we should really be careful about our alternatives to oil (i.e. the whole ethanol swindle)... or else we're going to find ourselves in the same boat we're in now: dependent on something or other, it certainly can get worse...just wait til the US government starts really regulating oil...

too bad we can't use more of the sun.... no one owns the sun

 

don't be fooled by george bush and his circus friends....It's just an excuse to pressure congress to green light for drilling off shore in california to make more money for his buddies!!!!

 

Because countries like Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait never benefited domestically from producing more oil..... This B$ about how producing more in the US won't affect cost is ridiculous. There's no reason that nationalizing it in US territories wouldn't help.

Congress' approval rating is in the tank.

 

Exactly. The world consumes 80 million barrels of oil per day. If you were to add 1 million barrels a day to the supply, the price of gas would probably drop about a nickel. Big deal. And if that oil exploration were commenced today, it would take 5 years before any of that oil hit the market. And even then, you are still talking about a short term solution to a long term problem. If we emptied every single drop of oil from our shorelines, you are still only talking about 3-4 million barrels a day for 10 years MAX. Then what?

We are right back where we started. Extremely high oil prices putting a strangle hold on our economy. Sending trillions of dollars overseas to countries we hate (Let me list a few of the countries with the 10 largest oil reserves: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, to name a few). And now we have just destroyed some of the most sacred environment on the face of the earth. All we would have done is put a band aid on a gushing wound.


Fortunately, most politicians in power are against off shore drilling. There has been an offshore drilling ban for 27 years. Obama is against offshore drilling. McCain was against offshore drilling in 2000, but he has recently changed his position in an effort to attract more ultra conservative votes. And his stance is still "Leave it up to the states," a traditional republican value. Do you really think any of the states on the west coast are going to allow offshore drilling? California's republican governor is strongly against offshore drilling. And if someone were to allow offshore drilling in California, you would be just asking for a recall election. Oh, and both Obama and McCain are strongly against drilling in ANWR. All democrats and several republicans in the house/senate are against drilling in ANWR too. So guess what, more offshore drilling is not going to happen in the next 4-8 years.

We can strengthen the value of the dollar.
We can clamp down on oil speculation.
Both of those can help bring the price of oil down. But you are still talking about $100/barrel or more just from strong world demand. The only way to get that price down is to cut demand.

The US alone uses about 11 million barrels of oil per day (15% of the world's daily demand) to power personal automobiles. We have the technology TODAY to power all automobiles using no gas. It made economic sense to buy a hybrid car when gas hit $3 a gallon. Now you are actually saving significantly more money by buying a hybrid car than buying a traditional gas powered car. Now just wait until more plug in hybrids/all electric cars hit the market. Electricity required to power an automobile cost about 60 cents per GGE (gallon of gas equivalent).

The big three automakers are bleeding cash right now. Yet, not one of them is taking a lead on what WILL BE the most popular vehicles in the future (hybrid/plug in hybrid/all electric cars). They have an opportunity to turn their company around, and more importantly turn their nation around. And they aren't doing much about it (Chevy with the Volt is about the only big name project I have seen). As far as I'm concerned, they can continue to bleed cash while Toyota and Honda continue to gain market share. Interestingly enough, Toyota and Honda have both taken the lead in hybrid/plug in hybrid/all electric car development as well as fuel efficiency within their gas powered car lineup. Coincidence? Doubt it.


Drilling for oil offshore is not going to fix our energy crisis. Cutting demand in a way that is financially smart, and does not affect the American lifestyle at all is a much smarter way to help solve the energy crisis.

 

they have been so eager in the past to help out, they are as much of the problem. And the last thing I want is the government to control MORE aspects of my life.

What we need to do is something to convince the speculators, they are the ones that have driven the price like this. People say that it is demand. Thats ludicrous, if that were true that means that in the last lets say 2-3 years oil consumption literally doubled and almost tripled. NOT POSSIBLE. Now Im not saying demand hasn't increased, it has and Im not saying we shouldnt become more efficient. I do agree with the idea we need to strengthen the dollar = lower gas prices. Has anyone thought that this whole drive up in oil prices is just trying to force America, and other oil dependent countries into some new technology that will make a company or several obscene amounts of money as we rush to it in a panic.

 

Actually, part of the recent oil price spike is the deregulation of the commodities markets, compared to 10-15 years ago. Trading and speculation rules on the commodities markets were considerably relaxed during Enron's rise to profitability, and nobody bothered to un-relax them after the company imploded, taking 401k and retirement savings with it.

