And THERE You Have It... Why You're Paying $4+ For A Gallon Of Gas...

[Shogun]

Those good old days are gone. That travelling was based on excess. The cars were gas hogs for one thing. IF you ever HAD to travel those old US highways where you had to pass through ever Tom, Dick and Harry little town and hit all their lights and get nailed by the local yokels' speed traps, or nailed with an absurd auto mechanic charge, you might think differently.

Then too, the culture that was then no longer exists. We used to be the USofA. Now, we're a conglomerate of irreconcilable differences.

I disagree. There is an America for each of us to discover much in the same line of Kerouac's On the road. If we remove the gas factor I see no reason to keep America from traveling again. I mean, National Lampoon's Vacation should not be a thing of the past.

Perhaps it's exactly localized conglomerates that are the product of diminished national exploration? Perhaps facilitating population movement to SEE the rest of America is the kind of thing we could use these days. Roadside diners, quirky attractions and various vacation spots would do our economy good AND impress similarities that we just cant see via the intertubes.


SING IT!
[youtube]a6e0qhfzu0[/youtube]


DAMMIT

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a6e0qhfzu0[/ame]


(notice the St. Louis Arch in the beginning frame!)

 

[tipper]

Does it really matter whose fault it is? Just start the drilling so our gas prices get back to somewhat normal.

 

[Mohican83]

I don't trust the oil companies to drop prices if they are allowed to drill off our coast.

 

[Ravi]

I don't trush the oil companies to drop prices if they are allowed to drill off our coast.

Smart. Why would anyone trust the oil companies?

 

[Mohican83]

The republicans believe in letting business take care of business and not regulating business. But business is out for profit and not the good of the american people. What would keep oil companies from jacking up prices. They are making record profits and I don't see them wanting to lower their profit margin.

 

[bjones7890]

i really don't believe on what i hear...

 

[Eightball]

Here's the mentality we're dealing with in one example that I personally experienced, and can be multiplied thousands of times throughout the U.S.A..

I get a knock at the door two days ago. A young man of college age with a clipboard greets me with a smile and a "Hello.". "I'm representing folks who are fighting global warming, and pollution of our planet.".

I expressed to the young man that I didn't buy into the global warming hype, and even mentioned to him that we just experienced a mini-ice age that finished up in the 1700's, where millions of souls were lost to plague, starvation, etc.. because of the downturn of global temps.. The fellow's eyes glazed over, and then he started on his memorized monologue of how we need to invest in alternative energy, and especially solar, and wind power.

I explained to him that wind power is a negative sum gain, as it was subsidized by the U.S. government way back, and folks were building expensive wind generators for small bucks because us tax payers were paying for them. Also I explained to him that these windmills don't pay for themselves unless they are mainly subsidized, so the money has to come from somewhere........it isn't free. The electricity these windmills produce in their lifetime will not pay for cost of the windmill generator.

I explained to him that his group probably thought this an abomination, but "nuke" power was the safest, cleanest, means of power available, and that groups such as his had thwarted, continuing atomic power plant production in this country, via scare tactics of horrendous undocumented/supported consequences to our populous, starting with brainwashing our children in the public school system.

He just didn't get it. I asked him which country in the world has experienced the worst consequences of the Atomic age? He said, "Japan, of course!". I agreed, and asked him if he knew what Japan was doing about supplying electric power to their grid? He didn't have a clue. I explained to him that Japan is building Nuke power plants..........Yes the folks that lost so many of their own at Hiroshima and Nagasaki! I asked why would the progressive Japanese follow that plan of supplying their nation with power, and us, the U.S.A. who had a little "blip" at Three Mile Island, that was blown all out of proportion by the anti-nuke/anti-growth/anti-everything movement do just the opposite? He hadn't a clue.

I asked him what he thought of hydrogen as a future fuel? H20 out of our car/truck tailpipes would be great? He agreed. Well, the only plausible, mass scale way to do it is through electrically breaking H20 molecules apart and not through algae, fuel cells, or hydrogen generators. Right now it is negative sum gain when it comes to using hydrogen as a fuel to replace oil, natural gas, propane, methane.....etc.... Why? Cause it takes more energy to free-up H2 from water than the amount of work or energy you get from it when you burn it in an internal combustion engine........................Yet!...........If we had a major nuke power plant expansion in the U.S.A. we would end up producing excess grid power, and could start using the excess to produce or H2 from water, and start stock piling it.

France and China are on a nuke power plant building frenzy. France is determined to be extortion free of OPEC oil dependence for their power needs/production.

We have been hit with scare storys about spent nuclear fuel not being safe to store anywhere.......and how it will leak out from it's containers and poison the earth and underground water supplies...............All undocumented, unscientific scare tactics!

