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Oil, the REAL Problem.

(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: Calabrio

Quote:

US Has Enough Reserves to Be #1 Oil Producer in the World

The US has enough reserves to be the #1 oil producer in the world.

** The Rocky Mountains contain three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. (From NPR)

So why is America NOT energy independent?
Because, over the past 30 years:

Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
Democrats have blocked clean coal production.

Democrats sold out to environmentalists.
Democrats set up "No Zones" where they will not allow drilling or development:

(Republican Senator Craig put together these maps)
As Americans pay more for gas than ever under this Congress--
Democrats continue to vote against drilling and oil exploration.

Instead, Democrats believe taxing and suing oil companies will somehow bring down gas prices.

And, democrats do this as Cuba and China drill off our shores.

Democrats like to attack evil American oil companies and block them from drilling off our coasts. It doesn't seem to bother them when China starts drilling for oil in these same areas 50 miles from Key West.

America may have enough reserves to be the #1 oil producer in the world...
But it isn't.
You can thank the Democrats.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...-be-1-oil.html

Posted by: Calabrio

Drill, Coast Haste
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY |
Posted Friday, May 23, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Energy Security: With the prospect of an oil shortage and $12 gas, the energy crisis is turning into a national emergency. One solution: Give states the option to develop offshore tracts.

Uncle Sam bans states from drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf mainly to protect the environment. Some 85% of the U.S. coastline is off-limits to energy production — including huge reserves off Florida's coast, which China is exploiting in Cuban waters.

To change that, a lawmaker is offering a novel idea. Rep. Sue Myrick of the House Energy and Commerce panel wants to let coastal states decide whether drilling is environmentally risky. She has introduced a bill that would give coastal states that want offshore drilling the power to opt out of the Interior Department's offshore restrictions.

And as a powerful incentive, Myrick, R-N.C., proposes cutting them (and adjacent states) in on the federal revenues from leases. Washington now collects as much as $8 billion a year in existing Gulf royalties, a figure that would balloon as coastal regions opened for exploration.

Her Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act would give states the ability to control energy production up to 100 miles off their shores and would extend their territorial waters.

The biggest energy finds are off Florida's coast. But the state's congressional delegation in Washington has almost single-handedly kept the national drilling moratorium in effect for the past 25 years — while keeping potentially millions of additional barrels a day of supply off the market.

That was when gas prices were $2 a gallon or less. They've since doubled, and now threaten to hurt Florida's tourism industry. The governor, fearing high pump prices will spook tourists, is trying to slash the state's gas tax.

Tallahassee also faces big budget deficits from a statewide recession, and may warm up to the federal revenue-sharing idea. Under Myrick's bill, state legislatures can vote to end federal restrictions and allow drilling.

But the bill faces major hurdles. Even if Myrick can get the House panel's Democrat chair, Rep. John Dingell, to take it up, it would face stiff opposition in the Senate. Florida Sens. Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson have blocked previous attempts to lift the ban on drilling — although Martinez, a Republican, lately has shown signs of softening.

Foes have successfully cloaked their arguments against offshore drilling in eco-apocalypse, claim it will lead to oil spills. Fearing tar-ball-pocked beaches, the tourism industry has joined the greens in lobbying against such bills.

Their fears are unfounded. And politicians concerned about America's energy security ought to do a better job educating the public with the facts. For example:

• Less than one one-thousandth of a percent (0.001%) of the 7 billion-plus barrels of oil that Washington has allowed to be produced offshore over the past 25 years has been spilled, according to the Interior Department.

• A whopping 63% of petro pollution in North American seas comes not from offshore rigs, but from natural seepage from the sea floor. Source: National Academy of Sciences.

• There hasn't been a major oil spill from an offshore well since 1969 even though rigs since then have been lashed by Katrina and other major hurricanes.

Today's drilling operations are safer and cleaner. Offshore operators are subject to at least 17 major permits and must follow 90 sets of federal regulations. Clean beaches can coexist with offshore production. The mammoth reserves can be captured with little risk to the environment.

