Why We Didn’t Drill Our Own Oil—A Timeline
I’m going to point you to three links on the same blog with charts to show why we haven’t begun to explore our own resources in getting oil so we wouldn’t have the prices at the pump and for heating we have now. Also remember that the price of oil affects the price of food. Think about this when you vote this year.
The first link is here.
The second comes from the same site and is here.
The third link also comes from the same site and is here with a timeline of the price of oil per barrel then and now.
Now, in case you missed the editorial I am going to point you to this Washington Post editorial.
WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There’s a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won’t be hearing it in the House of Representatives — certainly, you won’t find lawmakers voting on it — anytime soon.
Instead of dealing with the issue on the merits, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a staunch opponent of offshore drilling, has simply decreed that she will not allow a drilling vote to take place on the House floor. Why not? “What the president would like to do is to have validation for his failed policy,” she said yesterday when asked that very question. “What we’re saying is, ‘Exhaust other remedies, Mr. President.’ . . . It is the economic life of America’s families, and to suggest that drilling offshore is going to make a difference to them paycheck to paycheck now is a frivolous contention. The president has even admitted that. So what we’re saying is, ‘What can we do that is constructive?’ ”
If there is an explanation buried in there about why that makes offshore drilling off-limits for a vote, we missed it. Ms. Pelosi is correct that drilling is no panacea for the nation’s energy woes. The short-term effect of lifting the moratorium, if there were any, would be minimal. That doesn’t mean the country shouldn’t consider expanded drilling as one of many alternatives. There are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact of such drilling — environmental concerns that, we would note, exist in other regions whose oil Americans are perfectly happy to consume. But have technological improvements made such drilling less risky? Why not have that debate?
Read the rest.
Pelosi, and to a little lesser extent, Reid are both leading their respective houses like dictators. No debate on anything they oppose and fear might be passed. Is this the purpose of Congress, or am I mistaken in believing they are there to represent their constituents, most of whom are suffering the effects of high oil and gas prices?
Think about this when you vote. It’s not just the presidency that’s important this year; the Congress is also important and if we allow the Democrats control or even greater control look for a depression instead of a recession.
Instead of humoring Kucinich with his mock impeachment hearing yesterday, why isn’t Congress working on the real problems of the country?
It would be easy to put a bumper sticker on my car stating “Don’t blame me. I voted Republican.” But that gets us nowhere unless we vote for the party not afraid to drill. With Hurricane Katrina not one drop of oil was spilled in the offshore platforms. This shows the knowledge is there and being used to make oil drilling more environmentally clean.
Call your congressman/woman and Senators and ask why we can’t drill for our own oil now so we can reap the benefits in a few years. Benefits we could have been reaping even now if not for stubborn Congresses and presidents.
Written by Jeanette
While it is convenient to blame the Democrats, I think a lot of opposition is also geographical. Gov. Schwarzenegger reinterated his opposition to off-shore drilling in May of ‘08. Governor Jeb Bush was opposed to it early in his administration, but began to waiver in ‘06–depending on the restrictions. “The devil is in the details” of where and how the off-shore occurs for Florida. This is the typical attitude I see in almost every zoning and land use case I handle. Everyone wants schools and hospitals, but don’t want to live next to them. A lot of the coastal states have the “NIMBY” attitude on this topic. On the Alaska drilling, if we started drilling tomorrow, the Energy Information Administration of the BLM says oil would not start flowing until 2025. CNNmoney.com had a good article on this on May 30, 2008. I didn’t save the article, but I’m positive that was the date because of my birthday. Sixty percent of the federal land available for drilling is legally off-limits. However, I also recall the article said he would not reduce gasoline prices if we had instant production off-shore because the prices are set by the international market. That baffles me. I assume it’s just an issue I don’t understand. I think “petrol” is over $10.00 per gallon in the U.K. and they have a lot of oil from the North Sea. Therefore, no one should expect any quick relief from what we consider to be high prices from immediate off-shore drilling. Of course our prices are very low compared to most of Europe.
I’m not looking for quick relief, David, just relief in the foreseeable future. If we had been allowed to drill in these places 10-15 years ago we wouldn’t be at the mercy of an unstable part of the world.
Schwartzenegger is hardly a typical Republican and Jeb Bush did it due to the population in the area of drilling—a political move. Gov. Crist has agreed to do offshore drilling in Florida but the Congress, run by Democrats, will not allow it.
The statistics don’t lie and they show us it has been primarily democrats who have been opposed to drilling anywhere we are not drilling now.