The nuclear fuel utilized by a large reactor that powere, for example the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier will last roughly 20 years. In other words, the Ronald Reagan is fuel every 20 years. Now it isn't cheap to mine Uranium and break it down into fissionable material for reactor rods, but the science and technique or industry that does this has high safety record.

Secondly, the spent fuel rods from nuke plants are reused. The spent radioactive fuel is reworked and from that some useable, fissionable material is reused. The remainder is dumped safely using techniques that will containerize it longer than it's dangerous radioactive life.

Amount of radioactive waste: Folks think we are dumping tons or truck loads of radioactive waste.........that isn't the case. The actual, physical radioactive material is very small, but the containerization of it is large to insure safety from leakage.

Japan got the bitter end of the nuclear age, yet they are embracing clean, safe nuclear power for their future power needs..............Us, the U.S.A. who introduced the world to the modern nuclear age have been castrated by anti-war/anti-growth scare mongers who would prefer that we go back to the agrarian age and all get behind a pair of oxen, and live in the stone age, or in solar octagon houses with pit toilets.

You can blame oil companies all you want.........., but supply and demand do affect prices at the pump. I don't own stock in the oil companies, and it's been a real burden for me and my family and our relatives to cope with the price of fuel lately. We are definitely changing our lifestyles to adjust to this big gouge on our monthy budget.

Years have gone by, where so many fruitful, potential oil reserves have been made off-limits on our own nation's property, because of these "green" organization, such as Sierra Club, Earth First, etc.. and their immense lobbies in Congress and our state legislatures. These folks have tried to convince us that the sky is falling.........for the last 40 years or more..........Predictions back in the 1930's were, that our oil reserves were going to be depleted within a few years........yet this country seemed to keep "chugging" on finding more energy/oil reserves.

The Dakotas show great promise; ANWAR, off the California coast......where drilling has been stopped for many years................the Gulf of Mexico........oil shale........Canada's oil sands.............These oil reserves are larger than the Saudi reserves!

The Alaska pipe line project proved that man could extract energy and do minimal affect to wildlife........That project goes back to the 1970's...............That's over 30 years ago, and our scientific know-how to extract oil and transport it is even safer, and more environmentally sound.

Our we going to let a handful of scare mongers, who have poli-sci, and journalism degrees from our liberal universities control us and convince us that they know what's best for us, and we are just stupid sheeple, cause we aren't empathetic to Mother Earth? I hope the tide is changing..........The most advanced coal burning power plant in the U.S. spews more radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere burning coal, than all the nuke plants in the U.S. combined.

 

[Reality]

what does it matter? oil is priced and sold on a GLOBAL market, no?

care

DING DING DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!

The fact is that the people so pissed off about prevention of exploration are the people whose ideology would have them put an American finds on the open market subject to global pricing. Since OPEC nations control currently control about a trillion barrels in reserves, about 3/4 of the known worlds reserves, they would still have all the control. Even if 1 billion barrels were discovered in the US, which won't happen, OPEC would still control WELL over half of the known crude. They would simply pump less oil to keep prices up.

And if you don't put the oil on the open market thats socialism according to conservatives.

 

[Reality]

The most recent estimate of recoverable oil in the offshore areas of FLA that I heard is about 19 billion barrells.

Where did you get that number?

 

[Reality]

Which is why Congress should open up our public lands to only private American companies who agree to sell our oil only to Americans.....we have HUGE amounts of oil in shale....like 8 times the amount of the oil in Saudi Arabia...enough to supply us over a 100 years....and they're ready to begin drilling RIGHT NOW....if Congress would only lift the enviro crap off their backs...we could have one dollar gas...

Isn't shale not convertible at this point? Or at least it can't be converted cheap enough to make it viable?

 

[Warner]

Drilling "would" have kept the price down had we BEEN drilling all along... but NO, we COULDN'T! Because the democraps said NO to new exploration. You can himhaw all you want about this and that happening today, but the fact of the matter is, the DEMS are the ones RESPONSIBLE for us being in the predicament we're in today. We have LOTS of oil, we just have to GO GET IT, and it has been, IS, and probably always WILL BE the DEMOCRATS that stand in the way of it. I hope the public learns this and learns this good, and starts voting the stinking liberals beholding to the envirowhackos OUT OF OFFICE!

We have lots of oil. It is, for the most part, thick as tar, bound up in shale, or otherwise difficult to get at and refine. If you look at the facts of it, we simply cannot have any significant impact on oil prices with domestic on-shore drilling. Offshore might be a different story, but that is for the most part an unknown.

I think we should drill off the coast of Florida, since the Chinese are going to do so anyway in Cuban waters. But elsewhere... better to save it for the future and use the Arab oil while we can.

To give you a perspective, consider that most US wells produce less than 500 bbl per day, with 50-100 being typical. And most produce heavy crude, sometimes only useful for things like tarring roads. In Saudi Arabia, if they were to drill a well that only produced 5000 bbl/day they'd likely cement it back and consider it a failure not worth the effort to collect the production. And Saudi oil is "light sweet crude", easy to refine and produces a large proportion of burnable fuels.