In fact, the government estimates that 50% of our undiscovered oil lies offshore. It's time to let states go after it.

Posted by: Gambini

Damn liberals

Posted by: Joeychgo

Uh - now why do you only blame the democrats?

McCain I believe has said he is against drilling in ANWR -

And, let me restate what I have said many times. Bush had a republican controlled congress for 6 years and seemingly could push all kinds of other legislation through during that time. Why not all this drilling your talking about?

Don't get me wrong. I think we should drill anywhere oil might be.

Not only for the sake of gas prices, but also because I hate giving the middle east all this easy money when all they do with it is plot to terrorize.

Also - whatever happened to Iraqi oil being used to pay for the reconstruction? I think we should take enough oil to cover our costs in Iraq at least.

Again, I think we should drill anywhere we can possibly drill. But we should also heavily invest in other things, like refinaries, other sources of energy (wind, solar, nuclear, etc) as well as focus hard on development of new sources such as hydrogen and more efficient ways to use the oil we have.

But let's not make this out to be all a problem created by the democrats - thats just not true.

Posted by: fossten

McCain is a RINO - a not-so-closet Democrat. I don't count him as a conservative. You can take that for what it's worth.

Bush, to his credit (not that you'd ever acknowledge this), pushed really hard in 2005 for an ANWR bill, which passed the House and failed the Senate BY ONE VOTE. Just to set the record straight.

Posted by: Joeychgo

I know bush did.

But while Bush has ramrodded many things through, or ignored congress altogether on some issues. Yet he cant get any drilling done.

Posted by: shagdrum

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeychgo

And, let me restate what I have said many times. Bush had a republican controlled congress for 6 years and seemingly could push all kinds of other legislation through during that time. Why not all this drilling your talking about?

Again, I have shown repeatedly on this forum that the fact that Bush had a Congress that was of the same party is hardly anywhere near as strong a factor as you claim. Different voter bases, lobbyists, term limits, constitutional powers, institutional focus of each branch, lack of accountability, Presidents working relationship with Congress (or lack thereof), etc. all work to keep Congress and the President politically at odds. You keep ignoring those factors and placing way to much emphasis on the fact that Bush and Congress were of the same political party for 6 years. Merely a fallacious proof by assertion argument.

Posted by: Joeychgo

Are you saying it was the democrats that kept all the drilling from happening?

Posted by: Gambini

No

... Duh!

Posted by: Joeychgo

SO bush had a republican controlled congress for 6 years - but SOMEHOW - no republicans were involved in keeping the drilling from happening?

Posted by: fossten

Joey. Pay attention.

The last time this was attempted, here's what happened.

In 2005 the House passed a bill opening up ANWR. The Democrats in the Senate filibustered the bill, and you need 60 votes for cloture. The Republicans voted 56-44 for cloture, not enough. The split was along party lines.
http://www.usembassy.at/en/download/pdf/anwr.pdf

You CAN'T do anything in the Senate without 60 votes.

Understand?

Posted by: shagdrum

http://uk.reuters.com/article/pressR...48232220080612

Exxon to exit retail gas business: reports
Thu Jun 12, 2008 9:55pm BST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exxon (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is getting out of retail gas business, according to the Dallas Morning News and Fox Business News.

Exxon was not immediately available to comment on the news.

The Dallas Morning News reported Exxon said it will sell the 2,220 service stations it still owns across the United States. There are 12,000 Exxon Mobil branded stations, the majority of which are already owned by families or companies outside of Exxon. (Reporting by Edward Tobin; Editing by Gary Hill)

Posted by: fossten

Quote:

Originally Posted by shagdrum

http://uk.reuters.com/article/pressR...48232220080612

Exxon to exit retail gas business: reports
Thu Jun 12, 2008 9:55pm BST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exxon (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is getting out of retail gas business, according to the Dallas Morning News and Fox Business News.

