high gas prices don't effect me in the way it does many others, since i don't own a car, and almost always use public transport, but those costs show up elsewhere, in higher food prices, airplane tickets, etc. and it's going to get much worse, if we won't drill. [rquoter]Drill! Drill! Drill! June 12, 2008 Charles de Gaulle once wrote off the nation of Brazil in six words: "Brazil is not a serious country." How much time is left before someone says the same of the United States? One thing Brazil and the U.S. have in common is the price of oil: It is priced in dollars, and everyone in the world now knows what the price is. Another commonality is that each country has vast oil reserves in waters off their coastlines. Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger says America needs to get serious about its oil and gas resources. (June 11) Here we may draw a line in the waves between the serious and the unserious. Brazil discovered only yesterday (November) that billions of barrels of oil sit in difficult water beneath a swath of the Santos Basin, 180 miles offshore from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The U.S. has known for decades that at least 8.5 billion proven barrels of oil sit off its Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts, with the Interior Department estimating 86 billion barrels of undiscovered oil resources. When Brazil made this find last November, did its legislature announce that, for fear of oil spills hitting Rio's beaches or altering the climate, it would forgo exploiting these fields? Of course it didn't. Guilherme Estrella, director of exploration and production for the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, said, "It's an extraordinary position for Brazil to be in." Indeed it is. At this point in time, is there another country on the face of the earth that would possess the oil and gas reserves held by the United States and refuse to exploit them? Only technical incompetence, as in Mexico, would hold anyone back. But not us. We won't drill. California won't drill for the estimated 1.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil off its coast because of bad memories of the Santa Barbara oil spill – in 1969. We won't drill for the estimated 5.6 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil in the moonscape known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) because of – the caribou. In 1990, George H.W. Bush, calling himself "the environmental president," signed an order putting virtually all the U.S. outer continental shelf's oil and gas reserves in the deep freeze. Bill Clinton extended that lockup until 2013. A Clinton veto also threw away the key to ANWR's oil 13 years ago. Our waters may hold 60 trillion untapped cubic feet of natural gas. As in Brazil, these are surely conservative estimates. [Drill! Drill! Drill!] AP While Brazilians proudly embrace Petrobras, yelling "We're Going to Be No. 1," the U.S.'s Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, promises to impose an "excess profits tax" on American oil producers. We live in a world in which Russia's Vladimir Putin and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez use their vast oil and gas reserves as instruments of state power. Here, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid use their control of Congress to spend a week debating a "climate-change" bill. This they did fresh off their subsidized (and bipartisan) ethanol fiasco. One may assume that Mr. Putin and the Chinese have noticed the policy obsessions of our political class. While other nations use their oil reserves to attain world status, we give ours up. Why shouldn't they conclude that, long term, these people can be taken? Nikita Khrushchev said, "We will bury you." Forget that. We'll do it ourselves. Putin intimidates Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states and Poland with oil and gas cutoffs, while Chávez uses petrodollars to bankroll Colombian terrorists. Cuba plans to exploit its Caribbean oil fields within a long tee shot of the Florida Keys with help from India, Spain, Venezuela, Canada, Norway, Malaysia, even Vietnam. But America won't drill. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said just last month he's afraid of an oil spill. Katrina wrecked the oil rigs in the Gulf with no significant damage from leaking oil. Some portion of the current $4-per-gallon gasoline may be attributable to the Federal Reserve's inflationary monetary policy or even speculators. But we can wave goodbye to the $1.25/gallon gasoline that in 1990 allowed a President Bush to airily lock away the nation's oil and gas jewels. This isn't your father's world of energy. New world powers are coming online fast, and they need energy. We need to get back in the game. The goal shouldn't be "energy independence," a ridiculous notion in an economically integrated world. It's about admitting the need to strike a balance between the energy and security realities of the here-and-now and the potentialities of the future. Some of our best and brightest want to pursue alternative energy technologies, and they should be encouraged to do so, inside market disciplines. But let's at least stop pretending the rest of the world is going to play along with our environmentalist moralisms. The Democrats' climate-change bill collapsed last week under the weight of brutal cost realities. It was a wake-up call. This is the year Americans joined the real world of energy costs. Now someone needs to explain to them why we – and we alone – are sitting on an ocean of energy but won't drill for it. You'd think the "national security" nominee, John McCain, would get this. He's clueless – a don't-drill zombie. We may mark this down as the year the U.S. tired of being a serious country.[/rquoter]
Pretty sure this has already been posted but here it is again - Effect of ANWR oil on prices would be minor WASHINGTON -- If Congress were to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, crude oil prices would probably drop by an average of only 75 cents a barrel, according to Department of Energy projections issued Thursday. The report, which was requested in December by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, found that oil production in the refuge "is not projected to have a large impact on world oil prices." But the report also finds that opening ANWR could have other benefits, particularly in Alaska, where tapping the resources in the Arctic refuge could extend the lifespan of the trans-Alaska pipeline. It estimates that if Congress agreed to open ANWR this year, Alaska oil could hit the market in about 10 years. http://www.adn.com/anwr/story/414808.html
this is the thing that gets me. the congress is much more willing to institute wind fall profit taxes for producing oil and sue OPEC even though they have no grounds but they won't open up drilling anywhere. isn't it pretty well studied that the offshore rigs do much less damage than tourism of those offshore areas?
