Posted on 04/21/2006 4:16:43 PM PDT by Species8472
The gasoline prices at the pump in Washington, D.C., are headed for $4 a gallon, after surpassing the $3 mark a week ago. So say those who follow the 40-cent-a-month increases that have been the rule since the cherry blossoms bloomed.
You wonder whether anybody in the Senate or the House has noticed.
They blame everybody but themselves for the predicament facing motorists across the nation, including here in Alaska, as the summer driving season nears.
It’s the fault of President Bush. It’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfelt’s fault. Blame it on our presence in Iraq. Russia surely has something to do with it. And maybe even the debate on immigration reform. Anybody and anything but those members of Congress who steadfastly have refused to vote for oil exploration and development on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Oil from ANWR would now be flowing to market had not former President Bill Clinton, wrapped in the green coat of environmental extremism, vetoed legislation that would have opened the coastal plain. Since then, renewed efforts to get production from this barren coastline have failed under pressure from environmental lobbies and congressmen seeking election votes rather than searching for energy supplies.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, the Washington state Democrat who is running for re-election, is one of the anti-ANWR champions. She and others like her argue that opening ANWR now would not relieve crude oil shortages now.
She’s right, of course. It will take 10 years, the experts say, for exploration and development to reach the point where discoveries can begin to flow south in the trans-Alaska pipeline.
But had not Clinton scrubbed the previous deal, ANWR oil would be on the market now.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Why don't we drill there then?
Norm Coleman is reminded of his stupidity on this every week in my e-mails to him.
That's the middle of the road estimate. Could be less, could be more. I doubt we'll ever find out though.
You can have all the crude available in the world but if there aren't enough refineries to make gasoline out of it, you're not going to affect the price...
BTTT
Exactly - how about Republicans step up and introduce emergency legislation authorizing drilling, and releasing strategic reserves in the meantime.
I think it's hilarious that the environazis downplay the ANWAR estimates as being sufficient for only 6 months oil at our present consumption rates but Prudhoe is recognized as a monster field. Maybe when oil hits $100 a barrel congress will get off it's ass and pass legislation allowing drilling in ANWAR but even then I'm not optimistic. Even if they do the greens will get some accompanying legislation mandating 50mpg by 2010.
Capitol Hill… created the conditions for this mess last summer with its latest energy bill. That legislation contained a sop to Midwest corn farmers in the form of a huge new ethanol mandate that began this year and requires drivers to consume 7.5 billion gallons a year by 2012. At the same time, Congress refused to include liability protection for producers of MTBE, a rival oxygen fuel-additive that has become a tort lawyer target. So MTBE makers are pulling out, ethanol makers can’t make up the difference quickly enough, and gas supplies are getting squeezed....
Of course Bush has pi$$ed away 5 years during which he has seen this coming, he's had a majority on capitol and could have "steamrolled" through anything he needed to get oil from ANWR, the Gulf, etc. His "govern by consensus" approach is killing us,
As an example, some gold mines shut down when gold prices are below mining costs, maybe $300 or $400 per ounce.
There is a great benefit of high gas prices, think of all the taxes the government is raking in :)
With a 7.5B barrel/oil US domestic consumption, ANWR would give us at most ~ 1.5 yrs (but realistically less - becomes increasingly less cost efficient as the reserve goes down - the "dried up" oil fields in Oklahoma and Indonesia still have considerable amounts of oil - but harder to pump.
The quality is less that the "sweet crude", barely-needing-refining oil we get from the older, more established fields like in Saudi Arabia, adding to the cost.
We should keep our oil in the ground as long as possible. With China and India coming "online" as consumers, that oil will be worth alot more down the road.
Oil companies will always figure out a way to keep the price high if they can get away with it. The oil that's pumped out of Alaska now largely goes to the Pacific rim countries - the oil industry can get a higher price there than here. Alternative energy sources would force them to compete.
If drilling in the Arctic is impolitic now, it never will become politic. We must assume that no oil exists there because we never will get any oil from there. We can achieve energy independence only by imposing an embargo on oil imports, controlling petrol prices, decreeing confiscatory taxation on oil companies, and electing Democrats who have the political will to make the American people so miserable.
The U.S. uses around 19 million bbl's per day...we'd suck that hole dry in 526 days. What next?
Bush could issue an Executive order opening up any and all areas he wants for drilling. He doesn't because it would drive down the cost, and after all, he believes the tripe liberals try to sell us about new types of energy, and that we will run out of oil soon anyway.
I'm glad someone is saying this. Why in the sam hill are we not drilling in AWR? Why are we not saying that in order to have more gas we need to drill for it???
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