New York Times Op Editorialist Bob Herbert thinks motorcyclists in particular and American voters in general have been hood-winked by pols who proclaim that drilling for oil would offer relief from high gas prices. Make that "immediate relief." "Maximum capacity from these new leases wouldn’t be reached until 2030, when that 7- or 8-year-old is approaching 30, finished with college and graduate school, and very likely married with children. And even then — after more than two decades and who knows how many graduations, weddings, funerals and family cars — even then, the amount of oil expected to come from these leases would have little or no effect on the price of gasoline at the pump." So that's that then. Except for a slam at anyone stupid enough not to accept Herbert's argument. "I wonder if the electorate will ever wise up." Yeah, democracy sucks. You know, except for all the other systems [hat tip to Winston Churchill for the pithiness].
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I guess the other fools he is referring to are those in the drilling business that say they can have rigs pumping oil on the Outer Continental Shelf within 2 years. Im sick of the libs
How dare anyone insinuate that drilling for oil would result in us having more oil.
I’m hungry now, but if I order a pizza it won’t be here for 20 or 30 minutes. I guess I’ll just gnaw on my shoe instead and hope I can live off that.
Heh z31.
Yeah, what about in 30 years? If we could deploy a bit of foresight and get over this hallucination that we can go oil free in 10 years if we were really super serious and elected Al Gore, we’d realize that alternative energy and drilling for oil are both necessary parts of a wise and realistic energy policy.
In 30 years all production cars will be electric or other. But the nyt article is a bit pedantic. I like this one much better: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/photography-as-a-weapon/
While OPEC does not have a monopoly, they do have enough share to really determine the price of oil. How many think they will lower, or even hold, the price if we announce we give up on new drilling? Every time we have threatened it in the past they have lowered the price, or increased the supply, to make us forget such a crazy idea. This time let’s actually go ahead and really reduce demand along with drilling to break out of this cycle.
No offense to Teddy Roosevelt but sometimes talking big when you really have no stick at all is the best/only choice you have.
NYT, & Herbert especially, are so blinded by their liberal ideology. They have been using the same line “drilling now won’t produce oil until 10 years from now” for too long. What if we had started the drilling in 1998? The oil would be available now.
And, their preferred energy sources, wind & solar, are not exactly ready for prime time and won’t be for at least 10 years.
There’s a delicate Spanish phrase that describes just about everything the NYT print, “mucho crappo”.
Well, once you figure in the time it takes to build the rigs to get to a useful capacity you are sitting somewhere between 2028 and 2030. Then, as the oil companies and the Bush administration have shown – the max capacity you will get is 200,000 barrels per day.
We’re burning 20 million barrels per day in 2008.
And who do you think is going to foot the cost of the new oil rigs to pump said oil? That’s right – you and I at the pump every time we fill up.
What happens when a hurricane comes flying through this area that the want to build these rigs? If you think the price increase at the pump is brutal when a hurricane “appears” it will make landfall near a refinery just imagine what it would be if it takes out one or two of these rigs on its way in.
As for the 2 year comment – can you really build an oil rig sitting out in the ocean that pumps anything resembling a significant amount of oil? Last time I checked it takes a significant amount of time to get the foundation built underwater before you can even start on the base platform.
The only short-term, cost-effective way to get cheap oil is to invade a significant (and oil-rich) part of Saudi Arabia, WW3 be damned.
Ptrott:
Source?
Whether or not off shore drilling will generate enough oil, what’s the harm in allowing companies to try? I mean, _private_ oil companies will invest their R&D funds to hopefully get some oil which they can sell to recover their initial investment. The nice thing here is that since they’re private companies, they have rooms full of analysts that can tell them whether it’s profitable or not to get that oil. If it’s not profitable then it’ll just sit in the ground, otherwise they’ll go after it. Let the government make rules about how much they get fined for spilling oil while getting it, or what ever other things the lefties are worried about, but other than that just stay away and let the private industry decide if it’s profitable to get the oil. I’m sure they can do ROI calculations and see if a 10 (or 30) year wait is reasonable.
Even if all cars are EVs, we will still need a hell of a lot of oil for plastics, fertilizer, etc.
Almost as a side-note, what really gets me is when folks portray off-shore drilling as something new and revolutionary that does not exist in America. There are plenty of rigs off the coast of Texas and Louisiana. They provide for some excellent fishing [mmm… red snapper…]. Resources off the coasts of other states exist and should be developed responsibly. Immediate gratification they may not provide, but it seems like everybody would agree that planning for the future is prudent and wise, even if some in Congress say it will be 7 years before things come online. I don’t expect ethanol or hydrogen to lower the price of energy tomorrow (or ever).
I guess the other fools he is referring to are those in the drilling business that say they can have rigs pumping oil on the Outer Continental Shelf within 2 years.
Reference please? Not even McCain says new rigs will come online in less than five years. Is this just more Limbaugh math?
Using Herbert’s “logic” we might as well give up on trying to slow down (let alone halt or reverse) climate change over the next 30 years. Whatever steps we try to take now would take so long to put into effect, and have such a relatively insignificant impact at such high a cost in decreasing the amount of greenhouse gases dumped into the atmosphere (relative to the massive increases over the same time frame in greehhouse gasses coming from China, India and other “emerging” economies) why bother doing anything?
News flash: “Liberal” is not an obscenity. If you think it’s right to drill, propose an argument with actual figures. Lamenting an entire belief system just makes you look insular.
tirving:
>And, their preferred energy sources, wind & solar, are not exactly ready for prime time and won’t be for at least 10 years.
Not so. There’s a company in California right now that’s printing flexible solar cells from a machine that resembles a giant newspaper press. They’ve dropped the cost per watt by a factor of four, to parity with coal. Solar is a reality right now, or so believes the European utility that just invested $50M for a piece of their production.
Just by seriously talking about off-shore drilling, we will see the oil prices fall.
I am SOOOOO sick of seeing the Environmental Fruit Cakes destroying the US Economy.
Okay, lets say it takes 10 years to bring some of these fields on line (it won’t but that’s another story). They say, we can’t do it because it’ll take 10 YEARS, it won’t help NOW (Big Lie there).
By the that reasoning, WHY EVER DO ANYTHING??? It might take a couple of years to build that hospital or bridge, why bother???? What, we can’t snap our fingers and make it appear???It actually takes time to build something? Does that mean we shouldn’t do it?
What about all those “Alternative Energy” sources, are they ready for prime time RIGHT NOW, or might they take a few years to mature.
To me it seems kind of disingenuous to want to wane ourselves off of oil and then commit to drilling. Even if we do the off shore drilling we’d still have to import oil from our enemies anyway. The number of people driving and consuming aren’t going to get any less since most tech for future cars are way in the future and under debate. Most people will still be driving combustion engines and the demand for oil based plastics and rubber aren’t going away anytime soon.
To those who say we should have drilled ten years ago…sure but we could say the same about alternative sources. If we had started to demand alternative energy sources we would have been ahead of the game as well.
It’s all a matter of perspective and vision. Are we going to sit on our fat asses and settle for the status quo or are we going to want something better and demand it?
I’m an Art Director in advertising and manipulating people(The general public) with the proper PR is not that complicated. So establishing the status quo is very easy. People usually fall in line like sheep. Oil is very good at PR and people who want the status quo are also very good at PR.
Everyone is entitled to a profit…hell that’s our system. But the profits these oil guys make are obscene.
KnightRT,
News flash: “Liberal” is not an obscenity. If you think it’s right to drill, propose an argument with actual figures. Lamenting an entire belief system just makes you look insular.
As much as I do lament the general liberal belief system, I heartily agree with your statement.
I like to drive as much or more than the next person. However, let’s look at the facts. According to the CIA, in 2004 we exported approximately 1.4 million bbl/day. According to Reuters, “a record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007.” Assuming that more concessions are granted on U.S. territory, and actual oil is pumped out of the ground, will it be sold in the U.S? Until one of our politicians — either party, I’m not picky — can assure me that the new oli will be available here, I’ll remain skeptical.
http://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html
uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN0325640920080703?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10174
The price of a barrel of oil is based on predicted demand and predicted supply. Thus, if you increase supply, you have a shot at reducing the price per barrel.
I’m no rah-rah oil-mongering conservative and neither am I some goofy liberal who would rather sit on his hands. While I think it’s prudent to have some local oil, I’d like to see this small capacity utilzed by the US as fugally as possible.