Exxon was not immediately available to comment on the news, but John Galt was seen leaving the headquarters building shortly before the announcement.

The Dallas Morning News reported Exxon said it will sell the 2,220 service stations it still owns across the United States. There are 12,000 Exxon Mobil branded stations, the majority of which are already owned by families or companies outside of Exxon. (Reporting by Edward Tobin; Editing by Gary Hill)

Fixed it for you.

Posted by: 97silverlsc

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5111184:)

Posted by: fossten

Quote:

Originally Posted by 97silverlsc

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5111184:)

PAGE NOT FOUND

Good job Phil, you really nailed it.

Posted by: Joeychgo

Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5111184

McCain flip flopped on this issue a bit today. Now he's in favor of allowing drilling offshore

Posted by: fossten

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeychgo

Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5111184

McCain flip flopped on this issue a bit today. Now he's in favor of allowing drilling offshore

He should be flip flopping. The whole damned Congress should be belly flopping all over this issue right now. They were all wrong for the last 30 years, and the chickens are coming home to roost. If they don't get on the right side of this, we're all sunk, and McCain is starting to see the handwriting on the wall.

/cliched rant

Posted by: RedHotMark96

Man I hate politics.

Posted by: MonsterMark

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedHotMark96

Man I hate politics.

Don't worry. Obama will save us. He thinks the only problem is the price went up too fast. He would prefer us 'frogs' to slow boil.

The ONLY difference between oBama and oSama is BS!

Posted by: shagdrum

Quote:

Originally Posted by fossten

...McCain is starting to see the handwriting on the wall.

I hope you are right on that.

Posted by: Joeychgo

Bush Urges Congress to End Ban on Offshore Drilling

Quote:

While Bush said Democratic opposition ``has helped drive gas prices to record levels,'' his father, former President George H.W. Bush, signed an executive order extending the ban initiated in 1981, and his brother Jeb Bush opposed expanding exploration off Florida's coast when he that state's governor.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...qbs&refer=home

Posted by: fossten

If the GOP takes the lead on this, the DNC could lose control of both houses and the white house in November.

Posted by: Joeychgo

Nah, not gonna happen.

Posted by: Joeychgo

Ah -- Even Bill O'Reily is coming around a bit. It's a rare occasion that I agree with him, but I do, on all points.

Quote:

GEORGE W. BUSH: So my administration has repeatedly called on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal, and now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction.

Bill O'Reily:
Mr. Bush and now John McCain are calling for expanded oil drilling in America, while the Democrats and Barack Obama say no. So who is correct?

Well, "Talking Points" has said for years it's simply foolish not to drill in ANWR, a desolate place that can be kept largely pristine with new technology. Not to use this resource is crazy.

By the way, Senator McCain disagrees with me.

Drilling offshore and in the Rockies is more complicated. The states of Florida and Colorado depend almost entirely on tourism. Any drilling in those states would have to be controlled and noninvasive.

In short, we should explore and be responsible in our drilling strategy, not emotional and ideological. But again, the USA can't drill out of this mess, and there are other solutions.

What about Iraq? So far, the American taxpayer has forked over more than $500 billion — $500 billion — to give the Iraqi people a chance at freedom. That country's now pumping 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. So why isn't Iraq giving the USA an oil price break? I mean, come on. We have greatly sacrificed for that country. Shouldn't they help us out if they can? What say you, President Bush?

Then there are the speculators we talked about Tuesday night. Congress could control them with stricter oversight, but Congress just sits around. Listen to Ben Stein who appeared on "The Radio Factor" Wednesday.

BEN STEIN: I was just in a room with a whole bunch of speculators who are former Enron traders that are now trading natural gas and oil. And they're laughing their heads off about how much they're manipulating the price of oil. They couldn't care less.

Well, let's make them care. Tough new standards should be imposed on the speculative oil market because this is a national security issue.

