No, you have the wrong message from Democrats:
The difference between Republicans who lie, and Democrats who present the facts, is the desperation of Republicans who are on the wrong side of every issues. Republicans are on the side of the oil company CEOs and oil rich Saudis who are seeking to take every dime possible out of the American people's pockets.

This is going to really cost conservatives and Republicans who have been focused on driving up the stock prices of big oil companies by making leases available to the oil companies the big oil comany don't drill, but mere book as oil reserves to hide the fact that they are in the process of liquidating because they can't compete with Chinese and Brazilian oil companies.

What Bush should be calling for is a revival of the old US shipbuilding industry.

Oh, wait, that would require finding people who actually work for a living, people who labor, working class people, people who join trade unions, people who vote Democratic.

People who need to learn the trades like metal working: welding, machining, forging, smelting, pipe fitting, and all the old union jobs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/bu...hp&oref=slogin

Nah, the last thing conservatives and Republicans want are empowered workers who have skill and knowledge that are scarce and that can then push up the wages of the working class people. Better to just blame liberals for everything that's going wrong - that is easier than actually understanding the problems and actually fixing them.

Pelosi indicates openness to offshore drilling vote
By Mike Soraghan
Posted: 08/11/08 09:51 PM [ET]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday night dropped her staunch opposition to a vote on offshore oil drilling in the House.

Republicans, reacting to high gas prices, have demanded a vote on additional oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf, where drilling is currently blocked by a moratorium. Until now, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has resisted the idea as a “hoax.” But in an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live, she indicated that she was open to a vote.

“They have this thing that says drill offshore in the protected areas,” Pelosi said. “We can do that. We can have a vote on that.”

She indicated such a vote would have to be part of a larger package that included other policies, like releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which she said could bring down prices in a matter of days.

“But it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and is not just a hoax on them,” Pelosi continued.

She even indicated that she might support a package that includes drilling. She said her decision on whether to support such legislation would depend on how the policies are packaged.

“It’s not excluded, let’s put it that way,” Pelosi said.

In a year in which Republicans expected to take a beating at the polls, their support for drilling in protected areas has been a sudden bright spot. They have relentlessly demanded a vote on drilling as Democrats rearranged House business to avoid such a vote.

But the pressure has only grown. Republicans demanded a drilling vote before the House went home for the summer recess, and when that didn’t happen, some stayed behind in the chamber to protest.

A bipartisan group in the Senate came up with a plan that would include drilling, and Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has said he’s “willing to consider” it.

And Democrats realize that it will be difficult to end their legislative year in September without a vote because the offshore drilling moratorium must be renewed every year.

Pelosi had previously said she would allow a vote on drilling and then backed off. On July 30, the last day Congress was in before the August recess, she was interviewed by the Capitol Hill press corps. She was asked if she could envision a vote on drilling in new areas this year, and she answered, “Of course.”

But her aides later released a statement saying she was not announcing a change in her stance on a drilling vote.

The reality is that a bill that provides for the tax credits for green alternatives and also opens for drilling will produce immediate results for the green options, while the time required for laying out the lease plots and such will take years, and then the oil companies will want time to study. And by the time auctions actually happen, the oil companies will be looking toward a market with declining oil prices, carbon credits/taxes driving down demand, electric vehicles spreading, maybe a real push for T Boone's proposal to switch trucking from oil to natgas. Add in the billions required to buy or lease oil rigs, the costs of infrastructure, and all for oil that is plumetting in price and demand.

And the Saudis, Iran, and Iraq can produce profitably with the price of oil at $15, not that they want to, but they can punish high cost producers like those operating in the US. Russia and Brazil might need $20 a barrel.

I figure opening up everything that is left to drilling at the Federal level, and I would like to see market royalty or production sharing agreements, competitive with what Saudi Arabia, Russia, et al, charge, the result is that none of those areas will be drilled, and there will be no political way to call for a government solution to providing more US production of oil.

It will be like opening up the Naval Reserve renamed as North Slope, which the oil companies find too hard to produce - they can make a profit, but its not high enough to reward the CEO et al with millions in bonuses, so buying back stock become more rewarding to CEOs than drilling. Or the oil shales which were promoted during the 70s and 80s until the Feds stopped subsidizing that work, so the oil companies abandoned that an none are really serious about mining that.

So, without the excuse of some mythical new source for magic oil, the choice will be simple: find alternatives to oil like electric vehicles, or keep paying the Russians for their oil so they can afford to rebuild the USSR by invading one nation at a time.

Open ANWR Already!
The case for drilling—and more energy production
Jon Basil Utley | August 14, 2008

The media constantly repeat the claim that it would take a decade to get the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) into oil production and about as long for offshore continental oil to start flowing. Most accounts promote the views of extreme environmentalists to make the issue appear so hopeless that we must instead "change our way of life" rather than tap into proven oil reserves. In July, CNN repeatedly reported that offshore drilling would take "seven to 10 years" to get into production. Yet Brazil's Petrobras expects its new finds in extraordinarily deep waters to already be producing 100,000 barrels per day in just two years. What is wrong with American oil companies that they would take so long?

