Drilling Here, Drilling Now: It’s Just Common Sense (UPDATED)
In the midst of an undeniable demonstration of Obama’s “hope and change,” energy prices are skyrocketing. Gasoline has already surpassed $4 a gallon in some parts of the country, and is bumping up against that magic number in others. And because oil is over $100 a barrel, with some within OPEC predicting it will reach $130bbl, there is little reason to expect gasoline prices to do anything other than climb higher in the near future.
One of the problems we face right now is the uncertainty in Libya, an OPEC nation that has cut its normal daily output of 1.6 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) to just over 700,000, amid the political tensions surrounding Muammar Gaddafi. What this means for humanity as a whole is that there is now less oil on the world’s market to meet the demand around the globe. What this means for you and I as Americans is that our refusal to “drill here, drill now” is catching up to us with a vengeance.
The noose we allowed foreign oil producers to place around our necks is tightening.
And the worst part of all this is neither the per gallon gasoline price nor the per barrel price of oil, but rather the fact that it doesn’t have to be this way. We could be pumping enough oil here at home to offset the ramifications of the upheaval in Libya, but our president, various members of his administration, and the majority of Democrats in the Senate remain unwilling to budge on the idea. Therefore, we’ve literally turned our backs on billions upon billions of barrels of oil that we could be extracting and using right here at home.
For example, there are formations in Montana and North Dakota that hold upwards of “20 billion barrels of recoverable crude.” Moreover, these “formations also hold the natural gas equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil.” These figures represent such vast amounts of oil that if we were just to avail ourselves of the crude in North Dakota alone, it would place that state among “the 13 or 14 largest producing countries” in the world.
And how about Alaska? Recent reports about that state’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) show that it contains amounts of oil on par with Montana and North Dakota, and even exceeds them in the amount of natural gas it contains (“15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas”).
In fact, studies show that “drilling on Alaska’s OCS could make Alaska the eighth largest oil resource province in the world.” Yet we choose to rely on the Saudis, countries like Venezuela, and men like Gaddafi for the crude we need to make fuel for our cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, etc.
And I haven’t even mentioned the number of jobs active oil exploration and extraction would produce in Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota. The job figures for Alaska alone number “almost 55,000.”
The bottom line is that we are sitting on a gold mine folks — “Black gold, Texas Tea” — yet we are living lives of self-imposed impoverishment. Although we have oil supplies sufficient to offset much of the tensions arising in the Middle East (and elsewhere), we’ve chosen instead to be dependent on foreign oil producers who aren’t very trustworthy, to say the least.
Why can’t Democrats who are always touting things like “common sense [gun] regulation” and “common sense financial regulation” remove their partisan blinders long enough to understand that allowing oil companies to drill here and drill now is obviously one of the most common sense actions anyone could take?
It’s time to turn the spigot in Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska’s OCS, thus providing the American people with the peace of mind that comes from relying on American oil for a change.
It is a crime, A CRIME, that Obama and his administration is preventing us from drilling more off shore, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. We should be drilling more for oil snd natural gas, we should be investing more in clean coal, AND we should be opening a lot more nuclear power plants than ever before. Even the “Green” Europeans have more nuclear power plants than we do, not that anyone bothers to mention that. Yet we always seem to fight our energy battles with both arms tide behind our backs simply because the Enviro-Nazis in this country demand that it be so. Well, let’s see how well those windmills and solar panels do when gas is $5 or even $6 a gallon, which is going to be happening soon at a gas station near you.
Maybe we can survive long enough and it will hurt enough, that we can turn more of the liberal idiots out of office and get people in there who care about America and America’s interests instead of bleeding our tax payers do death to fund illegitimacy and illegals. Time to stop the unconstitutional programs and agencies and abolish them. Foreign aid, Departments of energy and education, HUD, HSS etc., are all unconstitutional and should be abolished. Foreign military bases should be closed and our troops brought home and used to protect our borders. No more shooting at bad guys with bean bags, use lethal force to protect our borders. Stop the insane policies that are destroying our country. Drill Baby DRILL!!!
