An America First Energy Plan

President Bush was on message Wednesday in a Rose Garden news conference when he kept up the pressure on his a drill, drill, drill offensive.

He said he knows Americans are worried about gasoline prices, and said he wants them “to understand fully that we have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways.”

He specifically mentioned opening up ANWR, the outer continental shelf, and oil-shale exploration. He also took a whack at lawmakers, saying “the Democratically controlled Congress has refused to budge.”

That’s spot-on correct. But it has me wondering. Where in the world is John McCain on this very same issue? It’s simple: Sen. McCain should be pummeling Barack Obama daily on drill, drill, drill. Why? Because oil and gas pump prices are potentially the single-biggest wedge issue in the presidential campaign. Mr. McCain has to pound the point home.

According to a new Rasmussen poll, 48 percent of Americans say lower gas prices are the key to an economic recovery, and 60 percent are in favor of off-shore drilling.

Here’s another one. Rasmussen asked voters about the now-infamous Harry Reid YouTube video, where the senator says coal and oil are making us sick, and that fossil-fueled global warming is “ruining our country” and “ruining our world.” Well, Rasmussen shows that 52 percent of voters reject Reid on coal; 50 percent disagree with him on oil; and 51 reject his idea that we need to stop using fossil fuels.

And all this is McCain’s opportunity. He needs to hammer away on an America First energy policy that will completely deregulate and decontrol this nation’s great energy industry. He needs to mothball his errant statements on “obscene oil profits.” Instead, he needs to support and unleash all of our energy companies and entrepreneurs, allowing them to develop whatever it takes on oil, gas-to-liquid, clean coal, nuclear, offshore, onshore, oil shale, wind, solar, and biofuel.

America First should be the rallying cry. We have the natural resources to become the Saudi Arabia of coal and the Saudi Arabia of oil. Lift the moratoriums. Stop attacking our own businesses. Put technology to work. Put venture capital to work, with rock-bottom capital-gains and corporate tax rates. Stop being mau-maued by the extremist greenies who have prevented energy production for over three decades. America First. Unleash our free-enterprise energy sector: 2 trillion barrels worth of shale; 90 billion barrels of offshore oil; at least 10 billion barrels up in ANWR and more throughout Alaska, both onshore and off.

Politically, Sen. McCain must also understand how Hillary Clinton clobbered Barack Obama in the big state primaries: Blue-collar workers. They can be the key to victory for McCain. Guess who works in the energy business? Blue collar Reagan Democrats. They work on the rigs. They work in the fields. They drive the trucks. And they’re paid high wages -- substantially above the average hourly wage.

Or McCain can sell it this way: American workers are worried about jobs going offshore to India, China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. Well, a drill, drill, drill, America First energy plan would create millions of new domestic American jobs.

Of course, there’s also a national security aspect to this. Worried about funding terrorist rogue states? Drill, drill, drill. A complete portfolio of oil energy sources in America -- that’s the answer.

And while he’s at it, Sen. McCain should stop blaming “reckless traders.” As soon as you say “end the drilling moratoriums,” it is precisely those traders who will start selling oil contracts -- long before the first offshore oil barrels are delivered to market. If they see presidential leadership on oil and shale drilling, they will rapidly turn a bull market into a bear market.

Sen. Obama is opposed to drilling. Opposed to nuclear. Opposed to coal. He and Harry Reid believe wind, solar, and ethanol are the answers. They’re not. It’s doubtful even at full development and commercialization that these alternative technologies will ever power more than 10 percent of our energy needs. We should go down this road as part of a full energy portfolio. But let’s not kid ourselves: These sources alone will never be sufficient.

Sen. McCain has to make this case daily. He must contrast his America First energy plan with Obama’s declinist American vision. He must argue America First for fuel, power, jobs, wages, and national security. He must enlist the Reagan Democrats who may be out of work and are surely angry at $4 gas at the pump and $140 a barrel oil in the world market.

Take a page from Ronald Reagan, Mr. McCain. Be optimistic about our future. Be clear, straightforward, and consistent. We can grow this economy and remain number one. This is how to do it.

This sums it up pretty well. Big oil companies can't make a profit in the USA. That is why ExxonMobil, as well as all of the other majors have sold off most of their domestic production and moved over seas. In the USA, they can make a 1% return on their investment, while operating overseas they can average a 15% return. Simple math. The main cause is all of the government regulations that have been put on the companies.

To all,

This is very interesting reading about our oil industry. (Does not mention that no new refineries have been built in U.S. for years. Believe that the reason is that government regulations require hundreds ' sometime thousands, of millions of dollars to start and pursue the permits before and without any assurance that they will be able to build!

Bill Phillips spent nearly 50 years in the US oil and gas industry; most of his career was with the Phillips Petroleum Company. Bill is a descendant of Frank Phillips. Frank Phillips, along with his brother Lee Eldas (L.E.) Phillips, Sr., founded the original Phillips Petroleum Company in 1917 in Bartlesville, OK. Do you remember Phillips 66 gas stations? Phillips Petroleum Company merged with Conoco, Inc. in 2002 to form the current ConocoPhillips oil company.