In fact, the world oil shortage is political, not geological. In the U.S., the government prohibits drilling offshore. In Nigeria, civil strife has shut down major production. In Libya and Iran, Washington effectively blockaded and isolated the nations for years to inhibit new production. In Iraq, of course, the U.S. destroyed much of the infrastructure since the first Gulf war in 1991 and then blockaded reconstruction. In nations such as Russia and Mexico nationalism and corruption curtail increased production.

Outside of developed Western countries, the single largest reason for oil "shortages" is government incompetence and ownership of the subsoil rights so that landowners don't benefit from oil discoveries. In Patagonia, Argentina (a nation with abundant oil), I was told how it was common for landowners to try to hide any evidence of oil seepages from underground, lest the government oil company come in and ruin their lands with no benefit to themselves. Private mineral rights ownership is the reason some 90 percent of all oil wells drilled have been in the U.S. Scientific advances and innovative engineers keep coming up with ways to both discover new fields and keep old ones in production almost indefinitely.

ANWR could become the fastest way to generate hundreds of billions of dollars of new oil. But laws need to be changed to fast track the leasing (there are 11 litigation choke points) and to create special courts to expedite environmental issues, as recently proposed by Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.). Under current laws, it could indeed take 10 years to produce oil, compared to two or three years for the actual drilling and pumping. Additionally, leasing is done slowly, thanks to laws written when oil was plentiful. Such laws were designed to gain maximum upfront money for the government, not for speed. For example, BP recently paid $1.2 billion for a new offshore lease, some 400 miles East of Canada's Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. The cost and distance gives some idea of industry expectations as to the extent of oil reserves.

In Anchorage last month, Marilyn Crockett, executive director of the Alaska Oil & Gas Association, explained to me the following time frame for ANWR drilling: Expect 12 months or more for an Environmental Impact Statement after Congress approves drilling. And this is working fast. It would likely take much longer. Expect 12 months to 18 months for the Department of Interior to draw up and bid out the lease-sale process. Plan on two years for oil companies to do test drilling and analysis. Drilling and transport of heavy equipment can only be done in the winter months when the permafrost ground is solidly frozen, from December through April. Concurrently with oil drilling, a 75-mile pipeline spur needs be built to connect to the main Alyeska Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to the Southern shipping port.

However, this time frame does not allow for environmental lawsuits "every step of the way," as Crockett warned. The rest of the 10-year time frame is to allow for lawsuits trying to prevent or harass production in one way or another. For example, a single judge in California's 9th circuit has failed to issue a decision on a Shell Oil project that already had $200 million of investment before it was ordered to stop. It will produce 30,000 barrels per day, about $1 billion per year of oil.

There has already been a test well drilled in ANWR and the oil drilling could be done from a concentrated small area, about the size of Dulles Airport. Compare this to the total size of ANWR, which is roughly equivalent to the size of South Carolina. Its reserves are estimated at 10 billion barrels by the U.S. Geological Survey, compared to 32 billion nationwide, almost a 33 percent increase. At full production, ANWR would add a million barrels per day to U.S. production. At $100 per barrel, this would equal over $36 billion per year that would not need to be spent on foreign oil. It would also create some 700,000 well-paying jobs, according to a Wharton Econometrics study [pdf].

Some accurate pictures are finally beginning to circulate. Previously, ANWR was typically portrayed as if it was like the Rockies, with happy goats jumping around. But the land is actually flat and desolate for most of the year, feeding birds and caribou in the summertime. I have personally seen such land with its untold numbers of shallow, frigid little lakes on the Arctic Circle in Northern Russia. It reminded me of what the first French explorer called such lands in Canada's northern extremes: "The Land God Gave to Cain." I was in Alaska hiking last July; the quantity and variety of animal life is astounding. Grizzly bears roam within the city limits of Anchorage and moose die of starvation every winter all over the state. Nearly a million caribou (reindeer) roam. The whole western half of the state is without roads. Hundreds of streams are filled with salmon. I saw a bowhead whale breaching and little sea otters (once nearly extinct) in Seward Harbour during one afternoon boat trip out into the bay. Drilling, in other words, will not spoil the richness and abundance of Alaska's wildlife.

Here are some other interesting facts about Alaskan oil:

• Drilling is permitted in the Beaufort Sea on Alaska's north coast. On the west coast, it is not allowed under the general prohibition against offshore drilling.

• Wells at Prudhoe Bay and nearby ANWR, if allowed, are very shallow, mostly 1,000 feet to 2,000 feet deep, which allows for fast drilling.

• New technology now also allows long distance slant and horizontal drilling from a single drill site. BP is now planning such an eight-mile drill.

