Nahncee,
In your 3:38 comment, you ask fair questions and deserve fair answers, however, I have been answering questions most of the evening for my students, so rather than answering in the spirit that your questions deserve, I am going to sit, have a cup of tea and gather my resources. However, to address your first comment, Ted Stevens (Alaska) of bridge to nowhere fame is Republican as is Don Young (Alaska), of the “Don Young Way” for example.
As far as the cost of gas and oil is concerned, to the best of my ability to reason, I truly believe it is market forces at work. Ten years ago, I spent a great deal of time developing software to predict economic feasibility for drilling test holes and predicting economic feasibility in the fracturing and/or recovery of older producing wells. There is much financial risk in drilling a dry hole. There is much financial risk in buying leases to fields that have unstable rock structure that collapses as oil is pumped or forced out and stops production prematurely. I do not claim to be a petroleum engineer, I’m just a programmer, but I developed a great deal of respect for oil executives and engineers that would risk their careers and the companies bottom line again and again in the pursuit of profitable wells. When the wells came in and produced as predicted, money flows in. When they don’t produce money hemmorhages out. A petroleum engineer could probably tell us what the percentage of good wells to dry holes is, but it seemed to me that even with the best seismic gear and smartest software, the hit rate was pretty low. I worked for some of the smartest geophysicists in the world. They traveled around the world giving lectures and consulting with many foreign governments. And they constantly stressed how “iffy” the whole proposition was. The days of drilling into a dome and “slurping” the oil up with a “straw” are over. In almost all cases now, oil is in rock structures of varying porosity, oil sands, and/or oil shale. Getting oil out of porous rock, oil sands and oil shale is an expensive proposition in the very best situation, but with the environmental laws and regulations in the US, it is down right time consuming and almost cost prohibitive, hence the increase in the cost at the pump. I am actually somewhat happy at the increase in cost of gas, since it will make the initial development of shale oil, for example, less of a gamble for the major oils. As an aside, I have read that Shell has developed an experimental process (at great cost, I might add) that meets environmental requirements and is cost effective (relatively speaking) for extracting shale oil in the west. However, again, because of environmental concerns getting approval for this process drives the time line a long ways out.
As for your last comment that my tendency to vote for Obama is the result of some personal economic issues with the Republican party, it is indeed. A man is known by the company (or in this case, the party) he keeps. And I need to choose. McCain or Obama. And I have not made up my mind. I am trying to rationally make a good decision, for as I said earlier, I will not choose to not vote. That is a true cop out and makes me angry when I hear members of the chattering class advocate not voting to “teach a lesson” to whichever party they are tearing up for that particular day. You and others are helping me make that decision. I love America, if for no other reason than, where else can an unsophisticated nerdy programmer participate in a discussion with well read, well educated and far more knowledgeable people than he who provide a grinding wheel of logic and experience against which he hones his thinking, and at no cost except for the time spent typing. What a country.