That is, let’s work on reducing our national consumption of oil as aggressively as possible. This way, the locally obtained oil will be a larger percentage (%) of our national demand. This is the only REAL way we will ever reduce our foreign dependence on oil.
And, their preferred energy sources, wind & solar, are not exactly ready for prime time and won’t be for at least 10 years.
Right. And Denmark produces 20% of its energy from wind. There are wind turbines all over Europe, all over California; companies in Texas are planning to install the wind equivalent of one quarter of all the nuclear plants in the country in much less than ten years. In this decade, the US has installed the wind equivalent of nearly 10 nuclear plants (there are ~100 n plants in the US). In absolute terms, worldwide, wind is growing about six times faster than nuclear.
Seems to me that if you have a product in your backyard that is valuable and becoming scarce and that same product is readily available on the open market, albeit at a higher price that we historically paid for it but still affordable, that it would be prudent to hold onto that product until it is really, really scarce and really, really valuable. Why rush out and use it up just because of some knee-jerk response of SUV driving fools. I say use up the available product that others have and hoard our product. Oil is useful for other things besides SUVs. Doesn’t anyone think further ahead than their last fill-up?
…Environmental Fruit Cakes destroying the US Economy…
So, this whole “Subprime Meltdown/Credit Crunch” thing I’ve been reading about is just a fiction, then? Because I could have sworn that was the major cause of the not-technically-but-effectively-a-recession.
Take off the ideological blinders for a moment and think about what they’re really saying: we could drill for oil, but there’s debate that it would do anything for the immediate price crunch–a crunch caused more by speculation than demand–and that it distracts from the real problem: we’re consuming too much of a finite resource, and need to find ways to use less.
quote without comment:
Tredshift: I am SOOOOO sick of seeing the Environmental Fruit Cakes destroying the US Economy.
Just by seriously talking about off-shore drilling, we will see the oil prices fall.
Sorry, but no. This isn’t true whether you take the fundamentalist supply-and-demand view of pricing (i.e. that the current price of oil is based solely on its supply and demand, along with the value of the dollar) or whether you believe, as I do, that speculation also impacts the price.
These proposals for offshore drilling do nothing to impact current supply, which would deal with the former. Nor do they address pricing as explained by the speculation/ bubble theory (investors seeking alternatives to lower return investments, while betting on political tension, distorted analyses of supply and demand.) That’s because in either case, the supply takes too long to turn on to make any difference.
That’s the point that the NYT article is raising, and it’s accurate. These appeals to drill offshore are just political pandering to unsophisticated people who are crying for relief, but who don’t know enough about petroleum or economics to know better.
Whether or not offshore drilling should be expanded is a different issue for discussion. Regardless of how one feels about that, claiming that the current price can be impacted by these drilling plans is just ridiculous.
If the supply can’t be added in within the next few quarters, it won’t change today’s price. Nobody who is paying to play in this market is basing today’s price on what might happen with a few offshore rigs a decade from now. The supply is too small and the timeframe is too distant to have any impact.
Folks, the oil companies are not going to build these platforms or spend the money for drilling without passing the cost on to us. They are enjoying raking in the excessive profits they are making right now and they sure as hell will can the first person that starts lowering those profit percentages by spending it on new developments without passing on the cost to the customer.
Be thankful for the environmental fruit cakes son – if not for them you’d be living in a smog filled country with water that is unfit to drink. Think about how much you’d pay for clean water to drink, cook, or shower with. Someone would clean up selling you all the filtration devices you would need to use that water. And the masks to breathe fresh air. What about our food supply? Think that would be safe if we were out there polluting till our hearts were content?
And the last time I checked our spiraling national deficit had nothing to do with environmentalism and everything to do with over spending and a couple wars over seas.
First of all, in much of the country, the NYT has no credability.
That’s been part of the right wing, neocon strategy – attacking left wing, or moderate news sources.
After the NYT came out with a sex scandal aghainst John Mccain and it dried up entirely, no one is going to listen to them.
I for one think that the offshore drilling and the gas tax holiday is bullshit. Furthermore, if you haven’t noticed, everytime we near an election, gas prices come down strangely enough and all the sudden the economy looks like its doing better. Then the next 4 years we are screwed.
If MCCAIN GETS INTO OFFICE, you can forget leaving Iraq and you can forget about energy, social security and healthcare.
The democrats failed us by not impeaching Bush their first day in office. I’ve lost faith in both the government and the American people.
Americans aren’t educated, or intelligent enough to vote for leaders who actually represent their interests. Wwashington politics is a game that puts Xbox Live to shame.
But what gets me is that Americans are stupid enough to keep falling for the same old tricks.
Off shore drilling only sounds good to people who
#1 don’t understand how the oil supply works.
#2 don’t understand how much oil America has in its borders.
#3 Don’t believe in global Warming due to fossil fuels
or #4 aren’t educated enough to understand anything past the trailer park.
Truth of the matter is, Obama is right on this issue. If we use this as a chance to develop electric cars and improve our electric infrastructure, we will have investment and improvement in electric power which will create green jobs for SOLAR power, WIND, OCEAN WAVE and nuclear.
But if Americans want to be stupid and keep letting big oil drive the economy into the dirt, then so be it.
Americans have a right to elect whomever they want, even if their poor choices destroy them.
Pch101:
Whether or not offshore drilling should be expanded is a different issue for discussion. Regardless of how one feels about that, claiming that the current price can be impacted by these drilling plans is just ridiculous.
True.
But there are some ‘unsophisticated people’ who are concerned about future prices and supplies, given the pain of current costs.
For price stability purposes, there are solid arguments for domestic drilling over the long term. (Although the 20+ year window pimped by the Times is a bit long).
According to The New York Times, we can generate energy from the magical, mystical power of rainbows. Or, by just wishing really, really hard for free energy sources. (I would say pray, but they don’t do that sort of thing at The New York Times)
They also seem to prefer to send billions out of this country, first by restricting energy production, then by making manufacturing impossible in the United States, then by making employers take on onerous burdens and expenses just to have a workforce located here.
The real story is the elitists hate the freedom that personal ownership of automobiles gives us – they want to take that away for everyone but themselves.
Make energy expensive, and they are happy.
I love some of your comments above:
I guess us “trailer park trash” just don’t have the sophistication that our, no doubt, French speaking, quiche eating, Sunday New York Times reading superiors, evidently do.
With only our lower brain functions available to think with, we come up with the ridiculous idea that increasing the supply of a comodity, ie: OIL, might actually result in lower prices. How stupid.
Besides, isn’t the WHOLE IDEA to make prices GO HIGHER so the riff-raff can’t afford to drive or heat their homes. Don’t “we” really want gas to be $8 or $9 or $10 a gallon. Sure do, it works so well in France and Germany, right????
Besides, Al Gore needs that gas for his limo’s and private jets, GOD FORBID we let the great unwashed fly down to Disney World once in awhile. What, you want to build a Dam there…NO, WE’LL SEE YOU IN COURT..it might disturb the night time dreams of some snail darter (that sounds like a joke, but it’s not).
No one wants to live in a dirty world. Every one of us wants energy independence and that will take many different power sources, like wind, and solar, and water, and nuclear, and coal, and bio-mass, etc. etc. Do them all.
Oh I forgot, we really DON”T need any of this, Obama said we only have to fill our tires with air and get tune-ups.
But we do still need oil. We will certainly need it for at least the next 40 years or so. To believe otherwise is, well….. stupid…..
@1138
Everyone is entitled to a profit…hell that’s our system. But the profits these oil guys make are obscene.
So what level of profit can Exxon make before it becomes obscene? Is it a flat dollar amount or a percentage?
Oil will be cheap when there are no oil using power plants, when everything from big rigs and construction equiptment to the smallest of cars uses less (either as a hybrid or as something else), and when people realize that this works.
Drilling does only so much if demand is always rising. We won’t see $1 gas again until we have a much more effecient, sustainable economy. Right now, Europe (especially Denmark – unemployment, 2.7%) is way ahead. We’ve been sitting here whining and trying to war our way to cheap fuel instead of doing the sensible thing. Grow up, people. This isn’t a “liberal” idea, this is common sense.
