Monday, September 08, 2008
Drilling is my business... and business is good!
Item!Leading ice specialists in Europe and the United States for the first time have agreed that a ring of navigable waters has opened all around the fringes of the cap of sea ice drifting on the warming Arctic Ocean.
This can only mean one thing: the Godhead is telling us to drill for more oil in the Arctic.
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This
Letter to the T-P editor from 8/22 concisely sums up an overlooked issue:
Oil is a global commodity
Re: "In Gulf, McCain pushes drilling," Page 1, Aug. 20.
In the debate about tapping petroleum reserves within U.S. onshore and offshore territories, I have yet to hear anyone point out that petroleum produced in the United States does not necessarily end up being sold in our markets.
The U.S. doesn't currently export much oil, but this is not because big oil companies are patriotic. They sell where the economics of production and marketing dictate; no oil company is under any obligation to sell oil or gas from American sources in America.
Increased supplies in the future might make oil cheaper than it would be without those supplies, but petroleum from our land and water will be sold to the highest bidder, wherever the market dictates.
That highest bidder may not be us.
Ben M.
So, are pro-drilling Republicans willing to adopt "closed-market" strictures so that oil companies won't export oil that is drilled in the U.S.? Currently the U.S. is
exporting record amounts of oil. In the coming decades, as currency values fluctuate and world economies grow and contract, how will our
free marketeers stop a global commodity like oil from being widely exported (and imported)? Shouldn't the unfettered sacred free market show us the way?
I'm curious.
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*Labels: Markets, oil
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12 Comments:
Let me tell you something Ursta. We must close all our markets like those freakin' Orientals do. Also, all this aid we send over to Africa, what do we get back? A promise that they won't eat American Tourists? Nope. According to the State Dept., one out of 5 Americans who return from a vacation in Africa does so as an amuptee?
Ben M needs to go look at my obama blog. I brought that very issue up one month and 11 days before he did :)
If I remember right, one of the larger markets for US oil exports is France.
I think Norway's citizens get a minimum of 81% of value of any oil extracted from Norway's North Sea platforms minus an honest accounting of expenses for drilling and operation. And it IS an honest accounting because the people are in charge of the books have no reason to cheat themselves. Norway owns 81% of the state-oil company, the aptly named Statoil.
I wonder what percentage the US taxpayer gets from the exploration of US energy deposits? There is the money collected from the auction of the leases and the money collected on royalties from production. All the while the energy companies keep the books.
I think Dems should just embrace drilling in the US and put forth the Norwegian model as the means. I think that's what most voters think happens anyway (US company drills in US waters, US citizens reap rewards) but that's not even close to how it works.
Someone much more clever than me asked WWJD (Where Would Jesus Drill)?
@ d-bb:
"According to the State Dept., one out of 5 Americans who return from a vacation in Africa does so as an amuptee?"
I found this fascinating--any chance of a source? I looked, I did find This, regarding the Iraq War. As of July 2008 there had approximately 750 US servicepersons amputated due to injuries in the war--out of the hundreds of thousands who have served. So, about one in, like, a hundredandfifty or more?
On of my friends just went on a vacation to Africa recently, to chill with her sister in the Peace Corps. I should ask her how close she came to dismemberment.
Or wait, did you mean one in five of your friends who return from a vacation to Africa return as an amputee?
ok
CB, you know as well as I that our government covers up stuff so we never find out. Perhaps I should blog some of the stuff that I have become privy to thanks to a few of my insiders in certain government departments and agencies, some of which no one has heard of.
As for my source, giving you that would be a death sentence for both of us.
Well, sure, the unfettered free market should show us the way! But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't expand our opportunities by drilling our own oil. Just because oil is a global commodity doesn't mean that we shouldn't produce it.
Lets expand the use of natural gas into the automobile market. Let's look at using clean coal. More nuke plants for electricity. Certainly, lets expand research into tidal power, and wind power, and any other power source that looks promising.
Wheat is a commodity too. Should we stop producing wheat?
Thanks for the link, Oyster!
I don't see how we can keep the oil. We can't even keep the gas. Palin's sending it to Canada so BP can use it to blast the petroleum out of oil shale and sell it to Amerika for top dollar.
The world, I've been told, is flat.
And global warming was invented by Al Gore...
@ d-bb:
Thanks for your response. I just assumed there would be a public source since the stat was attributed to the State Department (and not an insider therein). I guess the thing that defied my logic was that it is at least 20 time more likely that one would be amputated on a visit to Africa than fighting in the War in Iraq (as a US soldier; I didn't even look at amputation stats for Iraqi civilians, which would be more analogous to our American tourist civilians wandering into the Amputation Zone). Seems odd, and to be honest, HIGHLY unlikely.
@ Paw-Paw:
I believe Oyster's point is that a commodity or raw material produced/extracted in the US does not necessarily enter US markets, and specifically that drilling more oil in US territory does not garuantee ample supply in the US, if the highest bidder is elsewhere--and gives lie to the claim that drilling in ANWR is a step towards greater energy indenpendence. Oil Companies want to drill in Alaska to make money (by selling the oil on the open international market), not to ease Americans' fuel cost-burden. Proponents of drilling should be honest about this.
lart mikid