Finally, flex-fuel vehicles should be fast-tracked. Again, Congress must mandate a certain percentage of U.S.-made cars use alcohol-based fuels, at least in part. It's the only way the market's going to change. Millions of flex-fuel cars will force gas stations to install alternative energy pumps.

Both Obama and McCain have deficits when it comes to solving the oil mess, but the first one to get on the side of the folks in this issue will win the election.

And that's "The Memo."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,369005,00.html

Posted by: MonsterMark

"Finally, flex-fuel vehicles should be fast-tracked. Again, Congress must mandate a certain percentage of U.S.-made cars use alcohol-based fuels, at least in part. It's the only way the market's going to change. Millions of flex-fuel cars will force gas stations to install alternative energy pumps."

Sorry, Congress and the government should get the hell out of the way and let the private market take care of things. Get rid of all the government intervention and burden on businesses and let the entrepreneurial spirit of America move us to the next plateau.

Good grief. All the nannies that want government to control their lives. Get some balls and control your own destiny.

Posted by: fossten

Quote:

Originally Posted by MonsterMark

"Finally, flex-fuel vehicles should be fast-tracked. Again, Congress must mandate a certain percentage of U.S.-made cars use alcohol-based fuels, at least in part. It's the only way the market's going to change. Millions of flex-fuel cars will force gas stations to install alternative energy pumps."

Sorry, Congress and the government should get the hell out of the way and let the private market take care of things. Get rid of all the government intervention and burden on businesses and let the entrepreneurial spirit of America move us to the next plateau.

Good grief. All the nannies that want government to control their lives. Get some balls and control your own destiny.

You forgot to emphasize "force." Fixed it for you.

/runs off to speculate on alcohol stocks

Posted by: Joeychgo

SO your in favor of eliminating all gov mandated fuel economy standards then?

Interesting that's the only part you picked out of the whole article.

I see how well the private market forces are dealing with gas prices. A few are making millions and billions, while we all pay for it.

Posted by: ford nut

The market will drive fuel standards.
The goverment didn't tell ford to stop the truck line.

Posted by: MonsterMark

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeychgo

I see how well the private market forces are dealing with gas prices. A few are making millions and billions, while we all pay for it.

Let's say I can make 1,000,000 widgits year and I sell all I make.
I sell them for $1 each.
Suddenly, somebody wants 1,100,000 widgits. I don't have the extra 100,000 so the guy offers me $1.20 for each widgit.

Why wouldn't I sell those widgits for $1.20 then.

Supply and Demand. A really basis tenet of economics. There is just enough current supply to get by but not enough future supply to meet future demand. Therefore, the price goes up as people compete for the oil that is currently available.

Simple solution. Increase supply or decrease demand.

Posted by: fossten

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeychgo

SO your in favor of eliminating all gov mandated fuel economy standards then?

Interesting that's the only part you picked out of the whole article.

I see how well the private market forces are dealing with gas prices. A few are making millions and billions, while we all pay for it.

Wrong, Joey. We're paying for the incompetence and interference of the last 15 Congresses, not to mention some Presidents INCLUDING Billy Jeff. It just so happens that some speculators are taking advantage of it. LEGALLY.

Please stop hating businesspeople and recognize the true evil here - government looters.

Posted by: shagdrum

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeychgo

Ah -- Even Bill O'Reily is coming around a bit. It's a rare occasion that I agree with him, but I do, on all points.

O'Reilly has the focus square on where it needs to be; the speculators. However his solution is absurd, almost as bad as the windfall profit tax. Increasing fuel standards will only hurt the consumer in the short term, and result in crappy cars for quite a while. His solution doesn't fix the problem anyhow, it is more a reflection of his environmental ideology.

What we have is an artificial market of speculators inflating oil prices. That is the problem that needs to be fixed. The CTFC needs to start regulating this again, and regulate it heavily; effectively out of existence as an artificial market powerful enough to inflate prices.

Increasing gas standards is foolish, windfall profit taxes are foolish. At least drilling will have a positive effect, while the other two won't.