A gas guzzler here and there is okay, but not everyone can have a gas guzzler. Realistically, though, I don’t think people want them, they just want space/comfort/performance/whatever. Even us, we don’t really care about the “burning fossil fuels” part, what we care about is horsepower, slalom numbers, acceleration.
@ Tredshift
With only our lower brain functions available to think with, we come up with the ridiculous idea that increasing the supply of a comodity, ie: OIL, might actually result in lower prices. How stupid.
Well, the problem is that commodity prices will only fall when supply is increased–as long as new demand equals zero. The probability of that happening is near or equal to none, considering how Chinese growth in oil demand has been accelerating over the past few years.
So in theory your argument makes sense. But as with most well-laid plans and arguments, it fails when it meets daylight.
Folks, the oil companies are not going to build these platforms or spend the money for drilling without passing the cost on to us.
Yes and if I open a hot dog stand then I have to recover my costs (including buying/building the stand) through sales of hot dogs to my customers. I am “passing the cost” to the consumer. What’s your point?
Pch101: If the supply can’t be added in within the next few quarters, it won’t change today’s price. Nobody who is paying to play in this market is basing today’s price on what might happen with a few offshore rigs a decade from now. The supply is too small and the timeframe is too distant to have any impact.
For those who are still too slow to get it: If the average gallon of gas costs $10 in 2018, the new gas from the oil we start harvesting from the new platforms could/would still likely cost $10 a gallon.
@Tredshift: When you’re in a hole, you don’t get out of it by authorizing others to make more of them. That’s a very perverted interpretation of that famous saying.
Damn liberals and their facts.
I need cheap gas for my pickup truck. I don’t need no damn liberals gettin’ me all depressed with that science and logic crap. I’d much rather listen to that guy that makes me feel better. More drillin’ = Cheap fillin’! Yeah!
I guess us “trailer park trash” just don’t have the sophistication that our, no doubt, French speaking, quiche eating, Sunday New York Times reading superiors, evidently do.
Not quite what I said, but hey, I’m not in the mood to argue.
Perhaps an analogy would help: Suppose that I like orange juice. The price of OJ has, whether for reasons of supply and demand (the economic fundamentalist theory) or for speculative reasons (bubble theory), gone up quite a bit.
I’m a little pissed off about the situation and would appreciate some relief. A politician (for the sake of argument, we’ll call him McRubbish) promises to bulldoze the parking lot down the street from me and replace it with an orange grove. McRubbish claims that this will help to lower the cost of my orange juice today, and thinks that he has earned my vote for this promise.
There are a few problems with this. For one, it takes years to turn saplings into trees that are good enough that they can produce oranges that are suitable for producing juice.
For another, there’s no assurance that those oranges will end up in my orange juice, as they could get exported to a high-end boutique somewhere in England or Japan, for example. It might be down the street from me, but I may not see a single drop of it.
A third problem is that one orchard and a few others like it won’t add many oranges to the total supply, anyway. (Drop in the bucket, no pun intended.)
For those who believe in speculation, there is a fourth problem, namely that speculative traders tend to operate in the short term, and don’t examine long-term fundamentals in determining whether to bid up the price of a futures contract. The speculators are betting this week’s and this month’s news, not the news eight years from now.
Now, if somebody made these bogus promises about lowering the price of your Minute Maid, you’d laugh at him because it is obviously ridiculous. Yet for some reason, when it involves Mobil, you’re ready to listen.
That makes no sense. The logic is equally poor in both cases. The only difference is that you’re more revved about gasoline than you are about orange juice.
There are arguments for drilling, but short term pricing is not one of the good ones. That’s what the NYT was talking about, and they were right.
Ah yes, the NYT’s version of energy policy.
These are the same folk that breathlessly announced that the US *must* ban incandescent light bulbs to save electricity, yet now advocate plug-in electric autos.
Tredshift,
Oh I forgot, we really DON”T need any of this, Obama said we only have to fill our tires with air and get tune-ups.
That was only one very small part of Obama’s energy plan. And guess what? The tire inflation would net 3% oil usage reduction RIGHT NOW. The tune-ups would generate another 4% RIGHT NOW. Off shore drilling will net 1% – in 20 years.
The fact of the matter is, and the part that republicans like to ignore, is that this has been proven over time – and folks from Bush on down to NASCAR have harped on these two issues for years to save gas. The McCain campaign has to reach for straws and lies. The same as the Bush campaign resorted to because god knows they couldn’t stand on their own merits.
“But the profits these oil guys make are obscene.”
So its now a problem to make money? Do you also want to take their profits? *cough*Wealth redistribution*cough*
Flashpoint
”
3 Don’t believe in global Warming due to fossil fuels
or #4 aren’t educated enough to understand anything past the trailer park.”
This actually makes me mad. People say conservatives are full of hate speach.
NO ONE has any information showing that humans are responsible for the warming. OF COURSE in the 70’s we were all going to die because the world was going to freeze over.
this is pretty exciting…
Ah! Don’t get too worked up. These East Coast Libs are city people who don’t know that the steak, chicken and vege on the shelves don’t just magically come out from the back of the store.
You can’t expect them to have the foggiest idea whence comes the petrol they fill their cars with to drive out to the Hamptons for the weekend.
But let me tell you, our friend Putin does…and he knows that much of it travels through Georgia. He’s gonna go get it, while Nancy Pelosi is out selling her book, ingnoring the issues that face everyday Americans.
“The tire inflation would net 3% oil usage reduction RIGHT NOW. The tune-ups would generate another 4% RIGHT NOW.”
This is silly. It’s predicated on the idea that all cars are driving around with severely underinflated tires, or with barely running engines. I’m not surprised Obama believes this – assuming he really does – but it’s odd on a car blog.
By the way, the capitals don’t really HELP your point.
This reminds of the California blackouts. The Govt regulators strangled the local utilities with a single sided form of “deregulation” leaving the people wide open for exploitation. I read all of the same editorials about how building capacity would never work and taxes should be piled on high energy prices to create a green transportation utopia in (guess where) the NYT.
With no where to hide, Gov. Gray Davis (D) got run out of office – even after mortgaging Calf to the hilt to build more coal fired power plants.
Now the NYT is trying to provide cover for the same scam on a national level. Pols on the (D) side of the aisle are already breaking ranks and admit that regulatory decisions created this mess.
Same Circus, Same clowns.
The oil companies are acting as if they have run out of oil leases to drill in. They still have 70 million acres of land that they have asked for drilling rights to that they haven’t touched. It’s also worth noting that they asked for these leases when oil was $30 a barrel so profitability at $120 should not be a problem. The real issue is they think the off-shore oil is easier to get and they will make more profit. And that is what its all about – not meeting demand or lowering cost but making more money.
The California blackouts were caused by Enron manipulating the energy markets and witholding electricity and natural gas in order to drive up prices. This was a criminal act, it was investigated, documented and had nothing to do with some fantasy about Gray Davis.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/02/eveningnews/main620795.shtml
But who cares about facts when we have Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
Looks like lots of irrational drug (oops I mean oil) junkies making entries here, who just want one more fix before detox. Folks, the sooner we quit that addictive habit the better. It has to happen sooner or later. If sooner, by design it will be far less painful than if later in a more random and abrupt manner , i.e. war, economic depression, environmental disaster.
Call me a “lib” or what ever creative name calling you want, that hardly upholds the rationality or soundness of your position on the issue. I happen to be a registered Republican.
The very fact that world oil prices are dropping on the basis of conservation by US drivers in light of $4/gal gas shows what a two ton gorilla the USA is in the world.
This is one drug that going cold turkey on would be very difficult. We need to initiate reducing consumption and developing alternatives now.
Desperately enabling the drug dealers (oops oil providers) to get us just one more fix is a fool’s errand.
Carlos —
You forgot Carl Rove in your big, bad, boogey man parade. LOL Wake up and don’t let either side spin you.
I’m no Republican, but I also don’t default to clowns who manipulate markets through govt fiat.
If one takes active steps to create a hazardous environment to be exploited, then they are more an accessory than a victim. Suggest you read up on the Calf public utility commission’s “deregulation” and how their actions allowed *bad* actors like Enron to take advantage of the people. It is the same scenario with the nation’s energy policy in re: oil.
It is about the cause, not the effect. No fantasy here
Gray Davis backed that regulatory stupidity and paid the price at the polls– even after panicking and financing crap that nobody wanted in the first place. No fantasy there.
