ANALYSIS: Bush drilling plan wouldn't have eased pump prices
Reuters
Tue Apr 29, 2008
By Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - The Bush administration says the United States would be less addicted to foreign oil and fuel prices would be lower if Congress had only opened up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
But that claim doesn't reflect the long lead time to develop the refuge's huge oil reserves, which would not be available for several more years and initial volumes would still be small if Congress in 2002 had approved the administration's plan to drill in ANWR, energy experts say.
President George W. Bush during his first year in office made giving energy companies access to the estimated 10 billion barrels of crude in the refuge the centerpiece of his national energy policy that sprouted from Vice President Dick Cheney's controversial and secretive energy task force.
With gasoline prices soaring to records in recent weeks, Bush has stepped up his argument that ANWR oil is a solution.
"We should have been exploring for oil and gas in ANWR," he said last week when asked about record pump costs. "But, no, we made the decision and our Congress kept preventing us from opening up new areas to explore in environmentally friendly ways and now we're becoming, as a result, more and more dependent on foreign sources of oil."
(Continued here.)
Tue Apr 29, 2008
By Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - The Bush administration says the United States would be less addicted to foreign oil and fuel prices would be lower if Congress had only opened up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
But that claim doesn't reflect the long lead time to develop the refuge's huge oil reserves, which would not be available for several more years and initial volumes would still be small if Congress in 2002 had approved the administration's plan to drill in ANWR, energy experts say.
President George W. Bush during his first year in office made giving energy companies access to the estimated 10 billion barrels of crude in the refuge the centerpiece of his national energy policy that sprouted from Vice President Dick Cheney's controversial and secretive energy task force.
With gasoline prices soaring to records in recent weeks, Bush has stepped up his argument that ANWR oil is a solution.
"We should have been exploring for oil and gas in ANWR," he said last week when asked about record pump costs. "But, no, we made the decision and our Congress kept preventing us from opening up new areas to explore in environmentally friendly ways and now we're becoming, as a result, more and more dependent on foreign sources of oil."
(Continued here.)
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2 Comments:
Who are the biggest proponents for drilling in ANWAR ?
ANSWER : Alaska's Stevens and Young.
WHY : It has nothing to do with oil, it all has to do with increasing the royalities that are paid to Alaskans. Every year, they get checks based on the royalties paid based on existing oil extracted. In addition, Stevens and Young lead in pork-barrel spending ... ignore the Bridge to Nowhere, and just look at how much monies are sent for health care support since the state is so large and does not have sufficient medical facilities. I am not opposed to spending for healthcare, but why cannot they use their royality monies for healthcare funding?
The big arguement about drilling in the Gulf was whether Louisiana would get a greater share.
Instead of a Gas Tax Holiday (which is pure political pandering by McCain and Clinton), I would rather see oil companies pay an equitable royality to the US Government and eliminate paying royalties to individual states.
I would rather our country stop the arbitrary practice of purposely making off limits access to our own energy sources. ANWR is just one part of the puzzle for lessening our dependence on foreign oil. There are huge deposits of oil in the Gulf and off the coast of California. I don't care if Alaskans get royalties from drilling for oil in ANWR - it's not about fairness, it's about sound energy policy, which we do not have.
Ethanol is clearly not the answer considering its deliterious effects on the environment, the pressure it exerts on food prices as well as its negative efficiency (i.e. it takes more energy to create a gallon of ethanol than you get out of a gallon of ethanol, thus it requires a subsidy!).
We don't build power plants, we don't build high-voltage transmission lines, we don't drill for oil, we don't mine for natural gas, we don't build rail infrastructure to haul coal, we don't recycle plutonium byproduct from spent uranium, we don't find a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, and we don't build more refineries. At the same time we subsidize ethanol, we build wind farms, we ban the incandescent light bulb, we pass laws forcing utilities to meet a renewable energy standard that they may or may not be able to, and the political solution is to levy windfall taxes on oil companies.
Is it any wonder we have high energy prices?
The article misses the point entirely. We don't access our own sources of energy to reduce oil prices at home. We access our own sources of energy to lessen our dependence on foreign sources of energy.
We have the ability to solve our energy problems if we as a country, but we have initiated policies over the last 30 years that has resulted in the crisis we are in now.
I work in the energy industry and I know what the solutions are. I am not a pundit and claim that because I serve on some governmental committee that makes me an expert on energy. I live the right answers every day of my professional life. We just need politicians with the guts to reverse the trend and initiate sound, sensible, home-grown energy policies.
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