A Time to Drill
July 9, 2008
July 9, 208 – GOPUSA: This article comes from Paul M. Weyrich today regarding the shifts Democrats are making in their positions on the oil situation. Perhaps they have seen the polls and know they are in for a trouncing if they don’t abandon their positions against drilling. This is easy to understand. If we have more supply, prices will come down… and so will the futures that speculators are driving up. They think liberals will rule the day and sideline this issue, but the public has had enough. Politicians are feeling it from all sides. Democrats don’t want to let Republicans own this issue, especially when they tell us they are for the common folks.
In a remarkably short time the public has changed from supporters of environmentalism to advocates of drilling for oil and natural gas in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and/or in the ocean. For the first time since the 1970s liberals in both parties have found themselves responding to significant demands for drilling. Their responses are meant to confuse the electorate in order to turn public opinion back to their position on the environment.
Toward that end liberals have come up with two mantras which we hear on every talk show, in every press conference and in every speech addressing the high cost of gasoline. The first mantra is that it will take at least 10, maybe 30 years before we see a drop of oil coming from the ground at the aforementioned sites. The second mantra is that greedy oil companies already have 86 million acres of leases provided by the Federal Government. They only want more leases to satisfy their greed.
On the first point, correspondent Ken Wood pointed out that Larry Kudlow recently featured on his television show James T. Hackett, President and CEO of Anadarko Petroleum Company. Whereas some liberals are saying it could take 30 years for the oil to be available, Hackett said it would take two or three years, depending upon where the oil was drilled. Indeed, I saw one oil exploration expert on Fox News Channel who said that if the right equipment were available it would take only one year to get the first oil since the oil companies know exactly where the oil is located in the outer Continental Shelf. One oil shale expert told proponents of drilling in the House of Representatives that the first 800 million barrels of oil from shale could be available in two or three years. The remaining estimated two trillion barrels of oil from shale would take longer to have ready because they would be more difficult to extricate. But the initial 800 million barrels would help the U.S. economy.
On the second point, I received two different answers. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who used to be in the oil business, said the reason oil companies are not drilling on the 86 million acres is that there is no substantial oil available on those lands to make drilling economically viable. He said the government only permits exploration on those leased lands, so oil companies have explored them and found that they would produce little. The second answer came from Hackett. He said the federal government is, in effect, guilty of fraud. They accept the lease money and the annual rents but have refused to grant permission to drill there. He implied that some oil had been found that would be worthwhile to extract but since they cannot drill the consumer sees no benefits. Either way, to accuse oil companies of greed is an unfounded assertion.
Read the rest of the article here.
Our position is to keep the heat on. Politicans will say ANYTHING to get elected and then do what they want once they are in office hoping the public will forget that they are not doing what they said they would. Unfortunately, this happens most of the time. While we are busy leading our own lives, we miss much of what goes on in Washington. And these people get elected over and over again. But once in awhile, as in the case of Gray Davis of California, people wake up and remove the person from office. The most tragic part about this is that his replacement is just as bad! Read his response to our letter asking him to open drilling off the continental shelf.
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