Wednesday, June 18
Absolute nonsense
I was listening to the Neal Boortz and he was going on about how the gas price was the Democrats fault, and that we should be drilling off the coast of Florida and in ANWR.
The facts.
If we started drilling in ANWR and off the coast of Florida, it would take ten years before a drop of gasoline from it would hit a gas tank.
Even McCain's own senior adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin:
acknowledged in a conference call to reporters that new offshore drilling would have no immediate effect on supplies or prices.(via)
But he added: "There is an important element in signaling to world oil markets that we are serious."
If Mel Martinez would vote for drilling off Florida, you can bet that Florida would have a new freshman senator when he runs for reelection.
The oil industry is already sitting on tens of thousands of leases that are not being actively pursued.
The sum total of what is possible to get out of drilling Florida and ANWR doesn't even come close to making America independent of the Middle East for oil.
Neal Boortz has a problem with the Democrats now in power that are blocking the drilling. My thought is, President Bush has had 6 years of the Republicans in power and he's an oil man. Why now?
As a Floridian, I have an issue with drilling off the coast of Florida due to the combination of tourism and hurricanes. If a hurricane takes out the drilling platforms and pipelines and fouls the beaches, is the federal government and/or the oil companies going to pay for fixing them? It could take years to get the beaches back in shape, driving tourism out of Florida, and therefore bankrupting Florida.
And ANWR? Its full name is
There is not guarantee that the oil pumped from ANWR and Florida would stay in the US, and instead be shipped to the Asian continent, which is currently going on.
It is a crock. Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 6/18/2008 04:54:00 PM
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2 Comments:
There are several misstatements here:
If we started drilling in ANWR and off the coast of Florida, it would take ten years before a drop of gasoline from it would hit a gas tank.
Actually, the length of time that it would take to bring the oil to the tank would be about three years. However, the price benefit would be nearly immediate. Back in the Carter Era the US announced the formation of a Synthetic Fuels Corporation chartered and funded by the government. Just this news tanked crude oil prices. A similar announcement would be immediate on the markets. OPEC, the real creators of the high prices would once again be back in the historic $26.00/barrel range (adjusted for inflation). This would happen nearly overnight - OPEC would tank the price causing the price to go under the $45/barrel threshold for profitability for drilling and synthetic oil in the US.
The oil industry is already sitting on tens of thousands of leases that are not being actively pursued.
This is also an incorrect argument. These leases are in areas where the oil fields are considerably past peak oil production. These leases are for exploration only, not for actual oil extraction.
If a hurricane takes out the drilling platforms and pipelines and fouls the beaches, is the federal government and/or the oil companies going to pay for fixing them? It could take years to get the beaches back in shape, driving tourism out of Florida, and therefore bankrupting Florida.
When was the last time that a hurricane caused oil spills? Not in recent memory. The proof of this was when Katrina went through the Gulf of Mexico it destroyed over 100 oil rigs with no ill effects due to oil. The fact is oil rigs don't spoil the environment. There are actually indications that drilling causes a drop in natural seepage of oil into the waters. Times were you could walk up and down Texas beaches (in the 1940s/1950s) and find thousands of tar balls that washed up on shore. This was cruse oil that was literally pushed out of the sea floor by natural pressures. These tar balls were everywhere on the Gulf Coast (that's where the oil companies got the idea for drilling off shore). Now they're just a fading historical memory.
If one would like to worry about spoiling the environment in the Florida Gulf Coast, one should worry about the Chinese/Cubans drilling there. They're using slant drilling to get into our reserves from a safe distance. They won't be so careful.
And ANWR? Does it really make sense to be putting in the infrastructure to enable drilling there?
Sure it does. Using 20 square blocks of land within tens of millions of square miles of desolation makes perfect sense. The North Slope development of the 1970s was supposed to ruin the habitat but caribou herds have never been larger. Polar bear populations have gone from an estimated 5000 to over 25,000 in that period. The roads won't touch the ground - materiel will be trucked up in the winter when the snow is feet deep. The roads will melt in the late spring and will be covered again in the early fall (that's May to September when nothing will move up there - there's hardly anything that can live there during that time since it's nothing but a swamp with the largest mosquitoes in the world.) If history is our guide, the environment will be fine. The drilling will actually cause more people to come to ANWR, something that is nearly as scarce as tourists on the dark side of the moon. When more people see it, there will be more people interested in preserving it.
There is not guarantee that the oil pumped from ANWR and Florida would stay in the US, and instead be shipped to the Asian continent, which is currently going on.
This isn't happening. There's no economic reason for US oil to go to Asia. Between 1996 and 2000 approximately 7% of Alaskan oil production was going to China, Japan, and Korea. That's completely been stopped. The US does export oil products, but no crude oil, to Canada and Mexico. But Canada is our largest oil supplier with Mexico being our second. That's only a small percentage of what we get from them in the form of crude.
It is a crock.
I wouldn't say that. You just need to get your facts tightened up a bit.
By 
, at
10:07 AM
Actually, the length of time that it would take to bring the oil to the tank would be about three years.
It's going to take them three years just to get the surveying done of where they want to drill! There are too many creditable reports from those even advocating the drilling that the most optimistic time to get oil flowing is five years, and could indeed be 10. Three years?
OPEC can't control pricing. The only thing they can control is how much oil they pump to the world. And they are pumping at their highest rates ever.
This is also an incorrect argument. These leases are in areas where the oil fields are considerably past peak oil production. These leases are for exploration only, not for actual oil extraction.
I know others who are trying to figure that out, who are smarting than me, and have much better connections who still don't understand. It could be, but your the first person to tell me that, and at that, anonymously.
When was the last time that a hurricane caused oil spills? … The proof of this was when Katrina went through the Gulf of Mexico it destroyed over 100 oil rigs with no ill effects due to oil.
The toxic flood waters weren't influenced at all by the crude oil released, is what you're saying. I'll take that under advisement.
Using 20 square blocks of land within tens of millions of square miles of desolation makes perfect sense.
According to my illustrious freshman Senator Mel Gonzales, we're talking about 2,000 acres of land, the size of a football field. That's about 400 city blocks, and I bet they aren't all nestled together, AND that certainly won't include the acres lost to road construction and other necessary infrastructure. And that I will be will be at least if not more than the acreage involved.
There is not guarantee that the oil pumped from ANWR and Florida would stay in the US…
This isn't happening.
You may be right on that one.
I'm at the point that if drilling in ANWR shuts some people up, the get it done because I'm tired of hearing about it. And when it doesn't solve whatever the problem is, I don't want to hear about that either.
