Posted by
Bill Crawford on Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:52:24 PM
The Democrats are really adept at developing a set of talking points and clinging to them. Here's a few that are sticking in my craw right now:
"The oil companies should stick to drilling on the 68 million acres they have leased already". Cute. Until you realize that the company leases are a gamble. Some are yet unexplored, many may eventually be accounted for as unworkable. Many acres have potential, but have environmental impact studies being done on them, as required by the people who now slap the oil companies for not having drilled there yet!
"The coastal areas will not yield reserves for twenty to thirty years". A retread- the same concept was used in the early '80's (which was, conincidentally, twenty to thirty years ago). Even as yet unexplored territory, given the proper investment, can be developed and productive in less than six years, by oil company estimates. And at over $100 a barrel, the proper investment is not at all hard to find.
"ANWR will only provide a few months of oil for us". That is, if you shut everything else off and run the economy on their pipeline alone. That's a cute one, too.
"Opening up the offshore drilling will not drop the price of gas by more than a few cents a gallon". Probably the biggest pantload of them all. What is the Congressional outcry against commodities speculators if the hedge price of oil is in line with reserves vs. demand? The oil companies and the hedge fund managers agree that there is somewhere around $50-$75 a barrel locked in by futures positioning, which translates to 60-75 centas a gallon at the pump. Nobody in their tiny mind should be thinking that the factors of supply and demand have changed such in the last year to scoot prices up by a factor of over 50%. This would seem to lend credibility to the notion that a Congressional commitment to offshore drilling now would have an immediate effect on the commodities market, which would be followed by a significant drop in the price per gallon.
"We can't drill our way out of this problem". Nobody is proposing that. But you can't conserve your way out if it, either. Barrack Obama does not have a short term solution in the offing. He had better come up with one, if he can manage to. Unfortunately for him, solar panel and battery technology is not something that can be conjured up by executive fiat.