"Voters clearly voted for big change, not Big Oil," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, an outspoken opponent of offshore drilling.
Posted on 07/14/2008 2:23:41 PM PDT by tobyhill
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, on Monday rejected a call by U.S. President George W. Bush to lift a moratorium on offshore oil drilling.
Bush announced on Monday that he lifted the executive branch's restriction on offshore exploration, saying only Congress stood in the way of opening up America's untapped oil riches.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas:
“A ban on drilling in the same Gulf that’s open to Venezuelans, Indians, Vietnamese and Cubans never made much sense except as a political barricade erected by anti-oil environmentalists in and out of Congress.”
Apparently we really do not know how much oil is located off our coasts. A lot of the current surveys were done over 20 years ago. Techniques for finding oil have vastly improved since then. We could be the next Saudi Arabia or the next Russia for all we know. Currently the US banking industry is bordering on insolvency. The US Federal Government is bordering on insolvency. What happened to Russia in 1999 when it defaulted, could happen here. We need to put our resources in play. Look what it did for Russia fiscally in just 9 years.
"Voters clearly voted for big change, not Big Oil," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, an outspoken opponent of offshore drilling.
Republicans complained that Reid is trying to duck the issue. “Does it seem to you, like it does to me, that Harry Reid is scared, chicken, to have a vote?” said Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, ranking Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Meanwhile, House leaders plan to bring to the floor this week a package of energy legislation centered on their proposal to force energy companies holding oil and gas leases to surrender any they are not using. A so-called use-it-or-lose-it bill (HR 6251) failed on June 26, 223-195,under a procedure that requires a two-thirds vote.
Jack Gerard, president of the American Chemistry Council, said he has seen “movement” by Democrats. The industry group backs expanded offshore drilling.
“For those of us who’ve been in the trenches for years on this, we’re seeing the ground beginning to shift and quake,” he said.
I realize what you are saying has happened, and will happen again. It happens in MA all the time, but we have very few people in the legislature here to oppose them. In WA they have only a one vote lead. And there are Democrats on board with some of the proposed bills the Dem leadership “shelved”. Which is why they did it, they know if it were brought to a vote, drilling would pass, and they cannot allow that, not with a republican in office. Not to mention that would derail their socialism plans some.
“Californians are all too familiar with the consequences of offshore drilling,” Feinstein said. “An oil spill in 1969 off the coast of Santa Barbara killed thousands of birds, as well as dolphins, seals and other marine animals. And we know this could happen again.”
Last year, Boxer, Feinstein and Democratic Rep. Lois Capps of Santa Barbara reintroduced a bill that would provide permanent protection for California’s coast from any future drilling.
It is hard to send money to a party that doesn’t know how to fight back or even communicate a message. Lots of people seem to be asleep at the wheel. Losing the Presidency may not even wake the Republicans up from their deep sleep.
That’s not the only reason why Democrats want high gas prices. They also want higher gas prices to create suffering & economic hardships so they can advance their socialist agenda of helping the little man that’s hurting by providing them with government programs. Democrats are also hoping to force automakers to end the production of big cars and start working on batteries on wheels.
It would just be vetoed.
Rats lose again.
*traditionally, the ban on offshore drilling is included in the DeptofInterior's annual budget. If the Rats make a war over this point such that Bush vetoes that budget, then it just means that a useless bureaucracy gets defunded...but while defunded, the ban on oil drilling offshore will still expire at the end of September.
Please keep in mind that Bush *already* got his Iraq War funding through the end of 2009...so the Rats have no leverage here. Bush has trumped them, and they've badly misplayed their own hand of cards.
former Congressman Joseph Kennedy II’s “not-for-profit energy company”
Citizens Energy Corporation is not the organization that is directly involved with the program. Rather, one has to first look to a holding company, which is a for-profit and wholly owned subsidiary of Citizens Energy’s called Citizens Enterprises Corporation: first, eighty-six percent of Mr. Kennedy’s over $400,000 annual salary comes from this organization. Second, among the nine companies that it manages is Citizens Program Corporation, which directly handles the Citgo heating oil program. This company went from having almost no assets in 2004 to recording the purchase and later sale of over two million dollars worth of oil in 2005. Then in the first half of 2006 they managed to buy over ten million dollars in oil which they sold for over sixteen million dollars.