• The Beaufort Sea off shore is very shallow and production is done from man-made islands. A single platform allows for many slant wells.

• The Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia is only some 2,000 feet to 3,000 feet deep.

• Estimates of recoverable oil are based on a $40 barrel price—they should be much higher with oil at $100-plus per barrel. The higher price justifies more costly drilling and secondary recovery engineering.

• Alyeska Pipeline once pumped 2.1 million barrels of oil per day, It's now at 700,000 and declining 7 percent annually. Roughly 400,000 of these barrels come from many new, smaller fields discovered after Prudhoe Bay started production.

• The Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, a very large area west of Prudhoe Bay, may also have large new oil reserves. However, most of the area has not yet been leased by the Federal government's very slow plan, nor explored, nor litigated.

The amounts of natural gas are just as astounding as the quantities of oil. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated years ago that there were 150 trillion cubic feet of conventional gas, 590 trillion cubic feet of gas hydrates (an as-yet-unexploited form of methane trapped in water molecules underground). The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that to be "twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth." Also, there is an uncalculated amount of drillable coal-bed methane in an estimated 13.7 billion tons of indicated coal resources.

The state government of Alaska is now proposing a new pipeline to transport already discovered gas through Canada to connect with pipelines reaching the American Midwest and the east. It will cost around $30 billion, be underground, and transport quantities equal to some 6 percent to 8 percent of all current U.S. consumption.

Meanwhile, Washington has become paralyzed by dysfunctional government. France and China can build nuclear electric plants in just years; in the U.S. it takes a decade. Brazil will bring offshore oil online in 24 months, while for U.S. companies it takes 10 years. New refineries are virtually illegal to build. New electricity-generating plants using coal are now unable to obtain financing because of environment constraints.

This is destroying the value of the dollar and wrecking our balance of trade, making oil prohibitively expensive, and sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign lands—many of whom are no friends of America. No wonder 80 percent of Americans think their nation is on the wrong track. Washington needs to declare a national emergency program to produce energy. The reasons we don't are political, not technical. Indeed, new natural gas discoveries have knocked U.S. prices down by about 30 percent.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative and a former foreign correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers. He has decades of experience in the oil business, including as the owner and operator of a small oil drilling partnership.

And yet, after paying $1.2B BP will still get that oil owned by the people of the United States for a much lower price than it must pay to get the much much much cheaper to produce oil from Saudi Arabia.

So, can the author call for more corporate welfare for the extremely high profit oil corporations so they can plunder even more from the US taxpayer's pockets. And there is no way for that low royalty oil from Alaska to be sold at a lower price to just US taxpayers because the US taxpayer pays the world price. And if that Alaskan oil lowers the price per barrel by $10, for every $10 that Alaskan oil saves the US taxpayer, the Alaskan oil saves Europe, China, and India about $25, so the benefit of pumping that Alaskan crude quiclky with lower than the already low price compared to the world cost to the oil companies is to profit the oil companies, the Chinese government which subsidizes oil, and the people of India and Europe.

Ah, a vote for socialist central planning and government run industry. France and China government technocrats made the decisions on nuclear power and supervise government workers in operating the industry. Brazil is able to develop its oil resources because Brazilian oil belongs to the people, and Petrobas is a government company developing resources for the people of Brazil. And without a government central planner dictating the construction of new oil refineries to promote more government worker jobs at refineries operating well below capacity, the market is only gong to invest in refineries that can make a small profit by running at 90% or higher capacity as they do in the US. And the same is true for coal -- Britain kept coal miners employed for decades longer than made sense, and provided heavy subsidies to the state run and uncompetitive coal and coal powered government owned mines and utilities.

Efforts to lease the NPR have been going on for four decades, but the discovery of Prudoe Bay caused the oil companies to bypass it, and the Clinton administration tried to interest the oil companies in taking a look again and bidding in the 90s, but the leases that were taken out haven't moved rapidly to production because the recovery is expensive, especially compared with oil in Saudi Arabia.

The state of Alaska is anxious to get those fields developed for oil or gas because of the declining revenue, but the oil companies really haven't been interested.

The state of Alaska has been trying to get a pipeline for the gas for almost three decades; Canada placed a moratorium on pipeline work until native people's right could be worked out, and then did a lot of development work with pipelines extending into the Canadian territories. Meanwhile the oil companies in Alaska spent decades seeking tax breaks before they would begin work on a pipeline. Finally, Alaskans put a referendum proposal up and approved it calling for an Alaskan pipeline project, then politicians were convicted in oil industry bribery and corruption charges, and the political winds changed with the new governor forcing the legislature to approve an incentive package for a canadian government negotiate pipeline contract which looks like its going to the canadaian transcanada. Now the oil companies are rushing to put together their plan, now that its clear they won't get any tax cuts from the state of alaska.

Another example of the oil companies trying to screw ME and YOU out of OUR oil and gas profits.