And the NYT editorial position hasn’t changed. Fantasy? Nope.
TTACgreg —
Agreed, but cold turkey fails more often than it succeeds. If we panic, we can get scammed by tools of the oil companies or craven leftist politicians. The short term knee jerk stuff I hear today is all focused on the fghting the last war. The last thing we need is the energy equiv of the Maginot Line.It will take ~10 years of breathing room to get this licked and that means drilling for oil. It sucks to be us — but just for a little while longer.
Everyone needs to go back and read what barberoux said. It’s the most important point in this discussion, and sadly, it seems to have gone unnoticed.
During the Gore/Bush campaign I read quite a bit about their backgrounds. Bush was nothing but a con man and influence peddler. He’d run whatever he tried on his own nearly into the ground before being bailed out by people who wanted him for his value as a con man and/or influence peddler. But the ‘liberal’ media focused on Gore’s alleged deception so we got Bush. OK, I figured by the end of Bush’s 4 years, things would be so bad that even the most conservative (whatever that means now) people would see the light. So after starting a war etc., he was reelected. Guess I was optimistic. OK, I was sure that after another term, if he finished it, things would be so bad that even the most conservative would see the light. Well, after 4 more, Katrina, trampling of the constitution, global warming much worse, the economy in so bad a condition we don’t know where it’s going thanks to a severe overdose of Milton Friedman’s teachings, I’m still waiting for the conservatives to see the light. The so called conservatives had the ball for 6 years, and what have we got? But still the ‘libs’ get blamed. Denial similar to what goes on at the top of GM with similar results. For too many people, facts just don’t matter.
Truth of the matter is, Obama is right on this issue. If we use this as a chance to develop electric cars and improve our electric infrastructure, we will have investment and improvement in electric power which will create green jobs for SOLAR power, WIND, OCEAN WAVE and nuclear.
Why can’t we do all of those?
Why can’t we drill more oil, and conserve more? Why can’t we increase supplies while developing nuclear power?
Is the fear among the left that increased drilling will dramatically lower prices? Because if it doesn’t, we will still have the high oil costs that will allow alternatives to prosper. And if it does lower prices, then they’ve been selling us a big bag of lies by screaming that it absolutely won’t.
We should sell the oil because it’s valuable. And “wait until it’s more valuable” is non-falsifiable, since it says “wait forever.” How are people who were hoarding whale blubber doing these days?
85% in 3 years. That is how much of the natural gas drilling program I invested in has gotten into production. This is small scale compared to ‘big’ off-shore stuff.
Also there happens to currently be a near shortage of seamless drill pipe in NA.
Exxon and all the rest of them have gone way past obscene.
If you built as many more off shore oil platforms as you could, starting now, the price of gasoline might go down a nickel a gallon-five years from now. Or more precisely, gas will go up a nickel a gallon less than if you didn’t drill. (So, instead of us paying seven dollars a gallon in 2013, we’ll pay $6.95.)
Now, I’m still for doing so, but you have to have very modest expectations as to what doing so will accomplish.
No offshore drilling, please. Put up windmills instead. At least if they fall down, they do not ruin thousands of miles of coastline.
Its one thing for the Exxon VAldez to ruin a coastline that noone uses, quite another to ruin summer vacations for like 100 million people on the east coast. Entire regional esonomies will go up in smoke ( no pun intended). The lawsuits anywhere on the east coast will be staggering. Pick a state, any state with Atlantic coast frontage, the real estate is worth a fortune.
Drilling for oil has actually been a very succesful method of producing oil. It will still work. The drilling is only stopped by the enviros and their allies in the MSM and the Democrat party.
“They still have 70 million acres of land that they have asked for drilling rights to that they haven’t touched.”
You have to remember, first of all, that nobody really knows what is down there. And to really find out is a cool hundred million cash in deepwater. Good geologists can improve your chances but you have to kiss a lot of gold plated frogs before you find your prince. So, rationally, oil companies lease a lot of land. It doesn’t mean they haven’t explored there. It means they haven’t thought the chances are worthwhile or they can’t find a rig. If there was really something compelling, you could bet they would scare up a rig. So, if there is massive amount of territory left undrilled, it is probably because it is not worth drilling. Second, you have to remember that costs have risen just as fast or faster than the price of oil. A deep water drillship now runs $650,000 per day. Assuming you could find one anywhere in the world that isn’t leased through 2011, that is.
As for the economics of oil, most of the momentum is in natural gas, at least in this country. There just aren’t enough places left to drill unless you are doing that drilling in the ultra-deep zone. And in that case, bring your wallet, assuming you have several billion in it. The supermajors (BP, Exxon) and a few large specialists (Apache, Devon) can do it. First, you hire a drillship for $150 mil a year. Then, assuming you hit oil, you have to order a procuction rig and have it constructed. Call it a cool 700 million for the average rig. Then you tie it back to some other company’s undersea pipeline. That costs serious cash as well. All in, including parts and labor, you are talking 1.5bil minimum and 5-7 years for a decent size oil discovery. So there aren’t that many places to drill. Not only do you need to hit oil, you need to hit a LOT of oil to make it worth it. Most places don’t measure up.
I have made myself a rather obscene amount of money investing in the petroleum industry (largely but not entirely in the tar sands) and I am aggressively purchasing more oil stocks based in places with energy management policies.
Rix:
As for the economics of oil, most of the momentum is in natural gas, at least in this country.
+1. High prices & new drilling methods / technologies are bringing down the cost of gas. A geology student told me he’d be willing to bet speculative money on major natural gas finds in the near future.
1138 says:
To those who say we should have drilled ten years ago…sure but we could say the same about alternative sources. If we had started to demand alternative energy sources we would have been ahead of the game as well.
Except oil prices then were so inexpensive nobody particularly cared, alternative technologies were not as advanced, and Europeans paid through the nose but rolled over and took it instead of doing much research themselves (except for the French who went mostly nuclear).
I’m an Art Director in advertising and manipulating people(The general public) with the proper PR is not that complicated. So establishing the status quo is very easy. People usually fall in line like sheep. Oil is very good at PR and people who want the status quo are also very good at PR.
Thank you Al Gore’s best selling book, PowerPoint presentation, wide-release documentary, Academy Award, and Nobel Prize. Thank you, “scientific community”, for your consensus on anthropogenic global warming.
I believe a lot of people, including myself (of course), would be a lot less antagonized by the ‘green’ movement if it were about more realistic goals like avoiding SoCal summer blackouts, reducing air pollution, and reducing/reusing more of our discards to make our environment a nicer place to live. I like reducing my energy bills. My Republican registered, NRA member stepfather has an overengineered solar array covering half his roof with a large battery backup and a $50 yearly electric bill.
Only a hypocritical egotist is going to applaud and support Al Gore’s advocacy, carbon credit schemes, and hairshirt environmentalism while simultaneously modifying her decadent western lifestyle in conspicuous (yet minor) ways so she can self-righteously condemn the family with 3+ kids and a Suburban.
Everyone is entitled to a profit…hell that’s our system. But the profits these oil guys make are obscene.
I’ll paraphrase the other responses to this: WTF? Do you realize oil company profit percentages are near the bottom of any heavy industry in the world? Do you realize each gallon of gas you buy sends twice as much tax money to local/state/federal systems than it does to oil company profits? Have you really wrapped your head around how many barrels of oil these massive companies process? Do you realize people actually want to work for, invest in, and buy from profitable companies?
I’ll seriously suggest you go live in a country with a nationalized oil industry. Enjoy yourself.
The key point here is that we need a long-term national energy policy. We can’t rely on market mechanisms alone to guide us smoothly through what is likely to be a very disruptive, convulsive energy transition. Just a few clicks away from here you can find some rather colorful comments about the ineptitude of Rick Wagoner et al. Why would anyone think that short-sighted management is reserved solely for GM? Energy companies, too, follow where investors and management lead, and that’s not always the place that’s best for the long-term health of the U.S.
Offshore drilling technology has improved considerably in the past couple decades and makes a lot of sense now, so long as we are careful about regulating where and how it is done. It won’t provide any near-term relief in oil prices, but it will bring in domestic revenue and will have some modest impact on long-term supply and prices.
