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StumbleSun editorial:
A new push for oil
Bush administration’s latest effort to open sensitive areas to drilling should be stopped
Friday, May 23, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.
Using high gas prices as an excuse to pursue drilling on environmentally sensitive lands, the Interior Department issued a report Wednesday extolling “vast untapped oil and natural gas resources” in the United States.
The report claims land owned by the federal government could produce 31 billion barrels of oil and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, but it laments that much of the land is off-limits to drilling.
In a crass statement aimed at consumers’ wallets, the Interior Department called for opening up federal land for drilling as a way to ease prices at the pump. It is questionable whether that would happen if all the areas were opened for drilling. The report doesn’t go into any detail about the economic realities of oil and gas exploration. Left unsaid is whether it would be practical, much less profitable, to drill in any of these areas.
In addition, environmental concerns about drilling are glossed over in the report. For example, the report identifies land near Ventura, Calif., as a prime location to drill without acknowledging the serious damage that years of oil drilling have done along the California coast. The report also lists the potential for oil exploration in northern Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which although off-limits has been coveted by the Bush administration.
Drilling can foul the air, land and ground water, and it is with good reason that the government has outlawed drilling in national parks and other environmentally sensitive areas.
Those prohibitions are the target of this report as the Bush administration, in its waning days, tries to help one of its greatest allies, the oil industry. This mad rush to drill, however, is foolish. America shouldn’t be pushed into an energy policy because of fear-mongering over gas prices. Congress should prevent any effort to drill in those areas.
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There is enough gas and oil under the soil of Alaska (not to mention the Dakotas and the Gulf of Mexico) to meet the energy needs of the United States for the next 150-200 years. There is also no reason that gas should cost more than $1.50 a gallon (which is about what it was before Bush became President).We must begin drilling for the domestic oil that we know exists.
I am so sick of the pandering to the whacko crowd. We have the ability to be free of the middle east and Venezulan oil, and yet the Democrats do everything they can to keep the gas prices high
and the subsidies to the millionaire farmers for ethanol in place.
Democrats for the people? I don't think so!
Your op-ed insures that America remains at the mercy of enemies and terrorists.
Your op-ed insures that the hidden TAX of unnecessarily high fuel prices enrich oil companies, state and local governments and the oil-middlemen who were, this week, the latest "kangaroo court" whipping boys of the Uber-Lib Congressional by the 2006-lib-led Congress.
Your op-ed represents efforts to insure our next generations are much poorer than those who came before.
Your op-ed doesn't even represent the environMENTAL movement. Any such "conservation" efforts to use less has no effect on supplies strained. Less "greenhouse gases" re: "saving the environment" are more than NEGATED by the rise of the parts of the world who simply do not care about pollution, greenhouses gases and smog and on and on and on. China, India, Asia = will more-than swamp any conservation results in the free, capitalist world with their careless growth, massive pollution and an uncaring attitude about cleaning it up at all.
Your op-ed insures that the economic elasticity of lower fuel prices will NOT be realized = tying up trillions in capital WITH "Big-Oil" that could be used for development of fuel alternatives.
Your op-ed insures that America has a weaker dollar and a weaker economy than we have been used to in our nation's history.
Your op-ed insures that America's enemies will feel free to plunder America's wealth; and in essence pay those who want America crippled and/or dead.
Your op-ed is representative of true hypocritical politics. These SELF-imposed hardships and restrictions harm and injure millions of your countrymen == but enrich and support those who want us dead.
Your op-ed is simply not the American Way!!
The posters here today miss a number of important points.
1) Allowing drilling in sensitive areas doesn't mean that oil companies will save money and then pass the savings on to us. It means oil companies will get to drill on public lands and then sell that oil to us at the going rate. We will have sacrificed our land but we won't get any financial benefit from it. Exxon sure will, though.
2) Supply-side fixes for our oil problem won't work. The math is inexorable. We can't continue to use oil at the rate we do and expect the supply to last no matter how large it is. It has to do with the exponential rise in consumption. Oil consumption worldwide is increasing by five percent per year. That's five percent over the previous year's consumption, not some baseline. It's like compound interest. Do a simple test. Plug the number 100 into your calculator and then multiply it by 1.05 (a 5% increase) twenty-five times and see what happens. I'll save you the trouble: in twenty-five years worldwide oil consumption will be 339% of what it is today. The only way to keep from being caught up in the chaos that that kind of competition for oil will bring about is to stop using so much oil. No amount of drilling - in Alaska or anywhere else -is going to change that.
