“Should the Democratic Congress overturn the ban on domestic offshore oil drilling?”
After nearly 53,000 votes, 74% of voters said yes, 24% said no, and 2% said maybe.
Do you agree with this poll?
Source: AOL
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Yes, we need to drill now. We need to use all the resources we have.
Its a democracy, but you know there are other oil-free technologies that provide alternatives.
One such technology is a fueless electric generator that is driven by a small batery and magnets.
Each unit cost $5000.00
Go here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wk4m1MLZudE
Of course! A drilling ban is ridiculous.
[And alternatives would be nice, but burning food (ethanol, biodiesel) in the gas tank is a terrible idea.]
mr “no more oil for us”, I’m afraid you have been duped. Perpetual motion machines don’t exist… they violate the first law of thermodynamics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion
As for real alternatives, try nuclear. They produce no greenhouse gases, and modern pebble bed designs are quite safe. Reprocessing fuel (instead of just storing it) creates very little radioactive waste, which can decay in a couple hundred (rather than thousand) years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor#Safety_features
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle#Fuel_cycles
wind and solar are quickly becoming economically viable alternatives. Real out there technologies like fusion may be the long term panacea.
Had to laugh at Ann Coulter’s latest column; she really puts Nancy Pelosi and the DimDems in their place. :^)
It’s a straightforward problem of supply and demand: raise supply to meet demand, and prices will fall.
Drill now.
“A drilling ban is ridiculous.”
Why? We can always go to some undeveloped country and get their oil for free.
I completely agree with the poll, and drilling for domestic oil…but then again I’m a total conservative (I have this notion that most chess players are liberal…is that accurate?). If the vast majority of the population is in favor of lifting the bans, isn’t the government obliged to listen? I mean, in an ideal world, since the U.S. is supposed to be a democracy.
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is it true that the us continent is sinking and will disappear into the water in 290 years from now?
Off shore drilling is absolutely the correct thing to do at this time….while doing so, however, a new approach should be taken to step up progress on oil-free technologies. this is the future.
A drilling ban is, as one said, completely ridiculous.
In order to free us from foreign oil, we need to start drilling now. It would force the price down to under $100 a barrel immediately which is roughly a 25% savings to our pocketbook. If an executive order can drop the price of crude $7. imagine what actually drilling for the stuff would do.
That’s just an example of what action (with words) can do.
Setting aside the environmental issues, there are plenty of reasons not to allow offshore drilling.
The context: The US consumes between 20 and 21 million barrels of oil per day- roughly 13 million barrels of this is imported.
First of all, compared to the total usage of oil by the US, the amount of proven reserves (not including tar sands, which is not included in the present debate, and which are extremely difficult to process anyway) amounts to a just a three year supply. This includes all offshore oil in US territorial waters, all onshore drilling, and ANWR.
In other words, if we attempted to swear off foreign oil completely, our supply would be tapped out in just 3 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#United_States
If we allow the supply to trickle in over the course of 30 years or so, we would offset roughly 1/10th of our current usage of 20 million barrels per day, and then, at the end of that time, we would, again, have no viable supply to speak of- moreover, we would become even more dependant on other countries supplies at that time. Imagine the leverage these, often not very friendly, countries would have over us at that time.
The more we “sip” at our reserves, the more of a buffer we have against future “petroleum blackmail.”
Second, the world is currently in the process of making a shift to “post-oil” transportation and energy technologies. Were the US to allow the Europe and Asia to attain a monopoly on those technologies, we’d lose out on the economic benefits of being the producer of a highly-in-demand. Making stuff makes money. If we become the first, and best, windmill/nuclear power plant/geothermal/etc,. technology producer in the world, and we do it first, the payoff would be immense.
Alas, technologies don’t just spring up from nowhere. They require capital investment and some sort of economic impetus to take root. If drilling for additional oil off the coast of Florida/California/Alaska were, by some miracle, to reduce the price of oil significantly (by my understanding, it won’t) the economic impetus to shift our transportation energy production to something new is lessened. Moreover, when the price of oil is high, it faces stiff competition from other sources. Wind/Nuclear/Geothermal/Solar/NaturalGas begin to look much more profitable.
On the microeconomic level, $4.00 a gallon gas has, in less than a year, made the Prius the most sought after car in the US right now (there’s a several month waiting list for the thing in most cities), imagine what it would do in the long run to our fleet if the price stayed that high.
I realize that this would come at a cost, especially to shipping companies and those who cannot afford to buy a high-mileage vehicle. However, in the long run (say, 10 years out), all vehicles need to be replaced. Given that more high-mileage vehicles will be produced when demand for them is high, the price of them will come down due to the economy of scale. Thus, after a 10 or so year “bump” our fleet would be dramatically more efficient and our consumption would be less. In a way, a short hiccup of high prices would inoculate us against even more ridiculously high prices in the future.
The law of supply and demand has two sides. Drilling addresses the supply side of the equation: Supply goes up >> price goes down. But one can also formulate the equation: Demand goes down >> price goes down. Reduction of demand has the same effect as increasing supply – but without the environmental and long term supply issues.
If gas went back down to $2.00 a gallon, however, people would have less impetus to buy fuel efficient vehicles, car companies would have less impetus to sell them, and researchers would have less impetus to develop the technologies needed to go even further and our demand wouldn’t drop nearly as much.
