Feds Relax Offshore Drilling Ban. Or Not.
If you ever aspired to be a politician, this article should be enough to put you off the idea for life. It’s a strange tale of cross-aisle tit-for-tat-ism that reminds me of the Arab Israeli conflict, substituting your tax money for deadly munitions. The New York Times‘ lead shows us the swans above the water. “The House on Tuesday night approved a measure that would ease a longstanding ban on offshore oil drilling and try to spur greater use of alternative fuels as Democrats and Republicans engaged in a bitter pre-election clash over America’s energy future.” The rest of the article reveals the furious– and futile– paddling underneath. “The outlook for the measure is uncertain with only two weeks before Congress is set to break until at least the November elections and perhaps until next year. The Senate is preparing to take up a similar bill, but even if it averts a filibuster, it seems unlikely that the bills could be reconciled before the break. And the White House on Tuesday threatened a veto of the House plan.” Change this! “We are engaged in exactly what the American people are sick of, and that is political games here in Washington that are intended to be political games and have no outcome,’ said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader.
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fisher72: The USA uses about 20 Bbbls of oil a year. Actually, it's about 20 million bpd, or about 7 billion per year. Current US reserves are something like 20 billion barrels. Even if this was, by use of Magic Technology, increased by a factor of 10 to 200 billion barrels, it is dwarfed by current reserves found in the rest of the world. Reserves which would correspondingly increase in step as the Magic Technology is deployed elsewhere. Even if the entire Magic Technology 200 billion was instantly developed, overnight, and could be pumped at the demanded rate, it would supply the US for a few decades or so (current consumption plus expected growth). Basically, the Writing Is On The Well: time to think of new energy approaches. Merge while the merging is good...
Our government is the purist example of a con-artists flim-flam. Both are on the same side looking out only for themselves but not for the good of the American people. They choose opposing sides. Voice there positions of opposition neither of which will bear fruit. American public buys into this nonsense because most have the mental capability of somebody buying off a street vendor.
$36,000,000,000 a year in profit is enough to make me hate them. And Chevron (Bush's baby). And Shell. And BP. They are making a killing, not a living. And trying to kill us with their practices. This offshore drilling could have come about a long time ago if they weren't buying their wives Bentleys and 3-carat diamonds with their windfalls instead of using it for research and production. Once again, profit and shareholders and paying off the politicians has won out over ethics.