However there’s a problem with the math in these deals. According to Citgo 40 million gallons of oil went to help 181,000 households last year, however Citizens Energy claims it was 170,000 households. Now if you take the average cost of home heating oil (which was $2.43 per gallon), and the amount of $6,463,078 that Citizens Programs Corporation claimed to have spent on this program, the greatest number of gallons they could have been provided was 2,657,702. This is significantly less than the forty million gallons Citgo claims to have provided. If this amount was supplied to the 170,000 families that Kennedy claims to have helped, it would mean that each of those homes would have received only 15.6 gallons (or 14.6 gallons if Citgo is to be believed).
Interestingly, the numbers provided by Citgo offer a breakdown by State on the number households aided and total gallons involved. The disparities by State offer a view into what this program really seeks to accomplish. In New York where the program was limited to Bronx and Harlem are the districts represented by Congressmen Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano, the latter being arguably Chavez’s biggest ally in the US Congress, the average household received 454 gallons of oil from Citgo. In Massachusetts — the Kennedy stronghold – was where Representative Bill Delahunt, who is Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight of the House Foreign Relations Committee welcomed the delivery of on average 240 gallons of oil per household. That’s also the most oil delivered to a single state.
So what are you going to do about the natural oil seepage that occurs along the Santa Barbara coast ? You gonna pass a bill to ban that too ? Can the citizens of California sue the state for the spill in the image below ?
Caption - Natural liquid oil seepage is observed throughout the year in the Santa Barbara Channel and in Santa Monica Bay. This Radarsat SAR image illustrates seepage off Coal Oil Point (COP) and Goleta Point (GP) in the Santa Barbara Channel. Surface current vectors from shore based HF radar arrays are overlaid in white, corroborating the apparent offshore flow field indicated by the SAR image.
Image and caption from - link
Apparently oil seepage has been naturally occurring for hundreds and thousands of years. Long before Sacramento even existed.
Citgo is owned by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the state-owned oil company controlled by Chavez. Any reasonable observer would have to conclude that the “JOE-4-OIL” advertisements and discounted heating oil program are very political.
In one ad, Kennedy accuses the U.S. government of cutting the federal budget for heating oil assistance while a picture of the White House floats in the background. The placement of the ads also appears politically motivated. How else to explain, for example, why the ads are running on “Meet the Press With Tim Russert” and “FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace,” shows for savvy political insiders that presumably have few viewers that qualify for heating oil assistance?
The “JOE-4-OIL” ads skip over the prominent role Chavez has played to intimidate OPEC to reduce oil production to raise prices, an act that hurts the poor first and foremost.
The poor in the United States are well-off by Venezuelan standards. Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation noted in a recent report that “97 percent of poor [U.S.] households have a color television.”
"Before energy producers are permitted to explore offshore, however, Congress must lift their own legislative ban against drilling off the shores of California, Florida and Virginia that has been in place since 1981. Congress will have an opportunity to do so when it returns from August recess. The ban must be renewed each year and is scheduled to expire on September 30, unless Congress takes action to keep it in place."
Call your representatives.
Boston Herald stated that “entities related to his Citizens Energy Corp. paid him [Joe Kennedy] more than $400,000 in 2003, the last year for which records are available.” Not bad for a non-profit executive willing to lend his name to a $9 million foreign disinformation campaign.
Nowhere did I say the oil companies have the final say in the matter. My statement is the these enviroweenies will have off-shore drilling tied up for years in the courts, hence...many years in delays to receive permission to drill.
Can someone give me a reference that states that the ban expires in Sept, or better yet, a link to the law?
But drill, drill, drill, has never been fully implemented.
I'm really hoping that Obama will pick him for VP, so he can exit the senate sooner rather than later. He'd balance the ticket perfectly: a mousy old white guy to provide "experience and maturity."
The voices of 1,300,000 Americans are clearly making a difference. Help us keep the momentum going by calling your Congressman or Senator at 202-224-3121 and urging them to lift the federal ban on offshore drilling.
American Solutions
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