3) Continuing to use oil - no matter its source - plays into the the hands of terrorists by furthering worldwide reliance on their products. If we started drilling in Alaska do you think Halliburton would move their corporate headquarters out of Dubai and in to Anchorage?
"Your op-ed insures (sic) that the economic elasticity of lower fuel prices will NOT be realized = tying up trillions in capital WITH "Big-Oil" that could be used for development of fuel alternatives."
Is this an admission that we need to develop alternatives to oil? This statement, however, is in error in two significant ways. The first is the belief that opening Alaska to drilling will have a significant effect on the price of a barrel of oil. Even if Alaska provides 1 million barrels per day, worldwide consumption is over 80 million barrels per day and is increasing by 5% per year. Adding Alaskan oil to that mix won't lower prices. The second problem is the assumption that money we don't spend on gas will be spent on developing alternatives. NVMakz,if the price of a gallon of gas dropped $1 today would you invest that money in some solar company, or would you just buy another bottle of George Dickel? Or are you suggesting we tax that dollar savings?
1) There have been engineers analyzing better ways to extract oil and natural gas. We've all read them from time to time. NOT effecting the supplies and abilities for CAN do will only insure strangulation = while leaving some trump cards off the table. This makes no sense economically or politically.
2) With the massive amounts of raw material at our disposal, to say it will not effect global is simply laughable. SO much is now - but will not be forever - locked away. Choking supply while allowing the 5% to keep prices artificially high?? Is that it? Your solution is to let that 5% annual demand rise get away from all of us?? Increased supplies help effect prices. Someone else googled this math argument early this week. Same fallacies apply now as then.
3) This is SO 2002! Not extricating ourselves to our best abilities - THIS - plays into the hands of America's enemies. My comments before about this stand. NOT taking action to replace their supply of oil to us keeps we all tied closer than WE want. The liberal's agenda decries dependance, then disallows our own options.
xxxxxxxxx
"Your op-ed insures (sic) that the economic elasticity of lower fuel prices will NOT be realized = tying up trillions in capital WITH "Big-Oil" that could be used for development of fuel alternatives."
Is this an admission that we need to develop alternatives to oil?
xxxxxxxxx
I have ALWAYS said this.
Add it all up == the Continental Shelf, the massive oil-shale and oil-sand discoveries in the upper-central US, ANWR (1/4 of a postage stamp against a football field) - The Gulf - and on and on and on.... "We" have several hundred years with increased economic firepower and financial ability to PAY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVES - but for the eco-fascist. The macro-view politics is winning by the week. Global Warming, being chipped away as science wakes up from its "Algorian Slumber"(mq).
The rest of the last paragraph is the same old tired focus on ANWR alone. The micro-view.
Trillions in economic benefits are being held away from your own citizenry = while Russia, China, Hugo C, Middle-Eastern Muslims are fattening up. This IS the eco-socialist corrosive within.
NVMakz's grammar lesson for the day? Usage.
You insure your house.
You ENSURE events will happen.
Carry on.
"the bs" provides the irrelevant bandwidth waste for the day.
Thanks for not - once again - feeling like you had anything to contribute.
Another day, another day of crickets from "the bs".
yawn............
NVMakz's dictionary lesson of the day? Tautology.
(from Webster's Revised Unabridged)
4.(Rhetorical) Reiteration, or repeating the same word, or the same sense in different words, for the purpose of making a deeper impression on the audience.
Mere repetition of your debunked arguments do not make them stronger, nor inherently correct. It's repetition for repetition's sake, which is circular in it's own right.
You're the commenting equivalent of a merry-go-round. Fun for a few minutes, then we bore easily, cause it's the same ol' schtick. I'm content to sit on the sidelines and watch.
I do that sometimes, especially with Glenn Beck. Pop some popcorn and just chuckle at the clown on TV whose voice raises an octave or two every half hour. What's the new danger, Beck? Are scary muslims coming to kill us? Man, why doesn't Nancy Pelosi get it?!? It's obvious!
Sometimes I just like a taste of the empty calories courtesy of your particular flavor of crazy.
Bravo to the Readership of the Sun, which reflect the opinions of most Americans......
The whackos and extremists that prevent contained and delicate drilling in 2% of ANWR should be condemned to buy gas for the rest of us....relieving our slavery to Middle East Oil which now dictates the direction of the strongest country in the Galaxy....
Your Opinion Editor sucks and is in the minority!