Sitting on an Ocean of Energy, Doing Nothing

[GaryC 7]

Drill! Drill! Drill!

June 12, 2008

Charles de Gaulle once wrote off the nation of Brazil in six words: "Brazil is not a serious country." How much time is left before someone says the same of the United States?

One thing Brazil and the U.S. have in common is the price of oil: It is priced in dollars, and everyone in the world now knows what the price is. Another commonality is that each country has vast oil reserves in waters off their coastlines.

Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger says America needs to get serious about its oil and gas resources. (June 11)

Here we may draw a line in the waves between the serious and the unserious.

Brazil discovered only yesterday (November) that billions of barrels of oil sit in difficult water beneath a swath of the Santos Basin, 180 miles offshore from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The U.S. has known for decades that at least 8.5 billion proven barrels of oil sit off its Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts, with the Interior Department estimating 86 billion barrels of undiscovered oil resources.

When Brazil made this find last November, did its legislature announce that, for fear of oil spills hitting Rio's beaches or altering the climate, it would forgo exploiting these fields?

Of course it didn't. Guilherme Estrella, director of exploration and production for the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, said, "It's an extraordinary position for Brazil to be in." Indeed it is.

At this point in time, is there another country on the face of the earth that would possess the oil and gas reserves held by the United States and refuse to exploit them? Only technical incompetence, as in Mexico, would hold anyone back.

But not us. We won't drill.

California won't drill for the estimated 1.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil off its coast because of bad memories of the Santa Barbara oil spill – in 1969.

We won't drill for the estimated 5.6 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil in the moonscape known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) because of – the caribou.

In 1990, George H.W. Bush, calling himself "the environmental president," signed an order putting virtually all the U.S. outer continental shelf's oil and gas reserves in the deep freeze. Bill Clinton extended that lockup until 2013. A Clinton veto also threw away the key to ANWR's oil 13 years ago.

Our waters may hold 60 trillion untapped cubic feet of natural gas. As in Brazil, these are surely conservative estimates.

[Drill! Drill! Drill!]

AP

While Brazilians proudly embrace Petrobras, yelling "We're Going to Be No. 1," the U.S.'s Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, promises to impose an "excess profits tax" on American oil producers.

We live in a world in which Russia's Vladimir Putin and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez use their vast oil and gas reserves as instruments of state power. Here, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid use their control of Congress to spend a week debating a "climate-change" bill. This they did fresh off their subsidized (and bipartisan) ethanol fiasco.

One may assume that Mr. Putin and the Chinese have noticed the policy obsessions of our political class. While other nations use their oil reserves to attain world status, we give ours up. Why shouldn't they conclude that, long term, these people can be taken? Nikita Khrushchev said, "We will bury you." Forget that. We'll do it ourselves.

Putin intimidates Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states and Poland with oil and gas cutoffs, while Chávez uses petrodollars to bankroll Colombian terrorists. Cuba plans to exploit its Caribbean oil fields within a long tee shot of the Florida Keys with help from India, Spain, Venezuela, Canada, Norway, Malaysia, even Vietnam. But America won't drill. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said just last month he's afraid of an oil spill. Katrina wrecked the oil rigs in the Gulf with no significant damage from leaking oil.

Some portion of the current $4-per-gallon gasoline may be attributable to the Federal Reserve's inflationary monetary policy or even speculators. But we can wave goodbye to the $1.25/gallon gasoline that in 1990 allowed a President Bush to airily lock away the nation's oil and gas jewels. This isn't your father's world of energy. New world powers are coming online fast, and they need energy. We need to get back in the game.

The goal shouldn't be "energy independence," a ridiculous notion in an economically integrated world. It's about admitting the need to strike a balance between the energy and security realities of the here-and-now and the potentialities of the future. Some of our best and brightest want to pursue alternative energy technologies, and they should be encouraged to do so, inside market disciplines. But let's at least stop pretending the rest of the world is going to play along with our environmentalist moralisms.

The Democrats' climate-change bill collapsed last week under the weight of brutal cost realities. It was a wake-up call. This is the year Americans joined the real world of energy costs. Now someone needs to explain to them why we – and we alone – are sitting on an ocean of energy but won't drill for it.

You'd think the "national security" nominee, John McCain, would get this. He's clueless – a don't-drill zombie. We may mark this down as the year the U.S. tired of being a serious country.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1213228720...ss_opinion_main

[Ban Hammer 13,340]

in the end, we'll have no way to get to work, be freezing our butts off and can't take a hot shower, but we can still appreciate the beauty of nature around us while wondering how the hell we wound up in that position.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

in the end, we'll have no way to get to work, be freezing our butts off and can't take a hot shower, but we can still appreciate the beauty of nature around us while wondering how the hell we wound up in that position.

