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Drilling for a 'Comprehensive' Energy Plan
To drill or not to drill. We know the answer of the Republicans from their "drill, baby, drill" convention. Last weekend, President Bush again called for oil drilling on the outer continental shelf and blamed Democrats for blocking him. "This is their final chance to take action before the November elections," Bush warned. "If members of Congress do not support the American people at the gas pump, then they should not expect the American people to support them at the ballot box."
The actions of the Democrats in this three-week session will tell us whether they will signal the changes that might come in an Obama administration or they will wilt again. During the primaries, the Democrats vilified the plunderous energy policies of the Bush administration, the secretive energy meetings of Vice President Dick Cheney, and the record profits of Big Oil. In June, Barack Obama reacted to Bush's call for drilling by saying, "The politics may have changed but the facts haven't. . . . When I'm president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium here in Florida and around the country. . . . That may not poll well. . . . My job is not to go with the polls. My job is to tell the American people the truth."
But in recent weeks, Obama and other top Democrats have thrown water on the fires of their rhetoric with a sneaky big word: comprehensive.
With 62 to 74 percent of Americans now favoring offshore drilling in recent polls, Obama went to the battleground state of Michigan with a message of change that was not exactly what he has been selling. Despite repeating that "George Bush's own Energy Department has said that if we opened up new areas to drilling today, we wouldn't see a single drop of oil for seven years," Obama went on to tout a possible bipartisan compromise that supposedly mixes investment in renewable sources of energy with a "limited amount of offshore drilling."
Obama said, "I am willing to consider it if it's necessary to actually pass a comprehensive plan . . . particularly since there is so much good in this compromise that would actually reduce our dependence on foreign oil."
Obama appeared to soften his stance even more last week in another battleground state, Pennsylvania. He told an audience (after the usual drilling-won't-get-us-much qualifiers), "science and technology has caught up to the point where we can explore some new areas where we could potentially get more oil reserves."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in 1996 that she ardently supported a permanent moratorium on offshore drilling off her home state of California coast because, "We cannot allow our environmentally sensitive and economically vital coastline to be spoiled." But on NBC's "Meet the Press" two weeks ago, Pelosi said, "We'll put it all on the table, comprehensive, offshore drilling, if that is worth it, but renewable energy resources so that we do not get in this situation again." Told by host Tom Brokaw that her position was a "big change," Pelosi said, "As speaker, I have to put everything on the table. . . . I don't think it's a good alternative, but if they can prove that it is, and they want to pay royalties to the taxpayer, let us use these royalties to invest in renewable energy resources."
Senate majority leader Harry Reid said the call for drilling from Bush and John McCain was a "cynical campaign ploy," but he, too, will accept a "comprehensive" package that allows drilling. All of this is a reminder that for all the Democrats' rhetoric, the hand of Big Oil is moving in the background. McCain has so far taken in $1.4 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas lobby, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That is a lot more than Obama's nearly $400,000. But between Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson, the three crossed the $1 million mark in contributions.
The next three weeks will tell what kind of spine the Democrats have as the Republicans try to drill a hole right through it. If the facts have not changed about drilling, then let the politics of Democrats show it.
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39 Comments so far
Show AllIt's not about DRILLING, goddammit! Why don't the Oil Barons to drill on the millions of acres of our land that for which they already own the rights? Private oil companies have no incentive to drill, only the incentive to lock up even more potential oil fields so they can continue to maximize their profits. Only a nationalized energy industry would be able to operate for the benefit of the consumer and not the seller. Anything else will not work. Any policy compromise which cedes more territory to big energy is a disaster, and does nothing to lower the cost of energy, limit our dependence on foreign energy, or conserve or create new energy.
Corporate Capitalism = Social Slavery
I'm convinced we are going to have new drilling. But nothing will happen till after the election.
Wouldn't it be better to try and guide it? Make sure that any new production goes only to the domestic market? Tie it to new refineries?