Congress needs to do what they are constitutionally mandated to do under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution and regulate interstate commerce.

Posted by: fossten

Windfall-Profit Nonsense

by John Stossel

Posted 05/28/2008 ET
Updated 05/28/2008 ET

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to raise the price of oil, as well as most everything else, and lower the value of the pension and mutual funds that union members and retirees depend on.

Of course, they don't describe their plan that way. Instead, they call for a windfall-profits tax on the oil companies.

But it's the same thing.

Taxing a "windfall" sounds appealing, but stock prices are based on expected profits. Throw a new tax on profits, and retirement portfolios of regular people take a hit.

"Hillary will impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use the money to temporarily suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax and the 24.4 cent per gallon diesel tax during the upcoming peak summer driving months," says her website.

"They sure can afford it," she told an audience in Indianapolis.

Whom does she think "they" are?

Obama says: "It isn't right that oil companies are making record profits at a time when ordinary Americans are going into debt. ... That's why we'll put a windfall profits tax on oil companies..."

Taxing "windfalls" is politically rewarding, but in the final analysis, only people pay taxes. When a corporation is taxed, the burden falls on workers (through smaller raises), consumers (through higher prices) and shareholders (through lower stock prices).

Do Clinton and Obama really want to tax these innocent people just to spite oil executives for high profits?

Anyway, what is a "windfall"? Any answer is arbitrary. Obama says it's the profit made off oil that's priced above $80 a barrel. Why not $70? Or $90? Did he pull that number out of a hat?

At least he's honest enough to call his tax a windfall profits "penalty." But why do the companies deserve to be penalized? Have they behaved badly?

It's not their fault that demand for oil skyrocketed because of booming economies in China and India, and that tensions in the Middle East pushed prices up. It's not their fault government regulation keeps them from drilling in promising locations like Alaska and offshore, and harasses them when they want to build new refineries or expand old ones. It's not their fault the dollar has deteriorated dramatically.

Being in the oil business is profitable, but not as profitable as you may think. Last year, average earnings in the industry (net income divided by sales) were 8.3 percent. (They are lower this year.) Other industries have done better. Beverage and tobacco firms had returns of over 19 percent.

Yes, oil company profits have surged as the price of oil rose, but bigger profits are good for America. The vast majority of the money goes not to the pockets of oil executives, but to exploration for new oil. If you take the money away, who is hurt?

We don't have to speculate because we have experience to draw on. "We tried this windfall profits scheme in 1980," The Wall Street Journal writes. "It backfired. The Congressional Research Service found in a 1990 analysis that the tax reduced domestic oil production by 3 (percent) to 6 (percent) ..."

Repeating that would not be a good thing for the harried working families Clinton and Obama claim to champion.

Spiking prices and profits encourage investors to take risks to find more oil, develop oil substitutes and increase efficiency. We don't need a "national energy policy" because we already have one. It's called the free market. When oil prices rose a few years ago, old fields with hard-to-reach oil in Oklahoma were suddenly worth operating.

Economics 101: incentives matter. Now that the price of oil has reached a new high, oil companies and other entrepreneurs have more incentive to find new sources of energy.

Only that -- letting the profit-motive work -- will bring the price of oil down.

Interfering with markets may be good for politicians, but it's bad for everyone else.

Posted by: shagdrum

Gotta love Stossel.

Posted by: fossten

Krauthammer nails this one, and it's loaded with facts.

McCain's Oil Epiphany

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 20, 2008; A19

Gas is $4 a gallon. Oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And yet we voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

At a time when U.S. crude oil production has fallen 40 percent in the past 25 years, 75 billion barrels of oil have been declared off-limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-North American imports (oil trade with Canada and Mexico is a net economic and national security plus) for 22 years.

That's nearly a quarter-century of energy independence. The situation is absurd. To which John McCain is responding with a partial fix: Lift the federal ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling, where a fifth of the off-limits stuff lies.