At the same time, we’ve got to get past this silly either-or mentality: you’re either with the oil companies or you’re with the greenies. Investing in renewables (along with safer nuclear fission and, very long-range, nuclear fusion) also makes good sense for all kinds of environmental, economic, and political reasons.
My feeling is that we should also be investing significant R&D money in carbon sequestration. I don’t see any plausible market or technological shift that would cut carbon emissions quickly enough to make a big dent in the current warming trend. It’s easier to add a new technology on top of the current infrastructure than to replace that infrastructure.
All of this is going to cost money and yes, some of that money is going to come out of your tax dollars. On the other hand, those dollars will at least provide real security, technological progress, and economic growth–unlike, say, the huge farm subsidies that we have all numbly accepted as just the way government goes about its business.
I read in Scientific American that there’s a company developing a process of bubbling a natural gas powerplant’s CO2-rich stack emissions through seawater (or mineral-rich mine drainage) to produce a near-equivalent to Portland Cement.
That’s the kind of thinking we need in this country, and it won’t happen if we keep attempting to live in the past.
We should only drill offshore if we have the ability to store some of that oil for future security of supply (as in another Strategic Oil Reserve), otherwise, it’ll just get sucked up by a ravenous market, never to be seen again.
BTW
Obama’s “caving” on the offshore drilling issue is merely a compromise, so some sort of coherent energy policy can be started ASAP. I don’t agree with his proposal of tapping the SOR, as that’s pandering of a sort, and though it may provide immediate relief, it’s not a prudent move in a long-term solution.
Pch101 : wrote-in response to me
August 12th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Just by seriously talking about off-shore drilling, we will see the oil prices fall.
“Sorry, but no. This isn’t true whether you take the fundamentalist supply-and-demand view of pricing (i.e. that the current price of oil is based solely on its supply and demand, along with the value of the dollar) or whether you believe, as I do, that speculation also impacts the price.”
Where did you get this nugget, from the Nancy Pelosi School of B.S and Crap-ola???
Are you saying that increasing the supply of oil will NOT reduce prices? Did you happen to notice last month when Bush said he was withdrawing the Presidential Ban (about time, he should have done this years ago) on Off Shore Drilling that the price FELL $7.00 a barrel the VERY NEXT DAY. Are you saying there was NO connection there?
You claim “speculation” drives up the price, well so do I (there are a lot of other factors as well like the weak dollar and increased demand, etc.). Part of what drives “speculation” is “Perception”.
If you perceive a shortage, you will drive the price UP. Let me ask you, genius, if we tell the world we WILL NOT DRILL for the oil we know is there (I think I hear Cuba and China snickering), might we be telling those speculators to bet on higher oil prices? By the way, most other countries in the world do not seem to have a problem with off shore oil drilling, places like Norway, China, Brazil to name a few. There is no oil shortage, don’t believe me? Go check out what the U.S Dept of the Interior has to say.
As I said before, we have to use EVERY energy source available. Let’s be efficient in our energy usage, But we will need oil for the years to come. It might be difficult to design a 747 to fly on solar power and we better make sure we only fly those planes during daylight hours…
I have a new slogan for Obama, instead of a Chicken in every pot, he could say, “a tire gauge and air compressor for every car”. I know I’m always driving around on flat tires, and the ride is just so rough. Thank God the Messiah is here to help.
By the way, some of the “Trailer Park trailers” in my town are worth between 5 and 6 Million dollars, those are some mighty nice double wides! Not everyone who feels that “global warming” is a hoax (lets not even get started on the idiocy of the KOYTO Treaty where it exempts CHINA and INDIA from any of the restrictions) and supports off shore (and ANWAR) drilling is a toothless hillbilly.
Cars are awsome. Thus far, nobody has been able to develop a viable car for the market that is not fueled directly by a petroleum product.
Where did you get this nugget, from the Nancy Pelosi School of B.S and Crap-ola???
Some people understand the petroleum business and economics. I would humbly suggest that you may not be one of them.
My statements on this topic have been neither liberal nor conservative. I am simply stating a fact — inventory that takes many years to enter the market will not impact the short-term price.
I don’t care whether you hang to the left, to the right or in a completely different direction, that just ain’t gonna happen. You could find many a conservative economist who would concur with that statement. (The conservatives would likely disagree with my comments about speculation, but they most certainly would agree that supplies entering the system years from now will not change today’s price, for obvious reasons.)
The only reason that you believe that is that you are hoping to blame the Democratic party for your fuel prices. That shows a dire lack of knowledge about economics on your part. Facts will not sway the ideologues among us who reached their conclusions before they did their homework. Your loss, not mine.
toxicroach: Even if all cars are EVs, we will still need a hell of a lot of oil for plastics, fertilizer, etc.
The following URL is required reading:
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2008/01/326-detailed-breakdown-of-us-petroleum.html
Therein you will find out that passenger cars consume 40% of all oil.
Getting those all to EV’s would essentially solve the USA’s oil dependency problem.
If further measures are required, target trucks next — shifting most of it to electrified rail would be a reasonable plan.
That’s another 12% of oil.
Aviation (civilian and military) is about 8%. Chemical feedstocks is 10%. All in all, this is about a quarter to a fifth of current consumption: the USA would be all a-giggle if its oil consumption was under 5 million barrels a day (a level not seen since about 1950).
Eventually, of course, substitutes will be necessary. Fortunately, one is at hand: read Olah, Goeppert and Prakash’s “Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy”.
N85523: Thus far, nobody has been able to develop a viable car for the market that is not fueled directly by a petroleum product.
As far as I am concerned,
http://www.aptera.com/
http://www.teslamotors.com/
and several others appear to be completely viable cars. The Aptera looks like it is even affordable.
There is no disadvantage to drilling for oil. It will provide thousands of high paying jobs and oil. The only reason for not drilling is so the politicians can please their masters, the green zealots. Now the enviros will be happy and send hundreds of millions to the Dems and the oil will be untouched. And then the Dems will blame the oil companies for high oil prices. And many in the voting public will buy that.
The only reason for not drilling is so the politicians can please their masters, the green zealots.
Do you really think that the green lobby has one-hundredth the amount of money available to, say, lobbyists for manufacturing, petroleum or defense, let alone the major trade unions?
I’m puzzled as to where people think this “green conspiracy” gets it’s funding from. There’s very little money in green as compared to, say, the status quo. Who, exactly, benefits from the green movement? Some academics and what essentially amounts to a cottage industry. Who benefits from the status quo? Some of the largest commercial entities on the planet.
That the green movement has any traction in the upper echelons of politics astounds me to no end.
As an outsider looking in, the American political spectacle is amusingly perverse: it’s the Ultra-Right criticizing the Fairly-Right for not being sufficiently Right-wing, while the Fairly Right dithers about all the stuff the Ultra-Right does wrong. Meanwhile, the largely-unrepresented Left puts a bag over it’s collective head and, ahem, thinks of England every time an election rolls around.
bluecon: There is no disadvantage to drilling for oil.
The disadvantage is time and effort lost.
You can invest 10 or 20 years of work, desperately clinging to a questionable status quo … and be left almost nothing to show for it except an even nastier energy problem in the end.
Or you can bite the bullet now and invest in efficiency, alternative/renewable fuels, and so on, that will work for you forever, whereas all that oil you have a woody for will be gone in no time flat, relatively speaking.
In short, markets are good, but they are not perfect. A failure in an energy portfolio dominated by a single, huge, investment would not be a pretty sight. This is what an “energy policy” is about, and it’s #1 goal should be intensive, radical, diversification. The sooner the better.
As far as I am concerned,
http://www.aptera.com/
http://www.teslamotors.com/
and several others appear to be completely viable cars. The Aptera looks like it is even affordable.
Those two vehicles are not viable cars to many people. I need four seats, not two and so do many other people. Every day I either take my kids to school and day care or pick them up, so I have to have a place for them to sit.
The disadvantage is time and effort lost.
You can invest 10 or 20 years of work, desperately clinging to a questionable status quo … and be left almost nothing to show for it except an even nastier energy problem in the end.
Or you can bite the bullet now and invest in efficiency, alternative/renewable fuels, and so on, that will work for you forever, whereas all that oil you have a woody for will be gone in no time flat, relatively speaking.
It’s not an either-or. The oil companies are in the business of locating and producing oil and natural gas. They have committed substantial money to find what they have found, and they have expertise in how to get it.