Doesn't it take some years though before the drilling gets done? And what if the numbers on the amount of oil available don't materialize because it turns out there's more sour heavy than light sweet crude? Something tells me that I don't like the looks of this.
It will take a few years, no matter what happens. The off shore oil is the best bet (I think)...and I don't like the look of it either. I believe the absolute opposition to new drilling anywhere has produced the current majority in favor. With just a little bit of compromise I don't think this would have been the case.
The energy states really have no problem, but the rest of the states are looking at real problems in 5 or so years unless we have a world wide rescession...no problem then!
Question about the quality grade oil types. I take it that the crude oil that goes into manufacturing especially on plastics is light sweet whereas it cannot be done with sour heavy, correct?
P.S.: If this is the case, then I fear that virtually everything made of/with crude oil will exponentially go up unless Ron Paul finally gets a veto-proof support to get the Hemp Farming Act passed into law.
FrederickJohnson September 9th, 2008 5:42 pm
"Question about the quality grade oil types. I take it that the crude oil that goes into manufacturing especially on plastics is light sweet whereas it cannot be done with sour heavy, correct?"
My understanding of it is that the heavier and more sour (the higher the sulphur content) the more difficult and expensive it is to turn into refined products but I'm not an expert.
Lobo Gris
Maybe not an expert, but you are right.
Thanks for confirming my fears about sour heavy proving to be more costly to put to use. I am already aware of the sulphur content and higher viscosity part. At best, it smells of rotten eggs and it's too gooey to transport. At worst, it can be deadly since sulphur is a very dangerous chemical. Drilling sour heavy crude oil damages the environment even more than the light sweet brand. As I understand it, we're running out of the light sweet type and running more into the heavy sour type. As a matter of fact, I heard that the refineries had to be upgraded to deal with that type of oil which is abundant to get but very expensive to process and yields poor quality oil in the end. I heard the same thing happening in Saudi Arabia when it was confessed that more water from the seas was needed to put more pressure to pump the heavy oils out of the ground. The more I saw all this and more, the more scary and horrifying it turns out. This does not look good at all.
Most plastics are made using natural gas, not oil, although oils can be used to make plastics, needing more energy to make the same product.
I heard somewhere that there is a process for turning heavy sour crude oil straight to natural gas. If so, we might be spared some time.
What you may have heard is a process for turning heavy and heavy-sour into easier to handle synthetic oil by mixing it with natural gas or hydrogen, which is derived from gas. They must use a form of this process at the Alberta tar sands, for example.
My point is there are already plenty of places the oil companies can drill if they were so inclined. The truth is they have not used the access to lands they have, they just want to tie up more of your and my land. And on top of that they haven't built any new refining capacity in over 30 years. This was what they were supposed to do with all their tax breaks, not line their own pockets.
Drilling is a false hope and a dead end. Oil prices are descending and OPEC is circling the wagons trying to decide on capacity merely because the $1 increase in gas prices over the past year has caused previously gas-happy Americans to conserve, for a change, despite the "Cheney Doctrine" - conservation is for chumps. We cannot get rid of our SUVs fast enough; there are waiting lists for hybrids and 30+ mpg cars. Had we followed Carter's plan from 1973 we'd all be driving 40-50mpg vehicles now, dragging the oil and auto cartel behind us, kicking and screaming.
How are you going to get free-market capitalist pigs like the Republicans and half the Democrats to limit sales to the domestic market? That's interfering with their version of "Democracy." The only answer is nationalization - American natural resources are all of our treasure, not the private cash pool of a few filthy rich scumbags like T Boone Pickens and Exxon-Mobil. Nationalize Now!
I am puzzled by your support of drilling, Thomas. Would you give a heroin addict more of his drug while counciling him to kick his destructive habit? Would you not take note of the distraction that is this call for further oil exploration in our most sensistive ecologic areas. No call for renewable research, no plans to finance such research, no , only a call to "drill, baby, drill", sophomoric and stupid, guarranteed only to further enrich those who are already obscenely wealthy while doing nothing to wean us from our addiction to oil. Off shore drilling will be seven years in the preparation, and an additional seven to ten years in the bringing of such to the pumps. The cost reduction, by government figures, would be about $0.70/ gallon at best. This is not a solution , it is another Bush giveaway and rip off that you seem to support.