The noose we allowed foreign oil producers to place around our necks…
Why can’t Democrats remove their partisan blinders…
— yet we are living lives of self-imposed impoverishment…
I will agree about the “we” stuff when it reflects the truth: starting with the “we” that sat our our duffs while “they” meaning elected leaders of our local, state and federal government threw God out of our schools; setting the nation on a course of decline that will end with our destruction.
I’ve been listening to the “me good”, “you bad”, they did it rhetoric for over 65 years now. Its like a circus. Turn on the TV or radio today and the same monkey with a tin cup that danced for Harry Truman is doing his thing for Obama right now. Same hat, same bright colored suit, same grin..
The “oil crisis” 1970s, gas prices soared, gas station lines went for miles because of the “oil shortage”. This while literally thousands of fully loaded oil tankers were forced to anchor offshore on our East and West coasts… until they were given the signal…
“You can come out now guys, we got what we want!” said the politicians to the big oil companies – “We stuck it to them right where it hurts the most… enough of their money to fatten all of our own wallets for decades!”
Now courtesy of “them” “there” we have another oil crisis..
But, this time it is Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iran..
North Korea, China, India, Russia..
Sound familiar..?
Decades of it.. the world could be at peace.
All (Democrats) rise and curse George Bush and Israel!
Also our fallen soldiers and their families.
And so we only have a few million illegal Hispanics living in our country and “they” are only sending a few billion dollars back to “their” countries..
And they don’t really want to take all of our guns away from us or force us to accept government provided health care, abide by Islamic rules or do anything that “we Americans” don’t want to do…
Unless…..
They: the Democrats today, no not yesterday, nor tomorrow, but right now decide that is the way things are going to be..
Like it, or lump it – we won.
We got the leadership we deserve and it isn’t just made up of the damn Democrats!
I keep asking myself and anyone else that will listen, “Why is this administration intent on weakening the United States? What is Obama’s agenda?”
His and his minions’ actions are intentionally calculated to weaken us from several different points of attack simultaneously.
Why? Who is he? Who is guiding him towrds this evil objective?
We can’t produce our own oil and create thousands of new jobs. First, it would irritate much of the Democrats’ environut base. Second, it would make “high-speed trains” even less attractive, costing us thousands of high-paying union jobs for the Democrats’ union base. Third, too many of those oil jobs might be non-union, and having too many happy non-union families might make America too complacent, taking the declaring of martial law off the table and reducing the Democrats’ power.
Sorry, drill here, drill now is off the table.
Besides, I’ve heard it would be ten years before any of that oil would make a difference in the pump price of gas. Apparently Americans can’t work fast — certainly not if you include getting government permits in the process.
I am going to enjoy watching Obama and the Democrats in their Mussolini moment.
Hawkins, you’re smokin’ dope! At least your post reads like it. Liberals definition of “common sense,” is what every LIBERAL knows, which of course is nothing. Further, if any kind of sense were common most everyone would have it in about the same amount. Look around you they don’t! People blinded by their ideology, which is not limited to Liberals, although excessively prevalent there among, do some pretty stupid things. Everything you wrote has been explained almost to the point of saturation, which has now been reached! It must be understood, “You are preaching to the choir!” Science and facts to a liberal are as sand to a whale, sometimes an irritant, mostly to be ignored, and never to be rested upon.
WE didn’t do anything to us. The Left did it all. The choice is simple and stark. Crush the Left or America dies.
this is probably true.
HOWEVER< we did it to ourselves. We elected the same people to office year after year and never questioned
The Obama administration is literally denying us the energy we need to live. It is a scary thing to watch and witness.
“ricpic” is 100% correct. The Left is killing us. They are strangling us with the very hoses we once used to pump to gas. They are denying us our economy’s lifeblood (fossil fuels) and we’re about to pay more for gas than we ever dreamed.
I am for drilling everywhere and doing it now. We can’t wait for the next administration, oops regime.
