settle down douger. i doubt anyone will jump to drill on their permits. they might buy them up, but nobody even tested viability in the gulf of mexico after the permit bans expired there. limbaugh wants to preach drill baby drill, but the oil companies know the negative impact supply has on their profits, and its a free country.
drilling rights off the US has little or nothing to do with the price of oil, whether the seabees do it or not. obama knows that. rush probably doesnt. his fans probably think we can drill our prices down to venezuela's.
I'm still puzzeled with Obama's motive in lifting drilling bans.
Corrode the base constituants' support?
Appeal to Big Oil?
If he needed quid-pro-quo for an "Comprehensive Energy Policy," why not hold these cards?
I believe something else is amiss........
I the correct USMB forum (Oil.NRG) there's a raging debate as to whether or not there will be a "oil peak" vs "oil plateau" as the unrenewable resource eventually disappears.......I wonder if Obama has received information we don't know that he's required to act upon.....
hmmmmmm...........maybe the "Conspiracy forum" would be more appropriate
I'm not sure if you were able to see my previous post amidst all the rubble here, but I can give you the primary reasons for doing this.
You must realize that there are currently over 4k leases in the gulf of mexico and off many of American shores for drilling. Of these, about 900-1100 are used or are being developed, the rest are just purchased annually and represent assets on the companies sheets to prevent other companies, particularly foreign ones, from aggrandizing their status by acquiring more assets.
This means that, contrary to popular belief, we likely wont see the production of 1.2 million jobs (again, there are 3k sites out there that are TOTALLY undeveloped that would require more than a million jobs, yet no ones touched them for nearly ten years), nor will global gas prices drop, because these will likely be used in the same manner. If I recall correctly (and another poster in another thread had the statistics) it costs roughly 75-85 to produce a barrel of oil using most offshore drilling methods in deep sea beds (over 200 miles I believe), many of which characterize the beds that were recently approved in this drlling bill. Current market price of oil hovers around 81-83 dollars a barrel.
That means that it's simply not feasible to produce ALL of our oil here, as it costs roughly $5 in the middle east per barrel ($3 in Saudi Arabia I believe) to make.
this debunks the economic feasibility reasons, and also debunks the myth that he's a crusader for offshore drilling. while its potential to help is there, it should certainly not be the only thing we rely on.
Therefore you are left with a few things. he wants to erode future hostilities with alternative energy/climate change bills by ALREADY pushing through more drilling, which would make his opponents look like extremists if they weren't satisfied with drilling just off our coasts but also wanted to go to Alaska before we even started in mexico. He also wants to give the guise of bipartisanship, being accepting to their ideas. More importantly, this won't DAMAGE his reputation with oil companies (one of the most powerful lobbying firms in washington), and again, those polls don't really add credence to any of the conspiracy theories you had.
Reagan was around 36%ish at this time, MOST other popular presidents were actually around the 44% mark around this time, lower if they were in times of economic hardship. The popularity pattern that barry's been following doesn't bode will for those who wish to see him removed if history is any indicator, he's following in the footsteps of Reagan, FDR, and some other pretty seminal presidents who were initially questioned for their initial domestic and foreign policies but proven to be salient leaders later.
As for another person who tried to question nuclear energy, this is a matter of science, and something I suspect Steven Chu had a say in thank god. Current nuclear reactors are all political talking points, in terms of saving the environment or producing significant quantities of energy without requiring massive amount of energy or investment to offset their damage, they generally do poorly. Current nuclear technology is highly expensive to maintain, its waste must be stored, and the potential KNOWN environmental risks have already been proven to risk lives, let alone unseen risks.
What needs to be invested in is nuclear reactor R&D. especially technologies like what Bill Gates is investing in. The travelling wave reactor can actually USE depleted uranium, is compact, and can be maintained for cheaper. The only issue is getting them into mass production, but once that's done even their production would be far cheaper.
So the truth of the matter is, neither the dems nor repubs really know what they're talking about when it comes to alternative energy. Luckily the trends seems to be to get a bunch of technocrats like Steven Chu to do it for you, hopefully this keeps up.