This is a change for McCain, but circumstances have changed. When the moratorium was imposed in 1982, gasoline was $1.20 and oil was $30 a barrel. Since the moratorium was instituted, we've had two wars in the Middle East, and in between a decade of garrisoning troops in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE to preserve the peace and keep untold oil riches out of the hands of the most malevolent of our enemies.

Technological conditions have changed as well. We now are able to drill with far more precision and environmental care than a quarter-century ago. We have thousands of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, yet not even hurricanes Katrina and Rita resulted in spills of any significance.

McCain's problem is that he's only able to go halfway on energy production because he has locked himself into opposition to the other obvious source of domestic oil -- the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

His fastidiousness on this is inexplicable. "I believe that ANWR is a pristine area," he explains. Is it more pristine than the ocean, where he now wants to drill? More pristine than the Arabian Desert from which we daily beg the Saudi princes to pump more oil?

The entire Arctic refuge is one-third the size of the United Kingdom (which includes Scotland and Wales). The drilling site would be one-seventh the size of Manhattan Island. The footprint is tiny. Moreover, forbidding drilling there does not prevent despoliation. It merely exports it. The crude oil we're not getting from the Arctic we import instead from places like the Niger Delta, where millions live and where the resulting pollution and oil spillages poison the lives of many of the world's most wretchedly poor.

Our environmental imperialism does not just redistribute pollution to people who can least afford it. It generally increases the total overall damage because oil extraction in the wealthier and more technologically advanced United States is far more environmentally sensitive.

McCain's unwillingness to include ANWR lacks even political logic. His policy on offshore drilling is a flip-flop from his past positions. Perfectly justified, but a reconsideration nonetheless. If you are going to take the hit for flip-flopping and for offending environmentalists, why go halfway?

The oil crisis handed McCain an unexpected and singularly effective campaign issue. A majority of Americans now favor drilling in the Arctic and offshore. Democrats stand in the way of increased production, just as they did 13 years ago when President Bill Clinton vetoed drilling in ANWR. Domestic oil production would be about 20 percent higher today if the Republican Congress had been allowed to prevail.

As expected and right on cue, Barack Obama reflexively attacked McCain. "His decision to completely change his position" to one that would please the oil industry is "the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades." One can only marvel at Obama's audacity in characterizing McCain's proposal to change our policy as "old politics," while the candidate of "change" adheres rigidly to the no-drilling status quo.

McCain is a lot of things, but the man who opposed ethanol in Iowa -- as Obama shamelessly endorsed the most abysmally stupid of our energy policies -- is no patsy of the energy producers. Americans know that increased production is needed to complement reduced consumption as the only way to get us out from oil shocks, high prices and national security blackmail.

Alas, McCain's proposed reform is only partial. Still better than Obama, however, who refuses to deviate from liberal orthodoxy. But that is the story of his campaign, is it not?

Posted by: shagdrum

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...1ZmE=&w= MA==

That ‘70s Show
A lot has changed since Barack Obama was 13.

By Jonah Goldberg

You may have noticed that denouncing the “failed policies of the past” has become the official catechism of the Democratic party.

Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if at DNC headquarters “gesundheit” is out as the polite response to a sneeze and tsk-tsking the rise in nose-tickling particulates thanks to the bankrupt policies of the Bush administration is in.

So, you’d think if everything Bush has done is wrong, then a reversal of his position would be right.

Wrong again. We didn’t hear applause from Democrats this week when President Bush “reversed” his “longstanding position” (in the words of the New York Times) on offshore drilling.

Nearly 30 years ago, Jimmy Carter’s windfall-profits tax kicked in, making domestic oil exploration more difficult and expensive. In 1981, Congress passed a moratorium on offshore drilling that has stayed in place ever since. In 1990, the first President Bush signed an executive order reinforcing the ban on coastal oil exploration. And, until this week, the current President Bush supported the ban.

