Drill here, drill now: Answering the "won't help now" response

TigerHawk ^ | 6/29/2008

[shove_it]

The chief practical argument coming from those who oppose opening our continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling is that it will take ten years to get the oil so it will not have any impact on current oil prices. The response is that is factual and analytical hogwash, insofar as the whole point of futures markets is to discount the impact of changes in future supply.

It is also, by the way, reasoning that many on the left would not want applied to their own pet project:

My response to those who say that increased drilling is pointless because it won't yield immediate results -- like Arnold Schwarzenegger --is why worry about the greenhouse effect, then? Nothing we do will cool the planet immediately. Yet we're told immediate action there is vital. In fact, we're told that by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the very same speech.

One would have thought that this point was so obvious it would not have to be made at all. But then, one would also think it obvious that a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies would reduce the supply of oil in the future, since we have empirical evidence from the Carter fiasco that it will, yet Barack Obama continues to push the idea. That the mainstream media refuses to call Obama to account for the obvious impact of "don't drill, do tax!" on gasoline prices reveals them as utterly unthinking or completely in the tank for the guy. It is hard to know which it might be. Maybe it's both!

[Southack]

Drilling here now creates high-paying jobs today that must go on for at least ten years, per the liberals, since it takes that long to get the oil...

[bray]

Every $ we keep here is one less for our enemies.

Pray for W and Our Troops

[Conspiracy Guy]

I tell high school seniors to forget about college. It will take 4 years or more and cost them money.

It is therefore a waste of time.

[Signalman]

The libs keep saying “We can’t drill our way out of high gasoline prices.” That’s like telling a guy who hasn’t eaten anything for a week that he can’t eat his way out of starvation.

[xcamel]

Biggest lie in the book...

“US announces open drilling and exploration in continental and Alaskan ranges including offshore reserves”

2 days later...

“OPEC announces 1M bbl a day increase in production - oil drops $50/BBL...”

[o_zarkman44]

We have heard the same tired arguement about new domestic supply being unavailable for 10 years...... 10 and 20 years ago.

Nothing has changed because the government don’t want it to change. The opinion of the people don’t count.
So I say vote the bums out! Every last one of them!

[river rat]

Oil supplies and the effect of more oil, will come a hell of a lot quicker and cheaper that ANY other alternative energy source.

[JoanneSD]

If in fact it will take 10 years or more to get oil out.. I say we tell the democrats, using their own talking point “DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN’

[milky]

Is everyone at FR like-minded on this issue? How may people here know the FACTS?

I’m wondering why, with 33 million acres of offshore already leased to oil and gas companies, are they not drilling THERE, already? They are only drilling some 17% of it, currently. There are a reported 25 billion barrels available, and they are not drilling A SINGLE BARREL OF IT.

Why do they want to drill in ANWR and offshore where there is a moritorium? They do not WANT to drill in ANWR - or anywhere else, OBVIOUSLY. What they DO want to do is consolidate assets and continue to hold these leases and limit the amount of drilling on them in order to both control and increase the price of oil for their own profits and purposes. Over the last eight years, drilling leases issued for development of public lands in the USA increased by more than 350%. Ask yourself - whose assets will increase more if domestic oil is NOT DRILLED in the USA? OPEC’s, or the “Seven Sisters’s”

[Mr Ramsbotham]

I tell high school seniors to forget about college. It will take 4 years or more and cost them money.

Or what I told them at the gun shop: "Two weeks? But I'm angry NOW!"

[Elle Bee]

I heard someone say that by this liberal logic you should stop at the nearest kindergarten and tell the kids to drop out because what they're doing today will have no effect on their employment potential for well over ten years

.

[Jeff Head]

If we seriously announced, and then started drilling in ANWR, off the Gulf Coast, off the Paicifc Coast, and going for the Oil Shales...and did so by Executive Order so everything was expedited and the severe environmental holdups could be expedited...watch what OPEC would do.

It would help now because OPEC would be forced to try and get out in front of this and make it economically unfeasable for us to do so.

They owuld do that by slashing prices drastically and immediatyely.

If we did this...if we as a people would put politicians in place who had the will...our will...to do this, I predict that within six months we would see prices at the pump below $2 per gallon.

But we have to defeat the charlatain Obama who is telling us that 4 and 6 dollar a gallon fuel is actually good for us...if it would only happen a little slower. That we canot drive our SUVs, that we cannot keep thermostats at 72 degrees, etc., etc.

His way is the way of abject governmental controls...and that is not surprising because the man is an abject marxist.

THE GREAT SEAL OF OBAMANATION

THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

[bolobaby]

Here is the answer to the “drilling won’t lower the price of oil” argument:

Digging for diamonds won’t lower the price of diamonds so - despite the fact to you have diamonds on your property - you shouldn’t dig for them. Especially when diamonds are at an all time high value. Whatever you do, don’t mine those diamonds out of your ground and enrich yourself, your community, and your country. That would be stupid.

Instead, here’s what you do: let those diamonds rot. Send all of your current diamond money to South Africa. Spend billions on developing new technology that will make diamonds worthless so that the diamonds you have in your ground will be worth nothing. This will take decades, but you can just keep shipping billions of dollars to South Africa to the point where they start buying up treasured U.S. landmarks like the Chrysler Building. Or worse, they buy the bank that owns the mortgage on your house and land (say, Citigroup) so that they really end up owning those diamonds anyway.

Brilliant.

[shove_it]

I guess that’s why Exxon announced they were getting out of the retail gasoline business - there’s too much money in it.

[bolobaby]

Milky - fine. Don’t give the oil leases to the oil giants. Give them to me. Believe me, I’ll start drilling and get rich and help the country.

If this is a real argument, then Congress can simply say “we aren’t going to allow any small group of companies to monopolize these resources. They are too important of an asset. So, if you are holding any undeveloped oil leases, you can’t bid.”

Believe me, I could easily find investment to drill the CRAP out of ANWR.

[buckalfa]

The impact of drill here, drill now would be psychological in that it might knock some of the steam out of speculation and economic warfare being waged by OPEC.

Seven to ten years waiting for tangible product seems reasonable given the lead times needed for R&D and acquiring equipment.

The troubling question that has been posed to me by co-workers is that even if all obstacles to drilling and refining would disappear overnight, would the oil companies invest in American production if they could get a better return at less cost elsewhere? Oil companies are multi-national corporations with allegience only to their balance sheets, not any one particular nation. I fear what the answer might be.

[LOC1]

It will not take ten years, but if it did, it would be ten years from now, or ten years from tomorrow, or ten years from whenever we start. The amount of time it takes is the same, only the delay in starting varies.

[Flycatcher]

I just hate capitalists that want to make money. And, yes, that was sarcasm, Milky.

(Your post was sarcasm too, right?)

[LOC1]

Where do you think the 5 million barrels of oil per day being produced within the US today came from? It came from oil companies finding and producing oil on US lands.

The oil companies have a long history of finding and producing when the reserves are actually there. Just because they have oil leases currently on federal land, does not mean that oil is under that land. All the oil companies did was pay for the right to look for oil, and the right to profit from it if they found any.

Chevron, for instance, has returned sizable amounts of leased property back to the federal government, because they looked for, and did not find, oil under on those leases. Chevron paid for the leases, incurred the expense of looking for the oil, concluded there was none available and then returned the leases. All it did was make money for the federal government.