Oil supports some of the most ruthless and oppressive regimes in this world, and it takes its toll on our environment as well. I would urge you, because I think you a caring and intelligent person, to go to NPR.org/fresh air, and read the transcript of Terry Gross'interview on Tuesday of Thomas Friedman on this very subject.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
"That may not poll well. . . . My job is not to go with the polls. My job is to tell the American people the truth."
Where did we hear that before? Oh yeah, Bush and the Republicans. And yet the Dem apologists would have us believe that Obama can be pressured to move left after he is elected.
Lobo Gris
If he couldn't be pressured before he was elected, I seriously doubt he'll be pressured after he's elected. We tried that with Bill Clinton already and that didn't work out well. Besides, like most establishmentarian types, Obama probably has silly fears that he'll be "recalled" in the middle of his first term if he pays attention to the people's interests even though there is no rule in the Constitution that allows for such action.
Pelosi, 06: “I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table.”
Pelosi, 08: ""As speaker, I have to put everything on the table."
Guess it depends on our definition of "table."
Pelosi only has one table, her own.
I look forward to Cindy Sheehan KICKING Pelosi out of her seat and San Francisco putting that traitor Pelosi in a hurt locker. And while at it, put Pelosi on a table and give her a SUPERTOUGH SPANKING for betraying the voters of her district and the country by allowing the rightwing to dominate even when she had the power to SHUT THEM OFF.
"I look forward to Cindy Sheehan KICKING Pelosi out of her seat"
Works for me!
Oakknot
I also look forward to Cindy Sheehan doing the above action-Pelosi has been utterly beholden to the rightwing, allowing Warcraft Bush his own version of dictatorship...
It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Zapata
cowards
Here at CD a few days ago was an announcement listed on the righthand column that few seem to read or comment at that dealt with the facts behind all the drill rhetoric. Here's the link to the summary which links to the paper, http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/-oil-drilling-in-environmentally-sensitive-areas:-the-role-of-the-media/
The most important facts to note are that it will be many years before any additional drilling authorized now brings additional oil to the market, and that oil will likely have little to no impact on prices at the wellhead or gaspump.
So there is no "plan" within the Drill, Drill Drill here drill now hogwash plan. Like the Palin ploy and Georgia's terrorist attack, this is all about gaining votes for McCain in November.
I always appreciate your knowledgeable, carefully documented comments, Karlof, and I know the "drill now" notion is the typical kind of superstitious hogwash that appeals to Republicans, but McCain did raise one potentially legitimate point: i.e. that drilling would send an immediate message to speculators and the price of oil would drop as a result. Do you (or anyone else) have any insight on this point?
It seems to me that if speculation is the reason for high oil prices, that can be cured/prevented directly, rather than through signaling a greater willingness to drill. No?
"It seems to me that if speculation is the reason for high oil prices, that can be cured/prevented directly, rather than through signaling a greater willingness to drill."
Speculation can be a cause for prices either too high or too low, it can and does work in both directions. I don't see how you can legally eliminate all speculation from the market though, we all do it.
question- I asked this on another thread, but don't think I got an answer- so apologies for redundancy.
Geologically speaking, what is the role and function of oil in the earth? How do we know that all that oil that we have been pumping out of the ground.. actually does something down there? Maybe it absorbs heat from the molten core to disburse it more evenly ( like engine oil?).. or acts as a buffer between tectonic plates and geological features ( like the fluid in our joints?).. I am not saying that this is the case ( as I have zero geological background).. but it strikes me that most things in nature.. serve some function that contributes to the health of the whole...
anyone?