They can do their thing without taking away from alternative energy projects elsewhere in the economy. If anything, we can’t expect the oil companies to do much about it, because they aren’t well grounded in it.
Unlike oil, the alternative energy companies will need government money and tax credits because they are too speculative for much momentum to occur without a good shove from above. These projects may work well, fizzle out or bomb completely, and not many established companies are willing to take on that degree of risk.
Ultimately, if alt projects become successful, the oil companies will buy the new alt companies because they’ll want the resources, intellectual property and expertise that these startups have developed.
There are reasonable arguments for and against drilling. The point of the NYT article was to show that short-term pricing is not a good argument in its favor. Nobody on the thread has debunked that point, but it’s far from conclusive as to whether there should be no drilling at all. Whether you’re for or against it, you can’t expect too much to come from it too soon.
mdf: and several others appear to be completely viable cars. The Aptera looks like it is even affordable.
These are two seaters, which means that they are completely impractical for most people. Sorry, but most of us need a back seat in our cars, even if we don’t use it every day. We need the flexibility provided by the additional room. Otherwise, I’d drive an S2000 instead of an Accord.
Plus, the price is too high, in view of the limited utility. And the overall range still can’t match that of my Accord. So, no dice. These are not viable cars for most of us.
psharjinian: Do you really think that the green lobby has one-hundredth the amount of money available to, say, lobbyists for manufacturing, petroleum or defense, let alone the major trade unions?
You don’t measure influence solely in terms of money. If the green lobby is so weak, and the oil industry is so all-powerful, then please explain why drilling in those areas isn’t occuring NOW. Drilling would already be happening.
For that matter, if the oil industry is so all-powerful and omnipotent, please explain why there is still a debate about this. Under your scenario, the oil companies would have simply said, “We want to drill there,” then they would have taken the requisite bags of cash to the appropriate parties, and preparations for the drilling would be happening even as I type this.
psharjinian: Who, exactly, benefits from the green movement? Some academics and what essentially amounts to a cottage industry. Who benefits from the status quo? Some of the largest commercial entities on the planet.
The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council are more than a cottage industry. These groups benefit mightily from donations (which don’t roll in as fast unless individual donors are kept in a state of hysteria with “the-earth-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket” rhetoric).
There are also government grants at the state level given to many “green” groups.
You need to come to my office in the Pennsylvania Capitol to see how these groups work, and the influence they wield. The idea that they are being crowded out by better-financed industrial groups or have no influence is simply not true. One of state-level groups – PennFuture – has played havoc with one of my boss’s bills because it isn’t “green” enough, even though it in its current form it will HELP the environment and improve energy efficiency.
Can someone enlighten me? Would offshore and Alaskan oil leases be paid to the US goverment?
PCH101
“My statements on this topic have been neither liberal nor conservative. I am simply stating a fact — inventory that takes many years to enter the market will not impact the short-term price.”
I must respectfully disagree with your premise on oil prices….there is a significant emotional premium on the price of a barrel of oil. Fundamentals say the price ought to be in the $80 to $90 per bbl range, but emotional futures investors have bid it up to $140+…and we have seen that the rational side of the market has started to reclaim the high ground in the last few weeks as the price dropped to $114 to $117, seeking its new equilibrium point.
Be that as it may, drilling offshore, (although I am in favor) by itself would not in and of itself necessarily drive the price down. What would drive it down is if our politicians (I am looking at you both, Mr. Republican and Madame Democrat) would stop politicizing the issue (stop politicizing everything, dammit!) and get to work on a rational comprehensive energy policy which includes three things: tax policy which encourages investment in conservational technologies and discourages waste; open, responsible exploration and development (including offshore drilling) and development and expansion of renewable/alternative energy sources such as solar/nuclear/wind.
It should interest many to note that China just raised to 40% their tax on cars with engines >4.0 liters, and 25% on cars with engines greater than 2.0 liters. While I shudder to think we would do anything that draconian, perhaps we should consider a similar concept….you play, you pay.
Other than a rational, logical comprehensive energy policy which should become the model for the industrial world, everything else is wasted ink and wasted breath, IMHO.
As for the NYT, it will be interesting to see how fast they reverse their editorial stand, now that Nancy Pelosi is signalling that she realizes that political hay is to be made by allowing some offshore drilling…..and, political whores that they are, they tilt in the direction she blows. Sad, that. What we need right now from our leaders and our press is intelligence, statesmanship, leadership and gravitas. Most of our leaders probably can’t spell those words, let alone put them in action.
If the green lobby is so weak, and the oil industry is so all-powerful, then please explain why drilling in those areas isn’t occuring NOW. Drilling would already be happening.
Because voters who live on the coasts don’t want it. They remember high profile mistakes such as the Exxon Valdez and don’t want a repeat in their backyards.
Environmental issues may be largely a red-blue phenomenon, but specific issues lose that left-right axis for the people who live on top of them. For those who have to live with the consequences, their views will shift based upon their personal stake in the game, whatever that stake may be. That’s when you see conservatives opposing oil drilling in a coastal zone, while you’ll find liberals in rural areas who favor animal “management” when they pose a threat to their property and families. It’s good old fashioned self interest.
Politicians in the US are elected in districts on a first-past-the-post basis. That makes them sensitive to their specific constituents. Republican or Democrat, it doesn’t matter — a Congressman is most likely not going to push an energy project that his or her own voters don’t want.
mabye if everyone really just paid attention to why prices are so high, its all speculation on FUTURE SUPPLY, not todays, yes doesnt that sound rediculous well if you knew that then you would know just how screwed this situation is and that this article is not entirely untrue but does not have all the facts, just SAYING that offshore drilling WILL occur will immediately effect gas prices today. While it doesnt seem like it should in all senses but it does, and i wish politicians actually knew what they said before they spoke, why cant we ever get decent candidates
btw, all emissions from cars world wide produce roughly less than one percent of global polution, hm so why not fix the other 99+% ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I must respectfully disagree with your premise on oil prices….there is a significant emotional premium on the price of a barrel of oil. Fundamentals say the price ought to be in the $80 to $90 per bbl range, but emotional futures investors have bid it up to $140+…and we have seen that the rational side of the market has started to reclaim the high ground in the last few weeks as the price dropped to $114 to $117, seeking its new equilibrium point.
I have argued throughout this thread and elsewhere on this website that there is a speculative component to oil pricing.
But that speculation does not come from US plans to allow drilling offshore or in ANWR. Traders are in contracts for the short term, and that sort of news has little effect.
Right now, pricing is leaping around based upon every whiff of current and short-term supply and inventory data, whatever bump occurs in Asia, and war news from the Middle East. Many of these factors have fundamentals as their components, but the market reaction to them is extreme and driven by a trader’s mentality, as the hedgers have clearly lost their influence over price.
If you really want to deflate oil prices in the short term, end the war — eliminating tension in the oil producing regions of the world would do a lot to chase out the speculators. If you want even more deflation, have the Fed pursue a strong dollar policy, as oil has become a hedge against the falling dollar. (The recent gains in the dollar have been helping to lower oil prices, as we can see in the current news.)
New wildcatting in areas such as Oklahoma and Texas would and does help, because that oil can be sourced pretty quickly. That is different from the offshore platforms, which take years to build. In addition, there is currently a shortage of construction rigs, so nobody is going to care much about such proclamations from current or possible future presidents, because it would take years to just get those projects started, let alone finish them and make them productive.
Traders aren’t stupid — they know that the timelines for offshore drilling or ANWR are too long to count for anything. It’s naive for readers to believe that traders know nothing about the industry that makes them rich.
HOLD EVERYTHING.
By my count, there are more people here posting ANTI oil drilling than are posting PRO oil drilling.
Therefore, by the powers vested in the Fairness Doctrine, those of you who are ANTI drilling must SHUT UP until more PRO drilling posts are made.
I guess the ANTI drilling forces did not notice that the price of a barrel of oil has dropped appx 20% just since Bush reversed the presidential ANTI-offshore drilling decree?
Pch101: Because voters who live on the coasts don’t want it. They remember high profile mistakes such as the Exxon Valdez and don’t want a repeat in their backyards.
Very true…but that further shows how complex some of these issues are. It isn’t merely a matter of the party with the deeper (lobbying) pockets always getting its way.
