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Time to drill - ANWAR, California, Gulf Coast, National Parks, etc.

There just isn't that much there. We need to find an alternative to oil."

Baloney. There is a LOT of US oil and gas that could be available that is off-limits solely for political reasons. ANWR has about 10 BILLION barrels of recoverable oil. Just one lease area alone off the Cali coast has 1 BILLION barrels. Gas reserves off the Cali coast are huge. ... There are BILLIONS of barrels, worth over $1 trillion, in oil and gas off California's coast. We dont drill because the US Government forbids it. Now, it's time to CHANGE that:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/26/MNGPEGT2O21.DTL

"Pombo is considering new hearings on a bill that would end the 23-year-old moratorium on offshore drilling, allowing drilling for natural gas -- but not oil -- on about 85 percent of the nation's coastline that is now off-limits. Pombo is also pushing a plan to give states the ability to opt out of the moratorium to drill for either oil or gas."

To understand how absurd this limit is, consider:

http://www.mms.gov/omm/pacific/offshore/oil-and-gasfaq.htm

"OCS operations are carefully conducted and regulated to ensure safe and environmentally sound operations. Since the tragic oil spill in Santa Barbara in 1969, about 833 barrels of oil have been spilled as a result of OCS natural gas and oil operations offshore California. This spillage represents the cumulative loss from cups or a barrel at any given time, but for a 150 barrel spill from a pipeline in State waters carrying exclusively OCS production to shore. The California nearshore and coastal areas are replete with natural seeps. It is estimated that over 1,000 barrels of oil each week are released into the environment from these seeps. (From the Coal Oil Point seeps alone, almost 200 barrels a day may be entering the ocean.) There is some evidence that commercial production of the reservoirs offshore has reduced the amount of oil that would naturally seep into the marine environment by reducing pressure in the reservoirs."

In other words, NATURAL oil seepage off the Cali coast dwarfs the oil seepage from oil drilling by a factor of 10,000 to 1, and yet we forbid drilling because of the fear of oil seepage. Go figure!!