W begs Congress for Off Shore DrillingFollow

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080618/ap_on_bi_ge/offshore_oil

again...

Unfortunately Democrats, controlled by rabid liberals, have no intention of doing this. If Obama is elected get ready for 7$ a gallon, and they'll probably still blame W.

Varrus's **** & vinegar dries up in a hurry when someone agrees with him

Link

It must be his age... My mum is 68, and she sometimes forgets what she has already said.

Edited, Jun 18th 2008 9:41pm by paulsol

Every bit of oil will be drilled up eventually. It is just a question of when and how gracefully it is done. It's a nonrenewable resource (on human timescales) so it is very shortsighted to drill now. Particularly when alternatives abound. It may well be that oil is eventually principally used for aviation, military and sport.

My understanding is that without reprocessing, nuclear is short term. (Fission at least, fusion is not yet ready). So McCain's plan for a massive number of new plants may also be rather short term (unless my info is just outdated) unless we're talking about reprocessing - which I doubt the American public will go for. I think I've mentioned it before, but this has been done (the French did it with superphoenix or something) but the effort was abandoned as cost prohibitive.

Setting aside reprocessing, there is high level spent fuel and storing it all in Nevada isn't going to fly so the politicians will have to do something more palatable such as maybe 10 regional facilities. I think the public just feels it is unfair to dump it all in one place.

I for one am appalled at the dearth of in-practice alternative energy sources in this country, as well as the lack of affordable high-efficiency vehicles available. I don't care if it's because the economics of the market didn't support it...this is a case where the free market fails. It's driven by self-interest and self-interest doesn't extend beyond one's own lifetime. And now it appears we are woefully behind in development and implementation.


Disclaimer: the above is entirely conjecture and I will supply no supportive references.

Except that in order to do the necessary R&D to develop those alternatives to the point where they can actually replace fossil fuels, we need to keep using the non-renewable energy sources actively.


Let me present a little thought experiment. What would happen if we reduced our oil and coal use to just enough to keep our citizens alive, but nothing more. We could very likely stretch those resources out for 2 or 3 times as long, but we'd have nothing left over to put into developing alternative fuels. So when they run out, we're screwed.

If we burn a bit more and faster, we can promote a healthy economy which can support the research needed. I think it's shortsighted to insist that we shift to alternatives *now* instead of taking maximum advantage of the relatively cheap cost of oil and coal today while continuing work to make those alternatives more efficient so that they are more viable tomorrow.


Right now, alternatives at their current technological level, could provide about 30-50% of the entire power needs of our country. That's pretty much it. And that's not what they currently provide. That's how much total power we could get out of them if we fully adopted them (ie: grew as much ethonol producing plants as we possibly can, put wind power plants everywhere we can, put solar power plants everywhere we can, etc...). We need much much more if we are to fully remove our need for oil and coal. To do that, we must continue developing more efficient means of utilizing those alternative fuels. That could be genetic engineering to create more efficient biofuels, research into exotic materials to use for solar energy collection, research into super lightweight materials for use in wind or wave power, and that's not including such "future tech" type things like cold fusion, zero point energy, etc...


All of those require some pretty high tech work, which in turn requires an economy capable of supporting said endeavors. You can't do that if you tune your power use down to a subsistence-like level.

It would be truly ironic if at our current energy consumption rate we're say 25 years away from inventing cold fusion or something equally world changing that would allow us to have nearly endless cheap and clean power, but we're so concerned about burning oil and coal that we limit their production and make it so expensive that we're unable to ever figure it out. I'm thinking that a zillion years from now, some alien species would write an entry into their intergalactic encyclopedia about the human race that says something like "Not around anymore cause they were stupid".

Back to Earth boy!

That is honestly one of the dumbest things I've ever seen you type. And it faces some stiff competition.

It'd also be ironic if I decided not to take a short-cut to work every day by walking through some dark alleys and abandoned buildings, not knowing that I'm missing the chance to trip over a Hefty bag full of untracable drug money which would keep me from ever having to work again. Be that as it may, I'm still going to avoid dark alleys knowing that the reality is that I'll just get shived.

Incidentally, it's funny that the "decider" suddenly declines to overturn his father's executive order blocking off-shore drilling and instead decides to say that Congress really needs to do it instead. The reality is that the GOP doesn't care about drilling because they know it won't affect oil prices -- they just want to make political hay before the election.

Edited, Jun 19th 2008 10:28am by Jophiel

again...

Unfortunately Democrats, controlled by rabid liberals, have no intention of doing this. If Obama is elected get ready for 7$ a gallon, and they'll probably still blame W.
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you really miss the big picture.

1. even if this was authorized TODAY, it would be 5 to 7 years before the first drop of oil was pumped out of these new areas.

2. who do you think would end up footing the bill for the billions of dollars invested to build and support the new oil platforms? yep. you. how? higher gas prices. the gas prices would SOAR for the first 5 ot 7 years before the oil started being pumped out of the ground. it would probably be 10 years MINIMUM before the prices would level off and mabe even start to come down.

3. while this would LESSON our dependancy on foreign oil, it would do NOTHING to curb our soaring energy demands. and eventually, even that oil would run out.

4. oil companies are ALREADY sitting on millions of acres of PUBLIC, read YOUR land they already have leases for that they havent lifted a finger on to develop. they want more but havent even used half of what has already been granted them. what makes you think they have any intention of producing the new fields?

here is economics101.

if you sell 100 percent of your product, and still do not meet the total demand, your product is worth MORE money, ie, you make MORE profit. if you produce more product than there is demand for, your product is worth LESS money and there for you make LESS profit.

the ideal situation is to sell 100 percent of your product for top dollar and only satisfy 80 percent of the demand. why? because you can trade the last 20 percent on the open market to the most desperate of the consumers who might have to go without to keep the price of the other 80 prcent as high as possible. it is better to import the last 20 percent to trade with than produce 100 percent of the demand and have that drop off in the slow season and have the value of your product plunge.

bottom line, its a sucker punch. a play on public hysteria to give the giants the status quo for another 10 to 20 years atleast. it is not only not a good long term solution, it isnt even a good short term solution. all they want to do is buy up the leases and sit on them to use for bargaining chips with each other.

a fact for you. 100 PERCENT of the oil we pump out of alaska today is sold to Japan and other aisian countries. NOT use for U.S. interests. and we want to give them more to sell to other people?

the dems called it right. more oil is not a solution for either long term or short term energy answers.

a better answer is to take that 14 billion dollar tax cut we handed the oil industry and subsidize hydrogen refueling stations for the type of vehical Honda rolled off their assembly line last week. a hydrogen fuel cell/electric car that usses ZERO petrolium products. 14 billion dollars will subsidize alot of gas station upgrades.

thats a much better short term and long term solution. and probably why Exxon is selling all of its company owned gas stations this year. the Honda is being leased right now in this country. nissan just went into partnership with NEC to mass produce lithium ion batteries for their electric vehical.

the solution is not more oil, its getting off oil all together.

Interactive map showing the percentage of lands leased to energy companies versus how much of that land is producing oil/gas.

The Pacific Northwest as well.They have W. Virginia in the bag, though!

Edited, Jun 19th 2008 12:07pm by Jophiel