 

I'm all for a "New Deal II" and to me it looks like McCain's Lexington Project may fit the bill. I believe America is full of people with good ideas, we just need to figure out which ones are the best. Every scientist was telling us about a year into the ethanol debacle that it was a net loss in production... the writing was on the wall if you were willing to look... but the political machine had it's shining solution so we as a nation plowed ahead with a solution doomed to failure. I think the only solution is to look broadscope for solutions. Have you seen compressed air cars? freakin good idea. The problem with plug in cars is it just shifts energy demards to the grid, which is fine if you have spare grid capacity but we really don't. I think the other misconception is that we all have to change to the same power source at the same time. We could easily have infrastructure for compressed air cars, hydrogen cars, plugin hybrids, traditional hybrids, and traditional gas vehicles on the road at the same time. And if we're going to place a greater demand on the grid we have to build new power plants, the political environment has changed such that creating new dams for hydro power is probably environmentally non-pc, nuclear power is difficult to secure support for, though third and fourth generation reactors are a much better alternative to using 40 year old reactors to provide 20% of our power supply. If we're capable of building more nuclear plants, we need to start reprocessing the fuels such that we aren't filling up a yucca every two years. Regardless of the long term solution, the stop gap measure is drill here, there and everywhere, and regulate speculation somewhat. And develop technology to extract oil from oil shale as the united states has 3-5 times the oil reserves of the Saudi's lock in oil shale in CO, WY, ID, where basically no one lives anyway.

 

Wow...this post almost makes sense if it wasn't so clueless. Let's do the math. Energy has to be produced from a source. If we limit our exploitation of domestic resources, we limit supply and create upward pressure on price. Oil is down $19 a barrell just since Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling. Heckuva psychological hit, huh? We have more oil in this country than Saudi Arabia or anyone else. Some of it is not currently recoverable, some is. Technological advances will open up the rest. There are two types of Americans, those who work for solutions and the new class of those who think the sky is falling and we can't do anything about it.

Electric cars? LOL...you can't be serious...except you think it is the solution. We already have an electric grid that suffers temporary blackouts during peak demand and you think it can support our driving energy consumption? Where does electricity costs go when we introduce the new demand to a strained system? The next new "bubble" will be electricity and utilities. Electric cars are getting more advanced and will be viable for some people. Where does the electricity come from? Coal, natural gas, oil, etc. Natural gas is going up right now and what happens to electricity rates? They are up 20% already and we aren't even plugging our cars in yet!

Plain and simple here...energy has to come from somewhere. Right now, the most abundant and efficient source is fossil fuels. Some may argue we will never develop the Bakken shale or Green River formation. Some of ya'll may have heard of a lot ofd people in the DFW getting these royalty checks for natural gas the past few years. The Barnett Shale formation. Everyone knew of the gas in the shale, we just couldn't get to it. Until about 4 years ago. They figured out how to recover it.

We need to quit this silly bickering about not developing our own resources and solve this problem. It is the only way our jobs, lifestyle, economy, and current way of life stay recognizable. If not, then our kids or grandkids may need a couple hundred acres and the knowledge of farming because we refused to solve the problem early on and prices remained high and eliminated the middle class.

Of course this won't happen. We as Americans have always stepped up in tough times and solved the problems. Even Churchill was quoted, "The Americans always do the right thing, after they try everything else." We are in the process of trying everything else now and on our way to the right thing. Developing our resources.

 

I think that we should all press our candidates to accept the "Gore Challenge" to produce all of our electricity from renewable sources by 10 years, Obama has accepted the challenge and McCain says it is Doable.

Facts are that the US is too Automobile oriented, I sincerely hope that the current energy crisis has put an end to our dependence on cars and more public transportation is built. Once we have efficient fast public transportation along with Hybrid/Plug Ins/Electric coupled with electricity that does not come from Coal or Gas we will see such a huge drop in oil demand that the US will be able to satisfy its remaining demand with domestic oil and lower prices will allow our industry (since there is no practical oil replacement for airplanes yet) to prosper.

One of the risks of allowing oil prices to go back down is setting the stage for a rebound in demand, therefore it is important that governments tax gasoline to keep it at 3-4 dollars ensuring that people drive only as a necessity, it worked in Europe, were most people use public transportation and have a "weekend car" and it can work here too.

 

Once all of those pesky ice caps melt off we'll have plenty of places to drill.