As a unit of volume on a planetary scale, oil and gas are quite small--in fact, all the aquafirs contain more volume. What happens upon extraction of either groundwater, oil or gas is subsidence of the ground, which may have local effects, like putting additional pressure on a fault. There is the case of massive hydraulic mud flow from an attempted well in Indonesia http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4798501.stm But these events are very rare considering the thousands of bore holes drilled to date. In some cases, the evacuated fields are reinjected with gas for storage purposes. Same with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Generally though, nothing happens after an oil or gas field is emptied other than local ground subsidence, which often goes unnoticed.
thanks for the input.. are we really sure there is no larger role for oil though?
For the last couple hundred years.. we thought the appendix had no function in the human body... guess what... it's actually pretty important!
I just know Nature ( and the human body) doesn't keep anything that doesn't serve a function.. therefore it is relatively safe to assume that.. even if we don't fully understand what a function might be.. doesn't mean it doesn't exist...
does anyone know if this is a question that natural science / geology geophysics has ever really closely studied.. or when we found all that oil did they just go wheeee.. how can we get more....? sometimes when we are so excited by something.. we don't stop to ask the pesky questions..
:)
It's hypothesized that much more oil and gas have naturally escaped after being formed underground than were trapped, which I think is correct. So if nature has a "function" for oil and gas, then why did it allow its escape? I think oil and gas formation is a natural product of the planet's geophysiology having no intended impact in the same manner that plate tectonics is. How the planet functions is just that, without any sentience. I would advise reading about Gaia Theory as advanced by its founder James Lovelock and then revisiting your questions.
The geophysical role of oil, coal and natural gas is to sequester carbon and keep the earth from getting too hot. Oops.
Maybe, but the same is true for carbonate rocks like limestone and dolomite. I think there's a lot more carbon locked up in those formations but I could be wrong.
btw- if the government is willing to go to war for it ( okay, eager to go to war)... then maybe the government should own it...?
It sure worked that way for freedom/ democracy, cuz it sure has taken most of those....
How do you trust an article about oil drilling by someone named 'Derrick'?
Just joking.
I heard, but have not confirmed, that oil production in the US takes as much energy to produce a barrel of oil as there is in a barrel of oil. So there is no net gain in energy by drilling for oil. The only problem is that we don't have electric cars that can tie in to the grid so we need a portable energy source.
Check out articles on Peak oil. And also that it takes 10 years to develop a new oil field. How much global warming will we have ten years from now.
"I heard, but have not confirmed, that oil production in the US takes as much energy to produce a barrel of oil as there is in a barrel of oil."
Not true, not for current production as a whole in the US. It's true that it could be or become the case for a given well or formation. Or across the whole planet. But it would be economically unfeasable before that point to work the deposit, so it's not true of any current production anywhere.
The question is interesting as it applies to the extraction of any mineral wealth, but especially so when the commodity in question itself translates to energy, as with fossil fuels.
Not true for conventional oil wells in the US, but true for the the production of ethanol from corn. Expert disagree whether the ratio is maybe a little less than 1:1, or a little more than 1:1, but it is in that range. It can only be done with subsidies. But we get some other things in the bargain: twice as much greenhouse gas per mile driven, and a squeeze on corn supply so poor people go hungry.
orangutan--What you are questioning is termed Energy Returned on Energy Invested, or EROEI. For a good discussion of this concept, go to this link http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4428 For further discussion specificly about EROEI related to US oil extraction, see the list of referneces at the end of the above link's text, especially numbers 1, 16, and 20 by Cleveland, and explore the EROEI website at http://www.eroei.com/index.php
At theoildrum.com, we've had many heated discussions about biofuels. The discussion at this link http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4422 is very good, and many more can be found using the website's search function. Of course, theoildrum isn't the only place you can find items about biofuels, but I think it's one of the best.
We're taking Pelosi's re-election off the table!
But, this is a serious, serious matter, and it would be nice of the Obama-crats would take a real leadership in this energy crisis.