When the communists were in power in the old Soviet Union, they tried government control of the energy sector. They were poor. So what does our government’s energy policies make us? Collectivism forever, eh?
Our government should take a lesson from Norway. In Norway, you can see oil derricks from land. Much of their wealth comes from North Sea oil, even though the Norwegians pay very high taxes due to their socialistic policies.
I have read that oil wells have been drilled and capped just of the northern Alaskan coast.
The way this oil has been prevented from reaching US markets, and why it has been prevented, are a great mystery.
When I first read about this situation in a book by a Christian minster of religion working in the oil fields I was somewhat incredulous, but his information made sense.
It sounds like more world government at work.
Never, never has a country refused to use its own natural resources. But the US, it thrall to the Democrat party which itself is in thrall to radical environmentalists, refuses to use its coal, oil, and nuclear resources. It is crazy. These natural resources mean prosperity and national strength. Republicans must make this an issue. It is a winning one.
It’s not just Obama and the Democrats though they are certainly equally guilty but this outrageous moratorium on all domestic fossil fuel production in and around (offshore) America has been ongoing for decades in the face of what has always been obvious, that what is happening now would be the end result because it is the fervently desired outcome of the Environazis. These are not pragmatists or American patriots; these are zealots determined to break the back of the American industrial engine that, in their view, is grossly unfair and dismissive of the purported environmental calamities they’re convinced will ensue, somewhere down the road. All this self admired, collegial nobility surrounding the narcissistic notion of “saving the planet” while the rest of the world goes on oblivious, unrestrained and contemptuous in the process of utilizing to the fullest extent whatever fossil fuels they can get their hands on, domestic or foreign and the use of nuclear (78% + of total needs in France). That America is prohibited, by bureaucratic meddling, from using its inherent genius to develop these resources in an environmentally sound fashion is maddening to put it mildly. Not to mention what this one effort alone would do to solve the current energy, security and economic malaise that we currently find ourselves in. It is infuriating, self imposed, myopic stupidity that this goes on unhindered, day after day after day except for occasional lip service whenever there is a Middle East flare up.
“it is the fervently desired outcome of the Environazis. These are not pragmatists or American patriots; these are zealots determined to break the back of the American industrial engine that…”
Trust me….even the weenies in their Subarus, Volvos and Saabs will be squealing like the littlest pigs soon enough. I’d like to assign or mandate that all environazis be issued bicycles…sans seats.
In addition to purging “progressives” from American politics, we need a thorough retooling if not outright repeal of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. These laws are what enable unelected environmental groups to sue any new projects, thus adding to the cost and length of time it takes for them to be completed.
The problem as I see it is really the Republican party. We must continue to purge the RINO’s, then we can defund all these bureaucracys. With the victory in the last election, the Republicans are still dragging their feet.
More and more, the states are asserting themselves in areas usually reserved for the federal government alone. Why can’t the states start letting permits for drilling, and dare the feds to stop it? That would crystallize things for the next election!
The source of our problem is environmental groups who don’t want us to use any natural resource, be it oil or trees or whatever. They pull the strings of the Dems, who being natural lefties, think narrowly that this is just great to cripple rich corporations.
The answer to improving our energy supply is simple and similar to the answer for cost-cutting for a stable economy, it is for the Children. There was no Democratic or Republican leadership plan to get us out of debt. Such a debt reduction plan must show year by year how the budget must be reduced to eventually pay off our current debt, without borrowing more money. Instead our politicians continue to perform debt-rape upon our children. Perhaps we should require Congress and the Administration to prove that they have explained to their children how much of the debt payment is being postponed for them to pay off.
Our young people know they are being left to hold the debt bag, and they also know that not using our existing resources causes more debt while lowering our incomes that have to pay off the debt. Just as Ron Paul found many supporters among the younger age groups, they will provide the push that is needed for both energy development and a sustainable economy, because they have all the incentive.
