but let's discount the ability to put more product on the market (have our own vice buying someone elses), because greater availability NEVER causes prices to fall.
Out-fucking-standing post.
And let's not feed the troll, okay?
Typically short-sighted. We'll strip-mine the Dakotas (didn't that prairie anyway - stupid bison and prairie dogs) and suck up enough water to feed Cleveland in order to lower gas prices about a penny - provided you actually can extract it.
Or better yet foul what's left of our wetlands (who needs a natural barrier to hurricanes and rising sea levels?) on the estimate there may be enough oil to lower gas prices another penny in 10 years or so.
It's just neoconservatives, kicking the can down the road a few more years.
When the time comes for painful reality to set in, it'll be hard times.
Quick note regarding renewables- the standard vision is large centralized solar plants or wind farms that feed the existing grid.
Solar in particular is best suited for a decentralized system in which every building has it's own electric and hot water panels. Reason we don't see this is that large utilities can't profit on this implementation of technology.
Large wind turbines in windy places do work best, but are often fought on the basis of aesthetics. The issue is not windmills vs. unobstructed ocean views (Cape Cod and Long Island have both had this controversy). The visual I'd like to see in the ads is windmills vs. coal-fired smokestacks- because that is the choice.
Thanks for making ground Newt this morning, Evan.
That still leaves 2.8 to 4 Mpbd unaccounted for, and countries like Libya, Argentina, Azerbaijan on that list are certainly dictatorships, but I just can't put the Bahamas, Belgium, France, and Germany on that list.
I'm pretty sure Argentina hasn't been a dictatorship for a while.
you know whats goign to happen if we drill off shore...prices will go up, if we dont' drill, prices will go up...the party is on the verg of endign for the oil companies they are going to try and extract every last penny that they can. price at the pump will go up until it reaches a pain point...then they will allow us to go numb and raise the price to the new pain point. price of gas ahs NOTHING to do with supply and demand.
Dictators controlling US energy supplies
gingrich lost me with his first bullet point. sure, there are dictator's who control energy supplies. but, last time i checked, they were their own energy supplies, not ours.
gingrich should go back to writing historical fiction about how the south really should have won the civil war because they were so fucking moral and noble and shit.
http://www.ogj.com/display_artic...culation-bills/
"Katrina destroyed at least 46 platforms"
I don't understand the point of this comment. The fact that there was damage to or loss of the platforms is no different than saying that a gas station lost its awnings and cashier's booth. There was NO oil leakage from the platforms, and I thought oil leakage was point of the statement made since it was equated with the Exxon Valdez disaster.
To add, an oil rig is designed to shut down within a couple minutes if there are any problems; it's a fail-safe system designed to prevent oil leakage. There are red buttons throughout the platform for instant access. This of course is done before platforms are evacuated for hurricanes or other types of pending disasters, and can be done instantly in such as with a ship collision or a comet strike.
The platforms have proven themselves safe over the past three decades, even in a Cat 5 hurricane.
The real problem with gasoline and diesel prices is the lack of new refineries to process the crude. We can double our crude oil, either here or by purchasing more overseas, but if we can't turn it into fuel, it's useless. There hasn't been a new refinery built in at least 20 years, partly because the oil companies don't want to spend the money, and also because nobody wants one in their backyard (same mentality as: 'we don't want a group home for mentally disabled adults in OUR neighborhood), and environmental groups find reason to keep turning down each location. No refineries, fuel becomes scarce and the prices soar even though there is no shortage of crude.
Wrong. Democrats are to blame for every wrong in this country. ;D
Obama (re)brings the misery index. Carter's second term.
His presidency will be dead on arrival.
Very good framing on the scale of global energy issues.
Most of the chatter from big oil companies involves asset stripping and transitioning into investment houses once extraction becomes non-profitable.
It's the safe move. Overcoming institutional inertia and pivoting into another line of business is a tough nut.
I expect what's left of the domestic oil industry will be nationalized and the energy industry re-regulated.
The air industry desperately needs some degree of regulation.
The lack of fuel purchasing power is driving owner-operators into the ground. Trucking will move towards large union shops doing last 200 mile drayage.
Railroads are dropping serious capital on expanding capacity.
Ensley,
Two reasons to make the point:
1) Newt explicitly said that platforms were immune to damage from weather, and that Katrina did no damage to any platforms. It's always worth pointing out fundamental errors in arguments. Or lies. Whichever.
