't live and die with short term political fluctuations, but looks at long term implications. Yes, gas prices are going up---but a visionary would look for long-term solutions such as moving away from unstable, and peaking oil in the first place. In the long run, if it isn't crumbling dictatorial Arab regimes that will pull oil prices, it will be peak oil, or mounting exploration costs.

unfortunately, the American political system does not reward long-term thinking. so, it's unlikely we'll ever have a true visionary in office.

 

Something like enacting a multi-billion dollar plan sponsored by the DoD to reduce oil dependence from other countries.

 

It's visionary grand utopian plans like this that lead to untold amounts of human suffering.

Milton Friedman would scrap all subsidies (dirty or otherwise), and he would never be in favor of cap and trade for CO2.

Prices motivate and guide behavior, voluntarily, not by force. Some want a visionary to compel the masses with a universal grand plan. Every President has them, ans success is always just over the horizon. "These measures will achieve energy independence within a decade!"

The demand is for cheap energy. If the greens can't make it cheap or convince people to pay more for the green stuff, by golly they'll force it on us and artificially raise the price of energy (cap-and-trade) until there is no cheaper alternative.

You're right though, in his heart, Obama wants gas prices to go up, wants people to drive less and consume less (occasionally he lets this slip out). But it hurts his reelection in the short term, since people need cheap gas to survive in the short term and can't afford his long term utopian vision of miraculous cheap clean energy just around the corner.

Access to cheap energy is the lifeblood of the economy. It fuels (literally) economic growth and supplies the tax base for all of the social engineering and meddling Obama wants to engage in. The government's profit margins on a gallon of gas are many times higher than the profits of the people that work to bring that gas to market. Yet there is no gratitude, no celebration of their efforts, only disdain and scorn. Envy of the successful and productive is as old as time.



Millions of shareholders (including public pension members) pay this man to do one thing, improve the value of their investment. He has done this very well. He has increased the wealth of the shareholders he works for, his decisions fatten their wallets and puts food on their table. He should be celebrated for a job well done. He has zero control over the price of oil or gas.

Instead he is hauled before Congress and made to answer to those that produce nothing, that deplete the wealth of citizens rather then improve it.

 

Why can't they attract investors for this voluntarily?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickens_Plan

T. Boone Pickens is notorious for stuff like this. "Hey I own a bunch of natural gas, what do you think of this plan to use billions of tax dollars to convert all vehicles to natural gas? It will make us energy independent and less dependent on evil foreign oil. Trust me, it will pay for itself in the long run, I just need the taxpayer to take all the risk."

 

yeah, long-term thinking over short-term thinking has lead us to so much suffering eh? tell that to MLK, Rousseau, Mills etc.

I'm not even envisioning an utopia either, just a place that uses less dirty fuel or hell, less fuel.

Considering the massive riots caused by mounting food prices (largely caused by the fact that our food infrastructure is entirely based on subsidies and unsustainable use of resources) and fuel prices, one has to wonder what happens during peak oil?

Narrow short-term thinking with regards to this will lead to many deaths (if it hasn't already with the pressing food shortages in the Third World) and the greatest epoch of human suffering. just trace the implications of sky-high oil prices through and through. Add the fact that governments, either through political pressure or fiscal imbalance, will be unable to tamper these effects eventually. look, oil prices now are causing people to starve and riot, what happens when you increase them 200%? What happens when the resources simply run out? Are you ready for an age of climate migrants, and resource migrants? apathy works for the moment since only millions are dying (6 million annual child deaths linked to malnutrition for example) but what happens when these millions become billions?

We have to plan for this eventuality. While I am normally not a fan of subsidies, sometimes enterprise is slow and stuck on whatever makes them profits in the interim, even if it is to the detriment of all of us. Congress subsidized telegraph lines, and then when change was needed, subsidized telephone lines, such that private enterprise could be re-shifted to adapt to pressing, and needed changes. Hell, it doesn't even have to be active subsidies for clean energy, I'll settle for Congress dismantling the system that currently keeps the oil industry so well insulated from the winds of change that are battering at its' doors.

Hard to say, since he certainly came out in favor of an effluent tax on pollutants and placing a price on pollution, and cap and trade happens to be a more market-based tax.

One of the first things you learn as an economist are the failings of the market economy-one namely being the need for users to internalize externalities for a social optimum that takes into account both private marginal cost and social marginal cost. You either tax pollution or trade it, and I think Friedman would rather trade it.

 

It's the Clinton strategy: co-opt your opponent's issue

Drilling more or drilling less doesn't effect doodly-squat. It just looks good when people are hurting at the gas pump.

 

Removing artificial barriers to investment is never a bad thing.

Artificially inhibiting investment (prohibition/regulation) and artificially encouraging investment (subsidies) create market inefficiencies and distort prices.

The state imposes all kinds of barriers when it comes to energy development. There is plenty they can do (or rather stop doing) that can encourage investment, without subsidies.

 

Of course, Milton Friedman would still have to get his policies through Congress, and each of those would be dead on arrival. So the free market visionary in this case would actually accomplish exactly nothing.

 

In my hypothetical world where Friedman is president, Congress is under his thumb as well as the senate. Also, unicorns exist, and tears taste like candy.

Sadly, my thought experiment has not gone to the length of conceiving a "West Wing" like administration and realistic policy climate for President Friedman. these candy-tasting tears will have to suffice for now.

 

We will never be able to drill enough to outproduce the Middle East. The amount oil production for each field has been going down for decades, even with new drilling technology. Whether the president was Bush or Obama, the energy companies could not increase their production.

They would have to pull a miracle to discover oil fields that would outproduce Saudi Arabia. It's a dog and pony show for votes, because some voters believe in "Field of Dreams". If you build it, they will come. Oil doesn't work that way, though. Usually, you get nothing or the amount is so low that it's not profitable enough to extract.

 

Meh, it's a national strategy.

The link I gave has articles referencing it. It's a pretty cool plan.

 

This!
I am in a wait and see position on Obama with about several issues

The old saying - All every 1st Term President wants . .. is a 2nd term.
If he gets his second term . . . I wanna see how he acts and what he does.

Rocket River

 

I don't understand this article - it's dated today, and says "the White House said on Friday" but today's Thursday (Rebecca Black song taught me this....)