Posted on 07/04/2008 6:10:04 PM PDT by Libloather
Five-point energy proposal may lower gas prices in near future
5-point plan aims to help rid nation of 'oil addiction'
By Kevin Clark | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
10:07 PM EDT, July 3, 2008
DEERFIELD BEACH - U.S. Rep. Ron Klein announced a "Declaration of Energy Independence" Thursday, a plan he hopes to push through Congress that he says will help the country with what he calls an "addiction to oil."
Klein, D- Boca Raton, thinks the plan, unveiled at a news conference, , could work to lower gas prices in the near future.
The five-point plan consists of:
• Imposing criminal penalties for gas price gougers;
• Stopping speculation that drives up oil prices;
• Demanding oil companies drill all the land they control but are not drilling before leasing new federal land;
• Expanding clean energy tax;
• Investing in research for affordable energy.
"Let's use American innovation and a sort-of Manhattan Project thinking," Klein said, referring to the 1940s effort that developed the atomic bomb. "Let's find the answers to these problems, and there's a science-based solution to them."
Klein particularly attacked a proposal for oil drilling off the Florida coast, saying the benefits wouldn't be realized for five to 10 years.
The Hill newspaper in Washington reported Wednesday that Klein owned between $1,000 and $15,000 in stock in Hornbeck Offshore Services, which doesn't drill but provides equipment such as tugboats to the drillers.
Klein also called for taking away subsidies from oil companies and possibly putting them toward challenge grants for scientists for alternative energy.
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
This guy is just proposing all the dem talking points that their minions have been sent out to spew on the nightly shows.
BTW, they’re happy we now have high oil prices and believe they will lead us to oil alternatives. If this were true, the historically high fuel costs in Europe would have already done this, but they haven’t.
We need to drill now, drill everywhere.
This silly 5-point scheme is guaranteed to have no effect whatever upon the supply of oil, thus the price of oil. All of the twisting and contorting to avoid expanding our own exploration is becoming laughable.
I don’t know what this idiot is smoking but he needs to stop or share.
His plan is no plan, throw him in the ocean.
Yes, drill all the leases with zero prospects identified, that'll use up the drilling budgets so there won't be any money to drill the better quality acreage, that's the ticket !
This talk of an energy “Manhattan Project” is absurd. There was well-understood and -developed science behind the Manhattan project. There’s nothing of the sort waiting in the wings to replace existing energy systems.
This would cause an inordinate number of dry holes, not to mention that many promising locations are not drilled because of the restrictions and prohibitions that still must be overcome to be able to drill on land already leased. Price gouging strictures would be de facto price controls and will, in enacted, dry pu the oil supply because the oilcos will know that their profits and some more will be extracted from them by the government. with "gouging" as the excuse. At the very least it will tie up the oilcos in litigation as every lefty group goes to court to sue because of every fluctuation in price.
"Nationalization" was not just a slip of the tongue or of the brain. It is in the minds of most of the Democrats and the left in general. And in a few months they will control Congress and perhaps the presidency.
And, the sooner we beging drilling, the closer we will be to that point where new supplies can help to alleviate the current conditions.
We have the means and the resources to be independent of ALL foreign oil. Unfortunately, we also have the LibTard Tree Huggers, Enviro-Whackos and the DhimmiRats standing in the way.
The only Manhattan project we need is the one to put these idiots on the sidelines until the rest of us secure the country, again...
Wow. Klein is so smart! Genius!!!
Forget free markets, he has all of the answers.
All in all, quite a program.
The World is addicted to and runs on oil and oil products. Get used to it or go back to the caves, enjoy raw food, bad teeth, poor health, freezing cold winters and blazing hot summers which will be lived in DARKNESS!
I truly hope that you are right, but I still see November 4 as being a very good day for Democratic Party increases at every level throughout most of the U.S.! Please have me be wrong about this prediction!
Congress should demand that the tooth fairy put an extra $5,000 under everyone’s pillow. That will solve the energy problem.
We’re all addicted to food, water and air. Wanna stop using all those, too, in the name of conservation?
how does he stop international speculation?
BTW, isn't this the guy who narrowly won his seat against a write-in candidate in 2006?
If you like $5/gal, Thank Congress in Nov.
Pray for W and Our Troops
To the liberals who insist that drilling now in ANWR and the continental shelf will take 10 years to begin to deliver oil to the market I say,
Do you think oil will be less expensive in 10 years?
Do you think we will need less oil in 10 years?
Only if we are in a depression that would make the 1930's look like boom years.
Drill Here, Drill Now!
This is so illogical I don't understand how every media outlet keeps saying this with a straight face.
If the oil companies were not drilling leases that had oil, because they wanted to restrict the amount of oil and drive up the prices, how would it "punish" them to prevent additional federal oil leases? Doesn't that in fact keep MORE land off the list of land being drilled for oil?
It's not like there are another dozen oil companies who WANT to drill but are being locked out because all the leases are taken already.
And wait -- if there WERE actually a dozen more oil companies who had no leases, and who were being locked out, and THAT was the point of this rule, wouldn't it make sense to open up new land for leasing, but only allow the new companies to drill it? Of course, there aren't any such companies.
So logically, this move by the Democrats simply restricts the government from earning more lease money, and holds land away from oil companies who the Democrats say aren't drilling the land they have -- thus leaving the additional lands undrilled.
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