Posted on 02/15/2010 10:25:54 AM PST by Free ThinkerNY
How much money is the US losing by maintaining its de facto drilling ban on the coasts and the explicit ban on drilling in ANWR? The SAIC Corporation studied the question, in part funded by the oil industry, and claims that the American economy will lose over $2.3 trillion dollars in opportunity costs over the next two decades:
Restrictions on oil and gas drilling will cost the U.S. economy $2.36 trillion through 2029, according to a study requested by state utility regulators and paid for in part by industry-sponsored groups.
Drilling restrictions in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the U.S. coastline are blocking access to about nine years’ worth of U.S. oil and gas consumption, according to the report. Among sponsors are the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the industry-funded Gas Technology Institute, of Des Plaines, Illinois.
Former President George W. Bush and Congress ended bans in 2008 on drilling along the U.S. coastline. The Interior Department hasn’t acted to open the newly available areas, including offshore Alaska and on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Congress has kept the Arctic refuge off limits. …
The report, issued today, said opening the areas would free up 43 billion barrels of oil and 286 trillion cubic feet of gas. The U.S. used 22.8 trillion cubic feet of gas and 5.2 billion barrels of oil in 2009, according to a press release issued with the report.
The usual caveats apply to studies funded at least in some degree by parties with vested interests in the outcome. Obviously, oil and gas companies would like to gain access to these areas; after all, they’ll be the ones getting a chunk of that money.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
But what if we all inflate our tires?
And the reason for restricting drilling is? I would really like to hear the reason from our government.
Let me know if you'd like to be on or off t he ping list.
Domestic energy development creates WEALTH better than any other method. It also creates jobs and taxes. This is the ONLY thing that can reboot America and save us from insolvency. The other things is deporting illegals and cutting off their benefits.
Hey, if it's beyond the next election cycle, most politicians won't have anything to do with it.
The oil industry has stated that they could start producing oil withing three years of allowed to drill today. One problem is that it takes about three years just to get the permits. I’d like to have that job.
By the way.....you can never get oil out of the ground if you never start to drill.
"Well, I could do that, but I'd need a permit ..."
"Where's my stamp? WHAM! You got a permit. Go do it."
Only common sense. Just proves that Bill Buckley was right. It would be better to be governed by the first 500 names in the telephone book than by the elites who are currently in Washington.
Again, I would like to hear this from the government. If they said this, they would look like the biggest fools in the world. We have better technology for getting at the oil, and doing it cleanly, than anyone around the globe.
We’ve lost that will to succeed in our government. If they don’t get paid off, they don’t give out the permits.
Absolutely! I think it can be articulated even further than jobs and taxes; that is, the energy self reliance enables internal enterprise and imagination which of course made America what it was.
There is a school of thought that maintains economics is really a thermodynamic consequence. But that is waaaay beyond the recent Nobel's.
But we should be objective enough to include all forms of domestic energy, nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, etc. as well as our prodigious carbon reservoirs.
It's really a no-brainer with which the sinister, globalist elites, i.e. the CFR, have played us all.
I’m with you. What is the reason for the ban on drilling in our country? I suspect that somebody FEELS that it is the thing to do. No logic displayed in the drilling ban. Looks more like pure malice and America-hate.
$2 Trillion? That’s nothing! It’s barely 20% of our debt.
I understand this but I wish there were the same eagerness from the MSM in pointing out the funding sources of environmental studies, labor surveys, etc.
“energy self reliance enables internal enterprise and imagination which of course made America what it was”
This is exactly why progressives oppose domestic energy development. They have no desire to return to our self-reliant past, as their ideal is one in which we all are dependent upon experts in government. In their lights, the $2 trillion in lost output is no big deal: they plan to tax “the rich” to make up for the loss etc.
“A journey of 1000 miles begins with but a single step.”
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