I'll get to work, no problem. Plenty of buses and trains around me.

Kansas is fukced though. We'll just have to turn your state into a national park or something.

[Scott & Lai 12]

in the end, we'll have no way to get to work, be freezing our butts off and can't take a hot shower, but we can still appreciate the beauty of nature around us while wondering how the hell we wound up in that position.

We'll no longer have the luxury of appreciating the beautiy of nature around us as we'll be plunged into a third-world lifestyle and struggling for survival.

[alienlovechild 75]

In 1990, George H.W. Bush, calling himself "the environmental president," signed an order putting virtually all the U.S. outer continental shelf's oil and gas reserves in the deep freeze. Bill Clinton extended that lockup until 2013. A Clinton veto also threw away the key to ANWR's oil 13 years ago.

While Brazilians proudly embrace Petrobras, yelling "We're Going to Be No. 1," the U.S.'s Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, promises to impose an "excess profits tax" on American oil producers.

The goal shouldn't be "energy independence," a ridiculous notion in an economically integrated world. It's about admitting the need to strike a balance between the energy and security realities of the here-and-now and the potentialities of the future. Some of our best and brightest want to pursue alternative energy technologies, and they should be encouraged to do so, inside market disciplines. But let's at least stop pretending the rest of the world is going to play along with our environmentalist moralisms.

You'd think the "national security" nominee, John McCain, would get this. He's clueless – a don't-drill zombie. We may mark this down as the year the U.S. tired of being a serious country.

The drilling bans seemed ok for some the world price for oil was lower and national security issues weren't as immediate but the drilling needs to start in the thick skulls of Republicans and Democrats. Obama's windfall profit tax is a moronic penalty for producing more oil when it's needed. What's he gonna do, push Air Force One down the runway with the Secret Service?

Energy independence would be great but oil producers will always want us around when they want dollars and military support to protect them.

[isleta521 5]

Perhaps once we have thousands of favelas like Brasil, then the US might do something if its not too late.

[HAL 9000 96]

I wonder how people will end up poor after not having to spend all their cash on gas for their vehicles. The argument is a round one at best.

Or, perhaps the all-or-nothings as I read above could contribute once they get over their mad dash to drill mindlessly, that alternatives could be developed by actually investing time and money in them that would *cough* avoid that so called third world status they see in the future.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Liberals make me sick. Most still drive their cars and cool/heat their house but say:

NO oil

NO gas

NO coal

NO wind (kills the birds)

NO hydro (kills the fish)

We're gonna need more than solar. Open your minds!!

[HAL 9000 96]

Damn those liberals huh?

[Dr. Obvious 49]

NO wind (kills the birds)

My opinion is if a bird is stupid enough to fly into such an obvious, enormous, loud, and generally moving piece of machinery, it probably had it coming. Most birds aren't that dumb. The National Audubon Society endorses wind energy. I think that says enough.

[Fuzzness 2]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

According to estimates by geophysicists, there's about 2 percent of our current demand in ANWR, it would take close to a decade to extract it and billions of tax dollars to drill for it.

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

[Fuzzness 2]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

According to estimates by geophysicists, there's about 2 percent of our current demand in ANWR, it would take close to a decade to extract it and billions of tax dollars to drill for it.

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/770968/posts

not sure how accurate this is, but it is a good read. There is a lot more oil in ANWR than you may think.

[HAL 9000 96]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

According to estimates by geophysicists, there's about 2 percent of our current demand in ANWR, it would take close to a decade to extract it and billions of tax dollars to drill for it.

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

You just want us to be a Third World Nation!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I agree that we need to drill more but I don't see how it would lower the price of oil. The demand now isn't high enough to warrant the current price.

According to estimates by geophysicists, there's about 2 percent of our current demand in ANWR, it would take close to a decade to extract it and billions of tax dollars to drill for it.

The single, most dramatic step we can take with regard to our supply is to reduce our demand.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/770968/posts

not sure how accurate this is, but it is a good read. There is a lot more oil in ANWR than you may think.

No offense, Joel, but that is politically centered website. You have to kind of search around, but the geophysicists that aren't tied to any of the oil companies speculate that ANWR has about 2 percent. I think it's absurd not to be talking about reducing our demand first and foremost. In 2003, Cheney said that reducing our demand was not an important issue when he was forging the Energy Policy in close door meeting with oil execs.