I really don't understand the opposition to offshore drilling also. I don't think we should drill in the national reserve, however there is plenty of ocean to go around
I think the solution is to both pursue alternative energy and pursue new oil sources. In the long term, having viable alternative energy sources makes our energy future a little more secure (all of our eggs not in one basket). In the short term, and even the medium term, expanded drilling can provide relief. Offshore, ANWAR, shale, figure out a way to do it right, and not spill a few million gallons of oil.
The findings seem very dubious at best. Common sense says that if $1.3 trillion worth of oil is supplied, it will have some impact! If nothing else, it strengthens the dollar which would lower prices. I mean look at what happens to oil prices when something temporary like Katrina stops oil production in the Gulf or a pipeline is shut down. 75 cents is just a ridiculous understatement.
I would like to see oil prices stay high for a while and let our consumption drop. That is the real problem. Then after a few years of dropping consumption we can drill and keep prices the same but reduce our importation of oil.
2007 Oil Consumption by Country: #1 United States.............20,730,000 bbl/day #2 China:........................6,534,000 bbl/day #3 Japan:........................5,578,000 bbl/day #4 Germany:....................2,650,000 bbl/day #5 Russia:........................2,500,000 bbl/day #6 India:..........................2,450,000 bbl/day #7 Canada:.......................2,294,000 bbl/day #8 Korea, South:...............2,149,000 bbl/day #9 Brazil:.........................2,100,000 bbl/day #10 France:......................1,970,000 bbl/day I don't think more drilling is the solution to our problem. link
Population of China: 1.3 Billion Population of India: 1.1 Billion Population of the US: .3 Billion As per updawg's post #1 United States.............20,730,000 bbl/day = 0.0691 bbl/day/person #2 China:........................6,534,000 bbl/day = 0.005026154 bbl/day/person #6 India:..........................2,450,000 bbl/day = 0.002227273 bbl/day/person Who needs to drop consumption?
Actually, the link updawg provided has the ranking of per capita oil consumption data (mostly 2004): . #15 United States . . . . #128 China . #149 India Interestingly, Canadians are on average consuming more oil than Yankees
LOL ... but in their defense, a fairly significant portion of the oil consumption is probably spent on heating, which I realize is more of a necessity than luxury.
also just guessing, if there was country where cars and trucks (especially trucks) were more crucial to every day transportation than america, its probably canada
- 2 Trillion barrels of oil are estimated in the United States Oil-Shale Reserves (USGS) - 580 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in Russia's Arctic Ocean Shelf (ADN) - 400 Billion barrels of oil are estimated under the Arctic Ocean (Canada.com) - 175 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the Oil Sands of Alberta, Canada (AGS) - 86 Billion barrels of oil are estimated on the Outer Continental Shelf of the United States (MMS) - 32 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in ANWR, NPRA and the Central North Slope in Alaska (USGS) - 31.4 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the East Greenland Rift Basins Province (USGS) - 15 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in Jack field in the Gulf of Mexico (WorldNetDaily) - 7.3 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the West Greenland–East Canada Province (USGS) - 4.3 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, United States (USGS) - 214 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the Illinois Basin, United States(USGS) It ain't just ANWR that's the solution. And it ain't just oil. We should be using nuclear, coal, wind, solar, everything. Building refineries(use the closed military installations). Congress is doing NOTHING!!! They're wasting time trying to stick it to the oil companies which won't accomplish a thing besides making some vindictive Americans feel better that "Big Oil" is sharing in the misery. And as much as I've piled on the GOP for not speaking out about this, they are trying. It's Pelosi who's preventing anything from being done.http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/06/11/what-are-republicans-doing-about-high-gas-prices/ As far as I can figure, there are only two logical reasons why the Dems would prevent us from doing anything about the energy crisis. First is they share the sentiments of CaseyH that high energy prices will cause us to conserve more. A lot of the Dems are in bed with the environmental lobby, so that's not too far-fetched. The other reason for doing nothing would be that high energy prices affect the economy, and a weak economy and 4+ bucks a gallon at the pump helps the Dems at the polls in November. Which is unconscionable. We'll know whether the 2nd theory has any legitimacy if right after the elections, Congress is suddenly willing to drill and building nuclear plants.
Any suggestion that drilling in ANWAR would result in substantial downward price pressure, even in the fictitious universe where such oil was instantly available and could be refined starting tomorrow - reveals the suggestor to be ignorant as to basic facts regarding oil consumption.
Galveston's an industrial town, I have no hope for it being beautiful (if that's your point) plus I think these rigs that are banned would be pretty far out. lastly, i've been on a cruise out of galveston, and believe me, there are tons of drill already out there, this is just on the cruise route.
