Posted on 09/17/2008 9:27:28 AM PDT by markomalley
- The official surveys are 30-40 years old. - Whether or not there is oil, it has to be economically feasible for the oil companies to recover it. - Oil is traded on a global market. In other words, even if we say that US oil is for the US only, the net effect will be to reduce demand on globally traded resources. Implied is the fact that if oil costs less, the demand will increase.
Bottom line is that this is not a panacea (but, regardless, there is an absolute requirement to drill here, drill now)
Have you noticed that since our country is looking to produce its own oil, the Middle East has dropped the price of their oil. When oil was about $10 a barrel, it wasn’t worth the effort to drill our own oil. Once the Middle East realized we wouldn’t drill, they started raising their price to see how much we would take. They are finding out. If we use 25% of the worlds oil, and we start producing our own, that puts more oil on the market. Somewhere between 0-25% for the world to use.
I don’t believe anyone is suggesting that drilling will make America “oil independent”. What it will do is ease the crunch a bit while efforts are made get alternative resources lined up and working. Every advocate of “drill here, drill now” that I have read or heard has demanded that development of any and all sources of energy be pursued including nuclear, coal, natural gas, solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal and anything else that has a chance to make a difference.
One of the great scams being perpetrated on the American people is that even if we opened up OCS, there is no way there is enough oil there to make us independant of foreign oil. Brazil is example A of what happens with you combine new technology with a willing gov’t to search for oil. The HUGE reserves just discovered were untradeep SUBSALT deposits, which means they lie in very deep water, under a layer of thick salt. The reason this is important is that the surveys taken 30-40 years ago had no way to technically see what was under these salt layers. Even today, with 3_D seismic, it is still very tough to see oil deposits under these salt layers. The key is that they are there, just waiting to be discovered, but unfortunately for us, the gov’t will not allow oil comapnies to even LOOK for those deposits, let alone drill.
With modern technology and an agressive exploration program in ALL of the promising areas of Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, and Alaskan waters and ANWR, we probably have a couple hundred billion bbls of oil. The jobs which could be created, tax dollars on production generated, and lower energy costs for consumers could solve out economic problems within ten years, it is only the enviromarxist democrat party that is stopping us.
This article starts from a false premise — that McCain’s plan for “energy independence” is only based on offshore drilling. Hence it is a waste of time.
Off shore drilling alone won’t do it. However it is a key factor in becoming oil independent. Also included must be on-land drilling, oil shale, and coal gasification. Energy must include nuclear, wind and solar. That will hold us until new technologies are developed and in the market long enough to get down to the average consumer.
Main problem is that while conservatives understand what “energy independent” means the liberals think it means “independent of energy”.
Oil is traded on a global market
That is what I am to understand, as well - everybody drills and puts their oil on the global market (thus evening the playing field) and the gas companies buy it.
If we drill (oil companies pay for and reaps the rewards of that risk) and NOT put that oil on the global market, our prices would hopefully go down.
For example, gas prices in Saudi are at 70 cents - because they skim their needs off the top of what they put on the global market.
It has been quite some time since Scientific American has been a reliable source for any kind of scientific information. What was once a great magazine has now become just another source of PC Junk Science. It was a great loss. I loved Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games and the well researched scientific articles of the old SA. But they are gone forever for me. I wouldn’t waste my time reading Scientific American anymore than I would read Time or Newsweek.
“”Do you think oil companies are going to sell [U.S. oil] to U.S. consumers for anything less than top price?,” he asks. “The answer is no.””
But the money would stay in the U.S. — rather than being sent to the treasuries of enemies of the U.S. (Plus Canada of course — we don’t belong on the “enemy” list.) National security and balance of payments are as important as the price of gas at the pump.
Also, under the scenario in the article, the “top price” would be much higher if the U.S. does not produce more than it is now.
I wonder how much oil and gas there is on the East Coast of the United States.. As far as I can tell nobody KNOWS..
Correcto. The market will tell us.
This article is missing the point. What drilling would do is stop the huge transfer of wealth from the U.S. to Russia and the Middle East, lowering our standard of living and raising theirs. Sure prices would flutuate with the world market, but money flow would stay in the U.S.
I know one thing for damn-skippy-certain.......NOT drilling (offshore or onshore) won’t do a damned thing to reduce our foreign oil dependence.
“Whoever talks about oil independence has to tell a story about how we close a 15-million-barrel gap.”
That’s really a bogus argument. It’d be great if we did become 100% self-sufficient in crude production, but it might not be possible in the foreseeable future.
But doubling our production, from 8 million to 16 million barrels per day could give us enough additional production to keep prices reasonable. And, the ideal situation would be to produce more than we produce now, still buy on the international market, and have a reserve production capacity of a few million barrels to put in play when prices become unreasonable for whatever reason.
Plus, we should develop the alternatives that can be reasonably competitive, and further reduce our need for imported crude with alternatives.
Why ask a question that has been answered?
It will take many solutions but corn is not the answer.
The point being if our demand on a global market is reduced because of increased domestic supplies, either the price will drop precipitously or OPEC will throttle back on their production levels, in order to maintain a steady price.
It really is not realistic to not be on that global market, unless we can be assured that we would be 100% self-sufficient for petroleum for a long, long time. Even if we were, it is not reasonable to assume that the oil companies would not control their production levels to assure that our domestic prices for crude oil would pretty closely track to the global price.
Remember, if we have a resource that we are hoarding, the rest of the world can punish us in other ways.
The primary advantages I see are twofold:
#1) We would be insulated from interruptions in supply as the result of hostile actions elsewhere in the world (embargo, war, terrorism, etc.). Our prices might rise, but at least the oil would flow.
#2) As balls pointed out in #13, the wealth would not be transferred overseas. As balls didn’t mention, though, it would be a huge cash cow to our federal and state balance sheets, from royalties paid on the production.
And keeping a boatload of dollars in play in OUR economy.. creating jobs and even taxes..
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