For the record, I agree that drilling now won’t reduce prices immediately. Higher gasoline prices are reducing the amount of driving we do and have further accelerated the shift away from SUVs and full-size pickups. Higher gas prices are also putting the brakes on suburban growth.
So they are hardly a bad thing, unless you are GM and Chrysler (and, to a lesser extent, Ford) and bet the farm on light trucks.
Pch101: If you want even more deflation, have the Fed pursue a strong dollar policy, as oil has become a hedge against the falling dollar.
But I recall reading that the federal government has been encouraging the dollar’s slide to make manufacturing more attractive in the U.S. (and imports less attractive). They just didn’t count on it sliding as much as it has, because of other factors.
Oh, and can one of you ANTI forces explain why the price of gasoline DOUBLED since the democrats got control of congress promising to fix the problem? (And promising to get us out of Iraq…)
And BTW, are your tires properly inflated? And why is it that most of the people who pass me in the left lane going 80 or more mph are Obama supporters? WHY doesnt Obama tell them to slow down?
But I recall reading that the federal government has been encouraging the dollar’s slide to make manufacturing more attractive in the U.S. (and imports less attractive).
That’s getting pretty far from cars, so I’ll try to keep it brief, but in my opinion, the Fed never had a weak dollar policy — the dollar has weakened through neglect, not by means of a deliberate policy.
Everybody at the top knows that the US is destined to run trade deficits, and that there is no level at which the dollar could be so weak that we could substantially reduce our trade deficit.
The weak dollar is largely a byproduct of our budget deficit and the war being lost. The deficit is a growing problem which threatens to keep the dollar down pretty low, but it is offset somewhat by a bit more calm in the Middle East and the recessions beginning abroad, that weaken their currencies against the dollar.
If you want a stronger dollar, the bottom line is that you need to have a lower budget deficit. Until we tackle that, it won’t be like the good old days.
We don’t even know how much oil is out on our continental shelf as it is because we can’t even perform exploratory drilling to assay the resources. The next Ghawar field could be out there, fact is we don’t know and never will unless we actually can go take a look with exploratory drilling. All the bantering about how much oil is out there are just guestimates at best by “experts.” Given the credentials of the “experts” on both sides of this debate seem to be the same (Ivy League tool) I would surmise no one really has a clue what is out there resource-wise or how hard it would be to get it. Brazil recently found about three billion barrels of definitely recoverable black gold off their coast – again by actually exploring with tools of the trade – it makes me wonder what riches lurk off of our coast.
Another energy source that would be a game-changer if/when it can be economically recovered are methane hydrates. There is probably enough of that stuff off the coast of Oregon alone laying on the floor of the Juan De Fuca plate and continental shelf to power the United States for decades. We will never have access to those resources, or even have a working economical approach to recover those resources, until it is legal to at least try.
Most here seem to be missing the implications of Peak Oil and the Export Land Model. While more offshore drilling will eventually bring additional oil to market, it distracts from the reality that old oil wells are gradually petering out. Many of these wells are located in large oil fields that are in declining production due to depletion.
Newer wells generally turn out to locate smaller fields that don’t produce like the old giant fields.
Drilling more wells will not likely make up for the declining output of old wells. This coupled with Export Land Model effect where exporting countries consume more of their own oil as they grow faster on high oil revenue means we are in a situation where we must drill ever faster and faster just to maintain the same production let alone increase the supply of oil.
This is the dilemma of Peak Oil and what is behind the resistance to more drilling. Since we have to face the music anyway why not save some oil for the future and make the hard adjustments now.
The oil will still be there if we don’t drill and we can always drill later. If we change our lifestyle and economy to run on less oil we should be ahead long term. However the adjustments will be painful nonetheless.
This is the crux of the issue.
The Red Chinese are drilling off the shore of Florida RIGHT NOW. Taking the oil that WE could get, but our communists are dummer than their communists.
TonyTiger: Oh, and can one of you ANTI forces explain why the price of gasoline DOUBLED since the democrats got control of congress promising to fix the problem? (And promising to get us out of Iraq…)
Because politicians from both parties will say virtually anything to get elected, especially if it’s what the voters want to hear (note that it doesn’t have to be true – people just have to WANT to believe it). Whether the politicians believe it is true is another matter…
TonyTiger: And BTW, are your tires properly inflated? And why is it that most of the people who pass me in the left lane going 80 or more mph are Obama supporters? WHY doesnt Obama tell them to slow down?
I don’t know where you are from, but around here the speed limit is 65 mph, and if I drive at that speed, virtually EVERYONE passes me. The only groups that drive at that speed or slower are Buick and Grand Marquis drivers…
Peak oil is a theory. And there is no agreement on when or even IF we will reach peak oil.
However, if you go to the store ANY STORE and pick a product ANY PRODUCT you will see that prices are rising daily BECAUSE of the cost of Diesel fuel. That is a FACT. If WE dont do something, the economy will not be able to handle these price increases.
“The oil will still be there and we can always drill later.” WHAT??? We can drill later but we cant drill now??? What if Obama gets elected??? THEN will we be able to drill later? Oh wait, I’m sorry, Mr O has flip-flopped on this issue and admits McCain is right. Sorry I forgot.
geeber – I live in Northern California. Where we have LOTs of wind farms and electricity is more expensive than just about anywhere. But I digress.
Obama wants you to inflate your tires to save gas. But apparently he doesnt care if u drive 90mph, even though slowing down would save FAR more gas than inflating tires. MAYBE it’s because Big O knows that people dont WANT to slow down and so that position might cost him votes?
You make my point about the Buick and GM drivers. Their demographic is almost totally McCain voters. And they are much more law-abiding than the Escalade driving rappers doing 90 in the left lane.
And of COURSE politicians will say anything. That’s why we’re in this GD mess. For one politician who IS NOW SAYING ANYTHING and everything, see Mr O’s web site. Take notes what his positions are this week cause they will change by next week in the most Orwellian fashion. IF the winds blow that way, as they have with drilling.
ANd, BTW, the public SUPPORTS drilling now. Watch the poly-ticks sway in the breeze. So far only my governor, the very liberal Schwarzenegger, is still opposing off shore drilling here. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Liberals and other ANTI-drilling forces – Fairness Doctrine notes that there are almost an equal number of pro and anti posts now. I am doing my part to level the field. Liberals can soon post again.
Meantime you MUST read my posts or the goverment WILL turn off your screen. Big Sister Nancy is watching.
Fairness Doctrine notes that there are almost an equal number of pro and anti posts now.
Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctrine. And it never applied to websites, obviously.
Obama wants you to inflate your tires to save gas. But apparently he doesnt care if u drive 90mph, even though slowing down would save FAR more gas than inflating tires.
Actually, he has gone on record in support of a lower limit. Personally, I oppose policies that don’t work, so I hope that he doesn’t take this limit idea too seriously as president.
In any case, this is a car enthusiasts website, so we should all favor having proper air pressure in our tires. This is the sort of thing that people who like cars actually support, and there is no downside in keeping tires properly inflated. There’s no point in bickering about something that you should be doing anyway.
Pch101: You are correect. Reagan got rid of it. However, apparently you are not keeping up with current events as your favorite car designer, Nancy Pelosi, and her communist minions are trying to bring it back. And a simple google will garner you plenty of stories about how it WILL affect the internet if it is brought back. Everything will have to be 50-50. By the count of some beaureacrat of course. At least your buddy Al Franken will have a soapbox again.
Peak oil is a theory. And there is no agreement on when or even IF we will reach peak oil.
This line of reasoning always bugs me, both here and when applied to Climate Change. Yes, it’s a theory, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth hedging our bets against it.
Seriously, what seems like the smarter course? Doing a “steady as she goes” on extraction and consumption, or working to diversify supply and reduce consumption on the off chance that we either hit peak oil, demand goes up, or extraction becomes costly. Part of the reason GM is up a particularly foul-smelling creek without a paddle is a similar failure to diversify.
And yes, it’s possible to do both offshore oil drilling and investing in alternative energy sources/reduced consumption technologies, but it’s very hard to get the the impetus for it if there’s a glut of oil.
I’m personally in favour of maintaining the current price levels (and not drilling) because said prices are working to stimulate innovation and change. I can’t recall a time since the 1970s when there has been this much effort put into finding a real solution to consumption, both in new technologies and a reexamination of wasteful habits (shipping food halfway across the planet, encouraging sprawl, etc). Drilling would just be “doing something for the sake of looking like we’re doing something”. It might reduce prices in the short term and could potentially provide a small supply in the future, but it doesn’t effectively address the need for reduced consumption and certainly might reduce the pressure to innovate.