Third, Oil is used for far more than just transportation fuel and energy production. We make plastics, tires, roadways, lubricants and all sorts of indispensable items from it. If we were to send all that valuable stuff through our tailpipes, those oil-based technologies would face a strain, or disappear entirely.
Fourth, any drilling and exploration done today will likely not see dividends for several years down the road- by which time the current increased price of oil will likely have shifted our fleet towards more efficient vehicles, and our energy production towards moderately more efficient technologies- perhaps matching whatever economic benefit we would derive from increased tapping of our reserves. If we were to make the oil futures market happy by promising future additional supply, we would simply reduce the price and kill the economic impetus for efficiency.
Finally, Oil is a “fungible” commodity, which basically means that any production, anywhere in the world, has more or less the same impact on its price. Buying oil from Texas or Florida is, economically speaking, almost exactly like buying oil from Nigeria or Saudi Arabia. This is because our buying from ourselves simply frees up production for others to buy from, say, the Caspian sea region. Whatever we don’t buy from, say, Venezuela, is cheapened for those who do buy from them. So, our adding to total oil production will serve to reduce the price not only for us (that is the US, where I’m from), but for the entire world. Our drilling, therefore basically benefits the everyone else as much as it does ourselves. Not a very good deal.
This is, of course, ignoring the environmental issues surrounding greater oil production.
Brad Hoehne
The “Yes” answer should be obvious to any thinking person. Why? Here is why:
Despite all the loud, related noises, to find new energy sources is not as easy as it may sound like to people who don’t know much about physics. Sure the Sun is shining, and it is energy, only we don’t have yet the technology to capture most of that energy. People should “solar”, but I have yet to see a reliable calculation, that for how much, what efficiency energy can be obtained from solar.
Same for the wind and another “feelgood” methods. The biofuel seems to be collapsing faster than it came (which of course is indirectly also solar energy).
Mankind uses enormous amounts of energy. The only way to maintain that will be to really develop some new method. And that may take TIME. How much time? Nobody really knows, it will definitely require some new major inventions. And no economically ran down countries will be able to conduct the needed research to come up with something worthwhile new method. In the meanwhile, the energy must be maintained. No country is likely to come up with anything revolutionary in the energy department, while having to fight major economic hardship. Yes, if USA have energy sources available, those must be available. This way we may gain 5-10-20-whatever amount of years to come up with a new energy source. Nobody really knows how much oil is still available, but this would be the wrong time to run into an economic decline brick wall.
Gabor
“It would force the price down to under $100 a barrel immediately “
I am afrqaid not. It will take about 5-10 years for for oil platforms to come online and raise supply. Furthermore, there is NO current ban on offshore drilling in 78% of USA’s oil containing offshore regions right now. No one is drilling there. The problem is we don’t have refinary capacity to process oil. The American people don’t understand the full isue yet.
“No country is likely to come up with anything revolutionary in the energy department, while having to fight major economic hardship.”
I think this is a little bit pessimistic. Look, for instance, at all the amazing technologies developed during WWII, which was one heck of an “economic” hardship. We developed the Atom Bomb during that time, nuclear power got its start, aircraft technology improved immensely, and our economy became incredibly efficient. Sure, there was economic hardship at the time, but, as soon as the war was over, the infrastructure that was developed led to an extraordinary manufacturing and economic boom.
All it takes is motivation. $4.00 gas is pretty good motivation.
If not now, the economic impact will be worse down the road when Oil is $200… $300… dollars a barrel- and it will be eventually.
“Nobody really knows how much oil is still available, but this would be the wrong time to run into an economic decline brick wall.”
Well, Oil companies themselves have a pretty good idea. Of course, there are always new sources to be tapped, but the general consensus is that we’ve pretty much found the majority of what is out there:
US government data on reserves (consolidated data from Oil company research) from the Energy Information Agency:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html
Brad Hoehne
“Despite all the loud, related noises, to find new energy sources is not as easy as it may sound like to people who don’t know much about physics. Sure the Sun is shining, and it is energy, only we don’t have yet the technology to capture most of that energy. People should “solar”, but I have yet to see a reliable calculation, that for how much, what efficiency energy can be obtained from solar.”
I think you’re just not looking hard enough. There’s a heck of a lot of data out there regarding solar-panel efficiency, the amount of wind avialable, and the efficacy of what you dismiss as “feel good” technology.
Yes, solar panels are not 100% efficient at taking light and converting it into electricity. The best photovoltaics are about 25% efficient. Given that, on a bright summer day, about 1000 watts of sunlight fall on every square meter of land, that’s still pretty good.
Of course Solar cannot account for ALL energy we use. But, a combination of all of the “Feel good” technologies (as well as the not-so-feel-good Nuclear, which I support) can put a very large dent in our fossil fuel usage. Morover, improvements in efficiency can help as well. The average fuel economy of cars in the US went backwards during the 1990’s and has only been creeping forwards again in recent years. The fleets of some other nations are more efficient than ours, amazingly, using the same physics we use… We could go a long way towards cutting our oil consumption by simply matching what they do.
$4.00 gas is giving us the motivation to do so.
Looking for more oil is like a heroin addict looking for some new spot of unruined skin to inject the drug. The government should put a massive amount of money into solar (and wind) energy research and development: 1) to solve the energy shortage, 2) to stop destroying the planet, 3) to kickstart the economy (as ww2 industrialization got us out of the great depression).