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 ...
Lets see, 10 Billion bbl of oil at $70 per bbl is more dollars than I can count and thats money that would stay in the USA instead of of funding an Islamic Jihad or a central American revolution. Estimates are that it would provide over 700,000 US jobs. The lease fees alone would generate better than 3 billion dollars before a drop of oil is even pumped.
I didn't say we shouldn't drill and pump.
I am trying to put it in perspective.
We need more than ANWR.
Although they might hope we are simple enough to believe that and exhaust our time and energy fighting amoungst ourselves about where to drill, and who didn't vote on drilling. Keeps us too busy to notice....things.
The Answer is simple,we dont need oil
www.hemp4fuel.com
The lib environmentalists are destroying the country and the GOP that controls both the WH and capitol hill stands by and does nothing.
ANWR is a piece of the puzzle, a way to hedge in the future but we need to do other things: demand better fuel economy both in gov't standards and as consumers, drive more smartly (use cruise control if you have it, reduce your speeding, consolidate trips) and support getting away from oil longer term: biodiesel, hybrids, hydrogen research.
If we don't begin to seriously curtail our need for oil we'll be in major trouble when China truly booms in its oil demands. This is a national security issue and why we're not talking it more seriously I can only guess.
I think the pricing right now is a factor of pathetic competition forces, greed and the excuse that Iran could start another war which will threaten supplies.
ANWR by itself may produce 1 million barrels a day for ten years, which is in the same range as Prudhoe now, and NPR-A. Prudhoe produced about 2 million barrels a day at first, 20 years ago, and that was a bonanza. Oil consumption world-wide is 82 million barrels a day and in the US about 22 million barrels a day. This production is about what Saudi tries to increase from their fields every year lately. The effect on oil prices would be in the range of zero since North Slope oil production is not cheap, and the price of North Slope oil is only a couple dollars below some of the major indices.
Seems to go up every time I hear about it.
There's another enemy who isn't a hothead...but it pours cash into hostile islam (Wahhabism)...Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has done much more to damage the West than Iran or Chavez.
The royal family might be Bush family friends...but they are not friends of American.
BTTT
Part of that is the relative success at Prudhoe in getting fairly decent production from a field that was originally estimated to be depleted by now. Technology, geological knowledge make more oil available than would have been expected thirty years ago from the same field. ANWR should benefit from what has been learned at Prudhoe.
Recent Estimates say that there are 10 BILLION BBL's under the permafrost.""
Wasn't there a thread here just a couple of days ago about a larger find in Utah/Colorado?????
Obviously, you believe that should ANWR be drilled, we would stop production of all our other oil fields and stop the importation of all foreign oil...
And focus solely on using ONLY the oil found in ANWR.
Okaaaaaay...
Oil Shale - Very expensive to extract
ANWR can't be recovered at 19 million barrels per day. It would add supply to the market, driving down costs over a longer period, not just 526 days.
Bullsh!t. ANWR coastal plain would be no harder to produce than the rest of the North Slope. And it kept producing when oil was $10~12 eight years ago.
Alaskan North Slope Oil is NOT sold overseas. This has been the case for all but 4 years of the nearly 3 decades of Alaskan oil production. Between 1996-1999 5.5% of North Slope oil was exported to Asian countries. These exports were overwhelmingly supported by the US Congress and by the Clinton Administration to offset an oil glut in California at the time. In June 2000 Alaskan oil again ceased to be exported, and 100% of Alaskan production has stayed in America.
The West coast not only has enough refineries to take all of the Alaska oil and the oil produced on the West Coast, it imports and refines an additional 900,000 Barrel per day.
Well of course all the new housing being built (McMansions) for the last 10 years are heated by LNG.
Homes are not heated with LNG.
but we also refined crude for other countries so to try and fill existing contracts the American consumer gets shorted which helps drive the price up.
Nonsense.
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