The Audacity of Nope
Obama’s oil policy.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDYzZmRhODdhNGVmZGUyNWNhZDM3NDEwNWMxODg1MjY
Since 1981, Congressional appropriations amendments effectively have barred Interior from financing or permitting survey expeditions — particularly and precisely in the 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf where oil production and exploration are verboten.
In 2005, Congress mandated new, quintennial inventories, then gave Interior six months and $0.00 to assess how much oil and natural gas undergird the 1.76 billion-acre Outer Continental Shelf — a laughably impossible task.
“They couldn’t even board a research vessel,” explains a congressional staffer who studies these issues. Interior’s “paper inventory,” the aide adds, “examined Canadian and West African coastal data, imagined where those sediments pooled before the Continental Drift, then extrapolated to guesstimate what’s off our Atlantic coast today.”
The resulting document states: “Resource estimates are highly dependent on the current knowledge base, which has not been updated in 20 to 40 years for areas under congressional moratorium. . . . ” Translation: “We have no idea what’s really out there.”
Obama’s “Oil SENSE Act” would repeal the 2005 Energy Policy Act’s authorization of these inventories. Introduced in January 2007, S.115 would leave decision makers with Carter Administration maps drawn with pre-PC technology.
Obama’s so bright we can just face our solar shields his way day or night, more of tire pressure’s ancient technology only;
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDYzZmRhODdhNGVmZGUyNWNhZDM3NDEwNWMxODg1MjY
Obama’s bill would prohibit expanded use of 3-D, color seismic techniques that locate and measure underwater oil deposits — even though those tools are in wide use where offshore drilling is allowed, such as the western Gulf of Mexico.
In October 1999, President Clinton’s Energy Department evaluated the environmental quality of 1970s’ 2-D equipment against last decade’s 3-D technology.
With the latter, Energy concluded, “Overall impacts of exploration and production are reduced because fewer wells are required to develop the same amount of reserves.”
In 1970, 17 percent of offshore wells struck oil. By 1997, that figure was 48 percent.
Here’s page 2;
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDYzZmRhODdhNGVmZGUyNWNhZDM3NDEwNWMxODg1MjY=&w=MQ==
Contemporary 4-D surveying adds the dimension of time. Satellites help find and quantify subsea deposits, track their flows, and predict their next steps. Some 70 percent of 4-D wells hit oil.
Obama’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Drill policy spurns these marvels and embraces outdated information gathered with obsolete instruments. This is the audacity of ignorance.
Adults should not make decisions in willful obliviousness. Democrats like Obama prefer not to know what riches rest off America’s coasts — since, from their perspective, only bad things can arise politically from finding good things scientifically. They resemble kindergartners who cover their ears and hum loudly to muffle their parents’ unwelcome words.
Meanwhile, Americans struggle to fuel planes, trains, and automobiles. Despite this national nightmare, Congressional Democrats fled on a five-week summer vacation, rather than vote on Republican amendments to extend offshore drilling. Democrats chose suntan oil over oil production.