NetworkedBlogs
Drilling Inconsistency
Senator John McCain's call this week for drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf was a welcome move in the face of skyrocketing prices for oil, gasoline, and other petroleum-related products and services. It also served to highlight inconsistencies and weaknesses — in the positions of Democrats (particularly Barack Obama), but unfortunately also in the positions of McCain himself.
We're familiar with the situation, as it is front page news nearly everyday: worldwide demand for oil is up, particularly with the aggressive economic growth of China and India. Approximately 80% of the world's active oil reserves are controlled by nationalized oil companies, owned by governments that can range from openly hostile to the United States, such as Iran, to at least opposed in rhetoric and policy, such as Venezuela; much of the oil is located in the unstable Middle East. The OPEC wields considerable power of worldwide oil supply, and in the face of the adverse economic impact of record-high oil prices, the best we seemingly can do is to plead with governments relatively friendly with the United States to increase production, plead with American consumers to conserve, and plead with everyone to come up with energy alternatives.
Ironically, while asking other countries to increase their oil production to bring down oil & gas prices, the US government has "colluded" to prevent additional domestic supply from being brought online, and Democrats in Congress have even advocated increasing further the cost of oil through new taxes on companies that provide oil and gasoline. The US has vast known resources in the Outer Continental Shelf, oil shale in the Rocky Mountains, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Harvesting this oil is illegal, prevented by the government. Further, the regulations and permitting requirements necessary to build new refineries is so complex and expensive that no new refineries have been built in the US in 30 years. In short, the US government is purposefully acting to keep oil prices high. In supporting "cap-and-trade" legislation, McCain and congressional Democrats actively sought to increase prices even further in the coming years.
Of course, the justification for the forbidding of oil drilling in the OCS, ANWR, and elsewhere is that drilling would spoil pristine environment. Of course, the known benefit of more oil is contrasted against some nebulous environmental benefit — no specific environmental cost is detailed, and many of the proposed conceptual risks, such as decreased caribou population or oil spill catastrophes during, say, hurricanes, is in direct opposition to experience in current drilling locations. The caribou population in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, has increased since drilling began in the 1960s; even the catastrophic 2005 hurricanes Rita and Katrina did not result in major oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.
In my weekly work routine, I drive between Houston and Beaumont 2-4 times per week. Along the way, I pass an area where oil drilling occurred. As I passed by day-to-day, I saw drilling equipment brought in, oil removed, and the area setup for further removal. Passing by today, if you didn't know that oil had been drilled there, you wouldn't even notice the area. It sits in the middle of farmland, with a crawfish farm nearby; farming in the area was apparently not impacted by the drilling, save for the immediate area where the equipment was located. No environmental blight is visible.
In decrying "Big Oil" for not producing more oil to bring down the price while simultaneously purposefully restricting their ability to do so, Sen. Obama and the Democrats illustrate a basic weakness in an issue that hits Americans in their bank statements, and hurts lower-income families the hardest. Unfortunately, Sen. McCain's own position is inconsistent, preventing him from fully capitalizing on this issue.
We're familiar with the situation, as it is front page news nearly everyday: worldwide demand for oil is up, particularly with the aggressive economic growth of China and India. Approximately 80% of the world's active oil reserves are controlled by nationalized oil companies, owned by governments that can range from openly hostile to the United States, such as Iran, to at least opposed in rhetoric and policy, such as Venezuela; much of the oil is located in the unstable Middle East. The OPEC wields considerable power of worldwide oil supply, and in the face of the adverse economic impact of record-high oil prices, the best we seemingly can do is to plead with governments relatively friendly with the United States to increase production, plead with American consumers to conserve, and plead with everyone to come up with energy alternatives.
Ironically, while asking other countries to increase their oil production to bring down oil & gas prices, the US government has "colluded" to prevent additional domestic supply from being brought online, and Democrats in Congress have even advocated increasing further the cost of oil through new taxes on companies that provide oil and gasoline. The US has vast known resources in the Outer Continental Shelf, oil shale in the Rocky Mountains, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Harvesting this oil is illegal, prevented by the government. Further, the regulations and permitting requirements necessary to build new refineries is so complex and expensive that no new refineries have been built in the US in 30 years. In short, the US government is purposefully acting to keep oil prices high. In supporting "cap-and-trade" legislation, McCain and congressional Democrats actively sought to increase prices even further in the coming years.
Of course, the justification for the forbidding of oil drilling in the OCS, ANWR, and elsewhere is that drilling would spoil pristine environment. Of course, the known benefit of more oil is contrasted against some nebulous environmental benefit — no specific environmental cost is detailed, and many of the proposed conceptual risks, such as decreased caribou population or oil spill catastrophes during, say, hurricanes, is in direct opposition to experience in current drilling locations. The caribou population in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, has increased since drilling began in the 1960s; even the catastrophic 2005 hurricanes Rita and Katrina did not result in major oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.
In my weekly work routine, I drive between Houston and Beaumont 2-4 times per week. Along the way, I pass an area where oil drilling occurred. As I passed by day-to-day, I saw drilling equipment brought in, oil removed, and the area setup for further removal. Passing by today, if you didn't know that oil had been drilled there, you wouldn't even notice the area. It sits in the middle of farmland, with a crawfish farm nearby; farming in the area was apparently not impacted by the drilling, save for the immediate area where the equipment was located. No environmental blight is visible.
In decrying "Big Oil" for not producing more oil to bring down the price while simultaneously purposefully restricting their ability to do so, Sen. Obama and the Democrats illustrate a basic weakness in an issue that hits Americans in their bank statements, and hurts lower-income families the hardest. Unfortunately, Sen. McCain's own position is inconsistent, preventing him from fully capitalizing on this issue.
Comments