Carter took real steps in the right direction and he was vilified by this oil-greedy nation. The miles we Americans drive have been going steadily down hill for months with a commensurate reduction in pollution and gas use...the oil companies have adjusted gas prices back down to a "set" rate that they feel will not inhibit gas usage.
If I were an Obama-crat, I would encourage consumers to keep on conserving as much as possible, and slowly wean ourselves from the gas-pump titty. I would lead by example (as I have got rid of my own car and take public transportation myself) and I would start taxing the crap out of oil companies to increase public transportation, help support commuter train lines, develop clean, renewable sources of energy and clean up the super-fund sites oil/gas production have created. The Obama-crat would risk being a little unpopular, but asking Americans to sacrifice for the common good has worked before. I think under the right leadership, it could work again.
The Obama-crat would also have to be a fierce opponent of the McCain-lican and not suck up to it...and then, I believe that the Obama-crat would be the one leading in the polls.
Thanks, as always, for all the support.
Cindy
www.CindyforCongress.org
Clear thinking, Cindy - thanks for taking your time to post here. Many Americans crave real opposition to the corporate status quo. If the Obama-crats did tack left, as you say, condemn the new FISA, rewrite the [Biden] bankruptcy law, peck away at the ridiculous corporate person idea, they'd leave the McSame-old Same-old Republicans in the dust. At least you see this and we can start the leftward charge from San Francisco.
Best of luck to you; my thoughts are with Casey, as well.
I don't know who it will be in 08 ( and this is a very scary scenario.. wake up america!)
.. but in 12.. i think it will be cindy sheehan..
Obama could/ should have chosen her and he would have swept it all.. she
is a committed activist, a woman, and an outsider.. she has huge name recognition and a sympathy vote... and who can attack her for speaking against a war after all she has gone through with the death of her son Casey.
Like Palin- she is " one of us".. more so! And her platform speaks for and to the real needs of every single American.. and MORE.. she holds a voice for all people of the planet.. MY peruvian teachers all espouse that We, Americans, cannot have equity, peace, fairness etc here.. until it is had everywhere. I understand that today in a way I didn't fully understand it years ago. It is a literal truth as well as a metaphoric truth. Cindy understands that, as you can see if you go to her site and read her section on the issues.
TERI D: Science seldom measures the mystical aspect, or the "energetics" of inter-related systems, not to mention animals and plants as sentient beings.
There's a film documentary on a tribe known as the KOGI whose ancestors were among those "colonized" by Spain and its violent settlers 500 years ago. Some of a specific tribe (Kogi) migrated high into the jungles on the border of Columbia and kept their little civilization intact away from the modern world until recently. They viewed themselves (long oral tradition) as "keepers of the rain," and in the past few years, that role of many centuries was aborted as RAIN ceased to flow... so one of their tribesmen came partially down the mountain and was essentially interviewed by a research team (he showed them part of the little civilization) because this LIGHT being stressed the importance of the status of Mother Earth. His main commandment, "You must stop drilling the mother."
To shaman, the trees are the planet's lungs, and oil, as you said, an important lubricant. Many scientists are sure animals have no feelings or intelligence; and I remember a Harvard or Yale team of researchers stimulating portions of the human brain that elicited the "going to the light" experience many report in near-death experiences. To the researchers, getting a "recall" on this experience "proves" to them it's just about tweaking a part of the brain. To the mystic, the FACT the experience can be repeated through said "tweaking" implies it's part of the soul memory, and therefore, a genuine COMPONENT of human sentience, the type of sentience suppressed due to the dictates/socialization, role-modeling/conformity of a very opposed-to-empathy and spiritual FEELINGS civilization that instead substitutes cold logic wedded to aggression, so we end up with such pinacles of achievement as torture monitored by trained psychologists.
My long diatribe is in part to say (and I think you're hip to this), one must question what science says, as any AUTHORITARIAN rigid field of inquiry or academe, religion or politics, is limited by its own blind hubris, its presuption it has THE answers.