It is for the Children that we must extract oil, dig clean coal, build nuclear power plants to improve our ability to produce, while cutting our spending to follow a plan for debt elimination. Then the two parties can fight over whether it will take 50 years or 25 years, with the Teaparties going for ten years. But we must agree to a plan that improves our ability to produce while paying off the debt, and make it happen. There is no other way out, and it must start now!
Well, let me tell you something you don’t know or you chose not to know: Oil prices are all future options. They don’t sell dairy. They sell oil. The price of oil goes up today for September’s deliveries. So why would your gas prices go up in March?!!!!!
It’s a symphony written by your market speculators, orchestrated by your oil refinery companies under your government oversight. And you’re the audience who complain when the party organizers charge you more at the ticket window.
Oil goes up in March because the gas station owner is confronted with replacing their inventory in the very near future. Nobody seems to cry foul when the same mechanism works to bring prices down.
I’m not disagreeing with any other points. We need to throw off the yoke of our Eviro-Fascist Oppressors. I’m from North Dakota, the state with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. We need more workers to extract the Bakken. It’s huge.
You’re a nut
“….too many of those oil jobs might be non-union…”
The oil industry has managed to keep the unions out because they pay so well.
“Besides, I’ve heard it would be ten years before any of that oil would make a difference…”
They said the same thing ten years ago, and ten years before that, and ten years before that, etc., etc., etc.
Sorry. The above is in response to @5Polly.
Mr. Hawkins,
With all due respect I do not think you understand what common sense is. I state because the premise of your article is absurd. According to Thomas Pickens, there is only about 100 billion barrels of oil left in all of the US. That includes all areas that are currently off limits. Mr. Pickens also states that only about 10% of that oil is reachable. But even if all of that oil was accessible, it wouldn’t be enough oil to sustain our country’s needs for even one year. The idea that the U.S. can drill it’s way out of our dependence to oil is not just wrong, it’s laughable.
A much more intelligent solution would be to advocate for construction of new nuclear power plants to allow for natural gas to be used as an alternative fuel. The technology for both already exists and is in use today.
Better start looking at THORIUM. We have 1000 year supply on hand at present output. One fill up would cost about $850 and last 150,000 miles. So it is hard to TAX the use of it.If you think oil companies make to much money just multiply their profits 4 1/2 times and you will get the amount of TAXES collected.
Here’s the problem:
Too many politicians bought and paid for by the environmental lobby. They vote as instructed by their rich campaign donors. And since a politician’s NUMBER ONE PRIORITY is reelection in perpetuity, we can expect politicians to continue dancing to their handlers’ tune.
It’s time for the Constitutional Amendment to term-limit the House and Senate. 12 years is long enough. Politicians shouldn’t be a long-term “investment” by special interests.
Pickens is a tool. He tried to grab his own share of government money and it back fired. The US has more oil, coal and natural gas than any other country. Every toll that says otherwise is pointing to studies done over 30 years ago. Oil extraction has changed the equation dramatically. Yes and that is ignored as well.
touche’
More coal yes, more natural gas maybe, more oil no. The only people who would think otherwise are the same clowns who believe that Fox “News” and MSNBC are real news organizations.
Concerning Pickens credibility; I’ve never heard of anyone with any experience in the oil industry disputing the claims made by Pickens. Not even the oil industry itself.
I’ll remind you that he became a billionaire because of his years of experience in the oil industry. Can you claim that? Can you cite someone else with similar credentials who disagrees with Pickens?
I am begining to believe that our energy resources are being saved for our masters the Chinese. It looks like there is an agreement, we (the Chinese) will continue to loan you money to keep your ponzi scheme alive (for now) and in return you will not use any more of your own oil, gas, and coal. It is a good scheme for a politician who only wants to be re elected. Once the USA collapses, the Chicoms will move in to claim their prize. Chinese general Chi Haotian once gave a speech to an eager crowd about the plan to depopulate and assume control of north America. They want to keep infrastructure damage to a minimum to be used by the new Chinese colonists. Too bad for the population…
No, it’s really about DAR, drain America last, a policy quietly begun in the 50s. Get the oil out of the middle east and the middle east is no longer the problen it is now with rich terrorists.