And yet, no cheers for Bush when he abandoned his failed policy of the last eight years. Instead, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid sniffed that these were more of the same “old ideas.” Odd.

And when John McCain similarly reversed himself, the Democrats whistled the same tune again.

“John McCain’s plan to simply drill our way out of our energy crisis is the same misguided approach backed by President Bush that has failed our families for too long and only serves to benefit the big oil companies,” declared the Obama campaign.

Now, it’s fair to say that more drilling is the approach President Bush wanted. And it’s even defensible for Obama to call it misguided. But the salient fact is that Bush didn’t get what he wanted because he was constrained by the real failed policies of the past.

Indeed, we constantly hear we can’t drill our way to lower gas prices, but how does anybody know when we haven’t even tried?

Despite enormous improvements in extraction technology, the amount of oil produced domestically in America went down in the last eight years. It went down in the 1990s. It went down in the 1980s. In fact, it’s been trending down since the 1970s, back when Barack Obama’s “new” ideas seemed fresh coming from Jimmy Carter. Today, we produce about as much domestic oil as we did in the late 1940s, even though we keep finding, but not utilizing, more proven reserves.

That hardly sounds like a country that’s been dedicated to “drilling our way” to anything. The issue isn’t just oil. Gas prices largely hinge on refining capacity. But, as John McCain observed this week, “There’s so much regulation of the industry that the last American refinery was built when Jerry Ford was president.”

A lot has changed since Barack Obama was 13. No one knew what an iPod, e-mail address, web browser, CD, DVD, or Post-It Note was. Fax machines were cutting edge, the space shuttle was a pipe dream, and cloning was science fiction. Global cooling, not warming, was the fashionable doomsday scenario.

And yet, we act as if technology has remained frozen since the days when it made sense to “dial” a phone number.

So much for the supposedly failed policies of the past. What of the winning policies of the future?

When they want to seem mainstream, anti-carbon crusaders insist that we must achieve “energy independence” to “end our addiction on Middle Eastern oil.”

This makes it sound like their real motive is common sense or national security. We’re not anti-oil, we just don’t want to fund our enemies. That sounds reasonable, and it is a legitimate position — it’s just not the one they actually hold.

If energy independence were their real goal, not only would oil, coal, and nuclear be on the table, but you’d hear more lamentations about our “addiction” to Canadian oil — a bigger source than Saudi Arabia.

Instead we are treated to an endless stream of intellectual jibber-jabber and nonsensical argy-bargy. We need to be energy independent, but we can’t use the energy sources we have. We need to switch to ethanol fast, but we can’t import cheaper ethanol from Brazil. We must increase gas taxes to wean ourselves from fossil fuels, but when gas prices go up for any other reason, it’s a crisis, even a crime. We’re told we’ll get nowhere drilling our way to independence or lower prices, as if windmills will do the job (stop laughing).

We shouldn’t fight “wars for oil,” but the self-imposed embargo on our own oil makes us even more dependent on the foreign oil we’re allegedly going to war over. And, of course: We’re told to reject the failed policies of the past, when the policies that have failed are the real old ones merely being sold as new.

Posted by: shagdrum

I still think that drilling is only half the battle. It is a big part of it, but we need to take care of that artificial market of speculation that is controlling prices more then the supply and demand forces of the actual oil market.

Congress needs to regulate this artificial speculation market so it doesn't have that effect. The have the power under the constitution to do so (unlike say, the power to create and fund entitlement programs, or regulate business); specifically under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 which states "The Congress shall have power . . . To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes".

The founders understood "commerce" to mean "trade" , as Madison's said in an 1828 letter, "Constitution vests in Congress expressly...'the power to regulate trade.'" As used in the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist Papers, "commerce" can be substituted with either "trade" or "exchange" interchangeably while preserving the meaning of the statements. So, even under a strict, narrow definition, congress has the power to regulate transactions, which is all this speculation market ultimately is.

Dick Morris spells out the problem with the speculators and the speculation market well in this article.

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