2) There is more than one reason to be concerned about weather related damage to platforms. You address the issue of oil spills and environmental contamination. There is also the reliability of the supply. We lost up to 95% of our oil extraction and 88% of gas extraction in the gulf because of Katrina.
If Newt (& Shrub & McCain) are touting offshore oil extraction as a solution, we need to be aware of the potential disruptions. Just because we don't have Nigerian militants attacking oil platforms doesn't mean that there are ways we'll lose the extraction capacity at least temporarily. They are making it sound like these platforms are indestructible and bulletproof -- and they're not.
bicycle Hussein paladin:
Thanks. Updated to remove that reference. Just stuck in Evita, I fear 
.
Hey troll, join the military so Alex doesn't have to go to fight in the 100 Years War.
We lost up to 95% of our oil extraction and 88% of gas extraction in the gulf because of Katrina.
Evan, so what? We lost a few weeks of domestic oil and gas production. We would have lost 100% of oil and gas production for thirty years if we didn't have the platforms. So how is it worse?
And again, you can cite the weather problems all you want, but there were no leaks. Leaks seem to be the only objection to offshore rigs, and there have been no leaks.
Catastrophic weather affects lives and all types of businesses; look at the Mississippi right now. At what point do you say that it seems safe enough to have oil platforms, or will it never be safe enough for you personally even after 30 years of safe operations? There is always some risk. I don't know if it is true elsewhere, but families who live in southern Alabama close to land-based oil wells have to keep gas masks in their homes, including child sizes, because of the potential for a fatal leak of hydrogen sulfide. Land wells are NOT safer. I'd rather have that mess offshore.
Thanks, Evan, great read. (And I'm glad you took Argentina off the dictators list)
But regarding prices:
"The price of gas in the short term is driven by supply and demand, with additional complicating factors."
I have to respectfully disagree. I'd been complaining about the price of gas being dictated by the stock market for a minute now and Keith Olbermann's Special Report last night made it all neat and pretty wrapped in a bow. Gasoline, natural gas and all energy prices are traded as futures a la Enron - and that's where these ridiculous prices come from. Not supply, not demand. If it were, the decrease in imports from 07Q1 to 08Q1 should have lowered the price, eh?
I get real tired of a country that has done so much evil to many of its' own people complaining about dictatorships, especially when this particular nation has done everything it can to dictate to other peoples how they should live and the types of governments that they can have.
tenacitus considering that we ..espicaly the neocon side of we activly proprs up oil dictatorships around the world, i don't think we can complain about them
IXTOC's legacy lives on in Galveston. I was there last weekend, and there are still - 30 years later - asphalt balls, "black sand", and a general dirtying of the beach that will never go away completely.
Who wants that on Florida's white sand beaches? Or California's rocky coast? Raise your hand!
Evan, so what? We lost a few weeks of domestic oil and gas production. We would have lost 100% of oil and gas production for thirty years if we didn't have the platforms. So how is it worse?
You can't lose something you never had in the first place.
And it's worse, for among other reasons, because instead of pursuing conservation and fossil fuel alternatives as promoted by the Carter Administration, we drilled in the Gulf and started driving SUVs.
Forest trees, man.
And now we're 30 years behind where we should be thanks to the Reagan revolution and big oil. And the economic impacts of price increases and supply disruptions are 30 years stronger.
Thanks a pantload!
shorter newt:
"Oh fuck, we're not going to win Iraq and git their oil!"
I agree, Kenga, but that has nothing to do with all these past, present or future oil rig 'disasters' which didn't happen. People have also been driving economical compact cars rather than SUVs and using heating oil for their homes for the past 30 years from these oil platforms. Are you saying we would have been better off without their oil? In the alternative, I suppose you have lots of great things to say about strip coal mines and Three Mile Island -- the viable alternatives to oil drilling.
To show you how we are fed spin and false information, a poster over at DU is saying that 113 platforms were destroyed by Katrina and 'the oil spills were the worst on record.' What a pile of lies! There were NO oil spills during Katrina from the platforms. That is fact, and yet you get all these spinmeisters running the same lying crap by us over and over, one parrot after another -- just like Bush & Co and their spin on the war and just about everything else. The oil platforms didn't leak. There were no oil spills from the offshore platforms. Period.
The device used which crimps the pipe at the seafloor when a rig has to be shut down used to cost, about 25 years ago, over a million dollars; and probably a lot more now. And they have worked without fail.