Pch101: You are correct. Reagan got rid of it. However, apparently you are not keeping up with current events as your favorite car designer and planet saver, Nancy Pelosi, and her communist minions are trying to bring it back. And a simple google will garner you plenty of stories about how it WILL affect the internet if it is brought back. Everything will have to be 50-50. EVERY BLOG will need to be balanced by an equal and opposite blog. EVERY letter to the editor. EVERY INSIPID comment like yours and mine on this blog WILL NEED TO BE BALANCED. And of course EVERY singer on TV must be cute or a replacement will lip-sync for her.
You oppose policies that dont work – like lower speed limits? How so? Lower speed limits will save thousands of times more gasoline than properly inflated tires. AND it can actually be enforced. I really wanna see the first Obama-tire-policewoman in action. I’ll bet that will be cost effective!
Of course we here keep our tires properly inflated. But do you – who opposes policies that dont work – REALLY think this is the way to achieve energy indpendence? It totally AMAZES me that you people can say – inflate your tires and then say NO DRILLING. It’s pure insanity. But then, look at your candidate.
…Nancy Pelosi, and her communist minions are trying to bring it back…
For cryin’ out loud, Nancy Pelosi is not a communist any more than Dick Cheney is armband-wearing, goose-stepping Mussolini clone.
Che Guevara was a communist. Fidel Castro and Vladimir Lenin are/were more or less communists. Hugo Chavez could barely be considered communist. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are more right of centre than most of Europe and Canada’s right-wing leaders.
psar – “Obama ans Pelosi are to the right of Europe and Canada’s right wingers??????????”
ANd u expect to be taken seriously after saying that?
I dont suppose you heard one of Pelosi’s house-minions talking about nationalizing the oil industry? (She couldnt think of the word, but enquiring minds knew what she meant.)
And u dont think the “Fairness Doctrine” is a totalitarian communistic Orwellian tool to control media and thought?
And u think her recent actions of turning out the house lights while the republicans demanded nothing nmore than a VOTE on oil drilling were “democratic”?
psar – And my reasoning bugs you because I dont accept theories that you worship? Not very scientific, your approach. Not good for the economy either. Look, if you and your type WANTS to live in the third world, please stop trying to bring that world here – GET ON A BOAT AND GO THERE.
Personally, I love the USA. Fought for it. Pay taxes to it. I vote every 4 years. Though I am getting less and less inclined to continue that practice. I understand why all the rest of the planet wants to come here. AND I understand we need to stay strong militarily and economically. Worshiping every theory that comes down the pike that says the sky is falling if we dont change everything about our lifestyle – while the rest of the world changes next to nothing cause after all, ITS ALL GEORGE BUSH’ FAULT – is reasoning that bugs me. So there Fairness Doctrine satisfied.
psar – One more. So you say, with your apparently priviledged nose in the air “I’m personally in favor of maintaining current price levels and not drilling because it is stimulating change …”
Well, La-Di-Da. I’m sure all your fellow Obama supporters who drive 78 Bonnevilles to and from their minimum wage jobs are real happy to hear that. Of course, change is coming for them and you. Soon, you’ll be buying them a new Hybrid Escalade cause you’re rich and they’re poor and we must balance things. It’s only fair. That’s not Communistic either, is it? How about almost 1% of US GNP sent directy to the third world? That’s obamas only bill he intro’d this year.
Tony,
Really, visit another country. (full disclosure: I’m Canadian)
The American Democratic party–on nearly any given issue–usually lands to the right of such bastions of leftism as, oh, the Conservative Parties of Canada or Britain, Germany’s CDU or the French UMP.
Seriously.
Pelosi’s political theatrics aside (and really, what is politics but showbusiness for the ugly?), calling the American Democratic party “Communist” is a really good way to knock your own argument down. It the same problem as using “Liberal” as a slur: it makes the assumption that everyone agrees with you (they don’t), that your viewpoint has some kind of moral high-ground (it doesn’t) and it really amounts to little more than name-calling.
It’d be the same as my calling George Bush a little Hitler, the Republican Party a bunch of fascists and Big Oil a bunch of monied collaborators. It might sound good at a university coffeehouse or Anti-Poverty/War rally, but it’s just lame otherwise.
People are allowed to be environmentalists without being socialists and are allowed to oppose offshore drilling without being a traditional “greenie”. Sometimes it’s necessary to decouple ideology from pragmatism.
psar – I can’t stop.
You said “Che Guevara was a Communist …” Are you referring to the Che Guevarra whose picture hangs behind the desks of several (or more) Obama campaign managers? THAT Communist?
If u wanna see America under Obama, just turn on the Olympics and see the sights. The ones you’re allowed to see anyway. Watch the hand-picked lip-syncher put forth the party line for the world. See the people interviewed who are so brainwashed they think they’re living free and censorship doesnt exist. Have a look at the “mist” (called smog in the USA) that Kyoto does not require doing much of anything by the Chinese to eliminate. Have a look at your future.
psar – Really, I’ve been to Canada. Really. You guys speak French there right? Oh, no wait, that’s just part of it. You speak English in the other parts right? Oh no wait these days you speak more Spanish and Chinese than English dont you? Oh it’s so hard to keep up with those right wing policies you have up there. Like National Health Care. How’s THAT workin out for ya?
How much is fuel oil gonna cost this winter up there? Or have you a pipeline to Venezuela? Or maybe you have a winter home in Botswana? Hope you enjoy paying for change. Say, perhaps u could help obama out by becoming his mgr in canada. He does actually want to be king and I think he thinks of your provinces when he mentions having visited 57 states with 4 more to go! The math is actually almost right isnt it?
Tony Tiger: You make my point about the Buick and GM drivers. Their demographic is almost totally McCain voters. And they are much more law-abiding than the Escalade driving rappers doing 90 in the left lane.
I recall reading that older voters are actually more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. I do know that in my family, those age 65 and above are exclusively Democrats.
And too many of those older drivers are goofing around at the speed limit or slower in the left lane. Believe me, I wish that they would get the lead out…
geeber – If older voters are dems anyway, why is obama pandering to them with promises that they’ll never have to pay taxes or even need to fill out a tax form again after he is elected? He wouldnt – because they arent. Maybe in your family, but countrywide, most ‘older’ Americans are more in tune with Reagan/Bush/McCain than Carter/Kerry/Obama/Trotsky.
Look it up.
bluecon: There is no disadvantage to drilling for oil.
The disadvantage is time and effort lost.
I have to pile on. This is silly.
No one is saying you have to quit your job and go drill for oil.
Rather, private interests would go searching for oil and, if they find it, pump it and sell it.
The oil companies can go searching for oil while other people invest money in alternatives.
nonce: No one is saying you have to quit your job and go drill for oil.
If the government says “no drilling”, then the money, material and people that would have gone searching for oil are now released for other activities.
Part of an “energy policy” that said something like “drilling to energy independence is stupid” would be direct and indirect mechanisms that would encourage the aforementioned resources to be allocated in preferred directions.
If the government says “no drilling”, then the money, material and people that would have gone searching for oil are now released for other activities.
You would be an awesome central planner. Maybe we could call this the “Great Leap Forward.” Yeah, that would be sweet!
Next, let’s ban football and baseball. And then blogs. And then assign them to their proper jobs.
Of course, for those who aren’t trying to starve 20 million people to death, and who realize that oil rig swords aren’t going be beaten into windmill blade plowshares, letting some people drill doesn’t slow down the economy at all. In fact, with the significant multiplier of the money spent drilling compared to the money that the oil pumped out is sold for, it will increase the capital available for other investments.
If the government says “no drilling”, then the money, material and people that would have gone searching for oil are now released for other activities.
No, they really won’t. These are multinational corporations that are experts in oil and gas. They will simply expand their exploration and development work outside of the United States, or they’ll invest in other projects that they believe might be lucrative.
DRILL!!!!!!!!!!! drill the lands long and hard
now seriously, we need to start now if there is to be any gain at all, and at the same time go for alternative fuels, so we have options should we never have enough oil, i mean its not that hard to multitask is it?