Most US oil is only worth about $90 or less per bbl on todays market. We don't even have refineries capable of handling most of the oil that comes out of Alaska, so we have to sell it to the Japanese.

 

[Gunny]

We have lots of oil. It is, for the most part, thick as tar, bound up in shale, or otherwise difficult to get at and refine. If you look at the facts of it, we simply cannot have any significant impact on oil prices with domestic on-shore drilling. Offshore might be a different story, but that is for the most part an unknown.

I think we should drill off the coast of Florida, since the Chinese are going to do so anyway in Cuban waters. But elsewhere... better to save it for the future and use the Arab oil while we can.

To give you a perspective, consider that most US wells produce less than 500 bbl per day, with 50-100 being typical. And most produce heavy crude, sometimes only useful for things like tarring roads. In Saudi Arabia, if they were to drill a well that only produced 5000 bbl/day they'd likely cement it back and consider it a failure not worth the effort to collect the production. And Saudi oil is "light sweet crude", easy to refine and produces a large proportion of burnable fuels.

Most US oil is only worth about $90 or less per bbl on todays market. We don't even have refineries capable of handling most of the oil that comes out of Alaska, so we have to sell it to the Japanese.

What you're saying is, that for the bottom-line profit, oil companies won't invest in refining the oil we have. They'd rather depend on foreign sources which leaves us at those source's mercy, and forces a national concern for who is in control of the oil in the ME.

I'm not so sure I'm with making ourselves victims of our dependence on foreign oil is worth record-setting profits by US oil companies. If we could break our dependence on ME oil, so too would we break our give-a-shitter as far as them blowing each other up.

 

[editec]

Where did you get that number?

TV. Sorry can't remember which show. Some business show, no doubt, I seldom even listen to the general news shows anymore, but I think there's still some hard facts one can glean from the various business reporting shows.<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

 

[Annie]

TV. Sorry can't remember which show. Some business show, no doubt, I seldom even listen to the general news shows anymore, but I think there's still some hard facts one can glean from the various business reporting shows.<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

Yep and your numbers were way off the estimates:

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 06/17/2008 | McCain's call for offshore oil drilling won't bring relief soon

Look to the right, click on graphics.

Less conservative here:

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

 

[editec]

Not my numbers, Kathanne.

Numbers I heard reported as the probable recoverable oil off the coast of FLA., not the entire continental shelf.

It estimated that the Outer Continental Shelf could hold 115.4 billion barrels. However, it also estimated that recoverable reserves off U.S. coasts in areas now banned from production probably hold only about 19 billion barrels.
The figures differ widely because the higher number is a broader measure that includes "cumulative production, proved and unproved reserves."

Experts agree that the entire continental shelf "could hold" a lot more?

I don't doubt it for a moment.

Now when they start drilling, they might actually be able to give us estimates based on hard numbers.

Right now, all the estimates we have are basically just SWAG (scientific wild ass guesses)

 

[Annie]

Not my numbers, Kathanne.

Numbers I heard reported as the probable recoverable oil off the coast of FLA., not the entire continental shelf.



Experts agree that the entire continental shelf "could hold" a lot more?

I don't doubt it for a moment.

Now when they start drilling, they might actually be able to give us estimates based on hard numbers.

Right now, all the estimates we have are basically just SWAG (scientific wild ass guesses)

Your numbers, based on your memory of what you heard on television, but couldn't remember.

Again, being disingenuous, I mean besides leaving off the name of referring post you were responding to. The graphics I referred you to, with a link and all, broke down bbr per area. That you chose to use the aggregate, well...

 

[Ravi]

After all the analysis of this topic in the news, i.e., the length of time to bring any of this on line, the uncertainty as to cost-effectiveness and environmental impact, and the fact that the oil would have to be sold on the world market anyway...does anyone still think drilling off the coast is a good idea and will actually reduce prices?

 

[Annie]

After all the analysis of this topic in the news, i.e., the length of time to bring any of this on line, the uncertainty as to cost-effectiveness and environmental impact, and the fact that the oil would have to be sold on the world market anyway...does anyone still think drilling off the coast is a good idea and will actually reduce prices?

Yes. We should also be building the refineries to get the product to market as soon as possible.

 

[jillian]

After all the analysis of this topic in the news, i.e., the length of time to bring any of this on line, the uncertainty as to cost-effectiveness and environmental impact, and the fact that the oil would have to be sold on the world market anyway...does anyone still think drilling off the coast is a good idea and will actually reduce prices?

Well, McCain reiterated that he thinks it's a good psychological ploy.

 

[Ravi]

Well, McCain reiterated that he thinks it's a good psychological ploy.

Against whom?