So, when Bill talks about oil and gas issues, I tend to listen - very closely. I think that you will find Bill's thoughts and facts very revealing, very compelling and very difficult to argue with.

May 28, 2008 'Big Oil'

Did you know that the United States does NOT have any big oil companies. It's true: the largest American oil company, Exxon Mobil, is only the 14th largest in the world, and is dwarfed by the really big oil companies--all owned by foreign governments or government-sponsored monopolies--that dominate the world's oil supply. With 94% of the world's oil supply locked up by foreign governments, most of which are hostile to the United States, the relatively puny American oil companies do not have access to enough crude oil to significantly affect the market and help bring prices down. Thus, ExxonMobil, a 'small' oil company, buys 90% of the crude oil that it refines for the U.S. market from the big players, i.e, mostly-hostile foreign governments. The price at the U.S. pump is rising because the price the big oil companies charge ExxonMobil and the other small American companies for crude oil is going up as the value of the American dollar goes down. They will eventually bleed this country into printing even more money and we will go into runway inflation once again as we did under the Carter Democratic reign.

This is obviously a tough situation for the American consumer. The irony is that it doesn't have to be that way. The United States-- unlike, say, France--actually has vast petroleum reserves. It would be possible for American oil companies to develop those reserves, play a far bigger role in international markets, and deliver gas at the pump to American consumers at a much lower price, while creating many thousands of jobs for Americans.

This would be infinitely preferable to shipping endless billions of dollars to Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela to be used in propping up their economies.

So, why doesn't it happen? Because the Democrat Party--aided, sadly, by a handful of Republicans--deliberately keeps gas prices high and our domestic oil companies small by putting most of our reserves off limits to development. China is now drilling in the Caribbean, off Cuba but our own companies are barred by law from developing large oil fields off the coasts of Florida and California. Enormous oil-shale deposits in the Rocky Mountain states could go a long way toward supplying American consumers' needs, but the Democratic Congress won't allow those resources to be developed. ANWR contains vast petroleum reserves, but we don't know how vast, because Congress, not wanting the American people to know how badly its policies are hurting our economy, has made it illegal to explore and map those reserves, let alone develop them.

In short, all Americans are paying a terrible price for the Democratic Party's perverse energy policies. I own some small interests in tiny, 4 barrel-per-day oil wells in Wyoming. We have 14 agencies that have iron-hand jurisdiction over us. If we drop any oil on the ground when the refinery truck comes to pick up oil from our holding tanks, we are fined. Yet down the road the state will spray thousands of gallons of used oil on a dirt road to control dirt. When it rains that oil runs into rivers and creeks. Yet a cup of oil on the ground at our wellhead is a $50,000 EPA fine plus additional fines from state regulating agencies. They treat oil as if it were plutonium that has the potential to leak into the environment. We are fined if our dirt burms are not high enough around a holding tank, yet the truck that picks up our oil runs down the road at 60 mph with no burm around it. People wonder why there is no more exploration in this country. It's because of the regulators; people who have lived their whole lives doing nothing but imposing fines on small operators like us for doing mostly nothing.

So, America enjoy your $4.00 per gallon gasoline. Your dollar is now worth 0.62 Euro-Cents. The lack of American production of GNP, the massive trade deficit (as labor markets have moved overseas to fight insanely high union imposed labor costs in America) and the run away printing of money (backed by nothing of value here in America) has caused the dollar to become more worthless on the international market. And that's where our oil comes from. It's paid for with dollars that become more worthless everyday. If we had just kept par with the Euro we'd be paying $62 dollars per barrel for oil (42 gallons) or about $1.50 instead of $2.50 a gallon for crude oil.

What the US government also does not tell you is that it is the leaseholder and royalty recipient of most oil production and receives 25% of the gross oil sales before we pay for electricity to lift the oil, propane to keep the oil-water separators from freezing in the winters. We pay a pumper to visit each well everyday plus we have equipment failures all the time. We pay for that out of our 75% of gross sales. The government does not share in any expenses to run any production well. So, if the Big Oil Companies are making record profits, then so is the federal government from it's 25% tax on every molecule of oil sold to a refinery in this country. Why isn't the government on the stand for 'Record' profits? What you don't see is this 25% of the sales price of crude oil being siphoned away by the government. That money plus the road taxes, state taxes, etc. amounts to over $1 per gallon of gasoline you are buying while the governments only admit to about 50 cents per gallon.

To all you Democrats, when you go vote for your candidate, a blazing liberal like Barrack Hussein Obama or Hillary Clinton, just keep in mind that their liberal spending habits will further decrease the value of the American dollar on the world market and your gasoline costs will hike even higher. As they introduce more give-away programs, raise taxes on everyone to pay people not to produce or work, your dollar will continue to dwindle on the world market and you will be paying $10.00 per gallon at the next election. Cheap hydrocarbon fuel is all over. Enjoy! Enjoy the fruits of your decision to elect these folks when you are there in that voting booth and you stab your pin through a Democrat's name.

William 'Bill'Phillips

Compliments of the Democrats in Congress!

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