As for asphalt balls on Texas beaches, as you say, they are over 30 years old and not recent; didn't come from the current oil drilling platforms. Florida has plenty of asphalt/tar balls on its beaches, too, especially on the Atlantic coast. Used to have to clean all the black stuff off the bottoms of our feet every time the family went to the beach in Miami. Most of it comes from ships illegally emptying their bilges. Obviously, they are not from oil platforms off Miami which don't exist.
I am a Floridian, and as an aside, most of Florida's beaches are not what you would call 'white' but rather a dingy tan anyhow.
Ensley, I was referring to Escambia county in general - Destin, Ft. Walton, Pensacola and Navarre in particular. You're right that the lower gulf coast and atlantic coasts are more brown.
I live up here in Escambia County, which is why I made the point. We already have offshore platforms just over the state line, so offshore drilling bans are kind of useless to Floridians here.
And in the interest of being all inclusive, let's add that the Keys pretty much don't have any natural sand beaches, white or tan, to begin with.
I've overheard the truckers at work talking that in slowing down to 100km/hr that they were able to increase their MPG to 6 MPG--thought that is with a 53' trailer and ~40,000 lbs load.
As a side note, I think a H2 Hummer gets around 6 MPH too...
Ensley said:
Are you saying we would have been better off without their oil?
It's not quantifiable, but I think a strong argument could be made that yes, would be better off right now if we had not had that oil. Mind you, once Carter's alternative energy programs were trashed, it was moot.
But, it's an enormous opportunity cost.
And we still have to develop energy alternatives, 30 years after we could have started. CAFE could have been up over 50mpg today, fully 30% of the automobiles in the US could be plug-in hybrids.
We'd still have issues with nuclear waste and coal, but we'd be 30 years ahead of where we are now, and quite possible not spending 5 billion/day in Iraq.
I agree there has been some hyperbole in debates about storm damage, but less than you assert. From the Bush Admin:
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 109 oil platforms and five drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but only a small portion of production will be lost for good, the US government said Tuesday.
Rita accounted for most of the damage in a region that ordinarily produces nearly one-third of US crude oil imports, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said in presenting a preliminary assessment report.
Rita destroyed 63 platforms and one drilling rig when it tore through the region on September 24, she said. Katrina destroyed 46 platforms and four drilling rigs when it hit the Gulf at the end of August.
Katrina also caused extensive damage to another 20 platforms and nine drilling rigs. Rita seriously damaged 30 platforms and 10 drilling rigs.
BTW, that 113 number is from here:
http://www.mms.gov/ooc/press/200...6/ press0501.htm
A bit from that:
Yet in May 2006, the U.S. Minerals Management Service published their offshore damage assessment: 113 platforms totally destroyed, and - more importantly - 457 pipelines damaged, 101 of those major lines with 10" or larger diameter. At least 741,000 gallons were spilled from 124 reported sources (the Coast Guard calls anything over 100,000 gallons a "major" spill).
I believe that is the bit at DU you object to so strongly. That's from an official government report.
The pipelines mentioned are undersea - BP's Mars TLP alone had damage to 18" and 14" pipes that had to be repaired before the platform could be brought back online.
Granted - 741,000 is only a small percentage of the 6.5 million spilled by Katrina, but it's almost 10 times as big as the spill off California some years back.
As to this:
There were no oil spills from the offshore platforms. Period.
I'm afraid that is just wrong.
You guys are comical.
kenga, when you stop crying over the spilt milk of the past 30 years, maybe you can look ahead to solve the problems we have. What might have been in irrelevant. I feel the same about how the administrations of the past 50 years of presidents, both Democrat and Republican, have let our rail system die. That was a HUGE mistake. I remember back in my childhood years when they were the prime freight and people mover in this country with the most efficient use of fuel possible. But noooooo, cheap oil was the answer; and the big trucks and cargo planes took over. And I don't think there is any going back, at least in my lifetime. Look at the rail systems in other countries and weep.
Again, according to your document, the oil rigs did not leak. The fact that onshore or near shore pipelines to refineries or between refineries and storage areas were damaged and leaked has nothing to do with pipelines down on the sea floor. Perhaps the onshore facilities could have built better. But the rigs didn't cause the leakage. If you think it would be safer to stop using the offshore rigs and instead line up hundreds of oil tankers to unload there instead, you run a far greater risk than an undersea pipeline. Just imagine the "Condoleeza Rice" sailing into Gulfport each week from Venezuela. You can't have everything, and I expect in the future that there will be storms which will hit the NJ refineries, earthquakes that will knock out nuke plants out west -- or just a bunch of incompetents running it, like Three Mile Island. You can't protect from every disaster. You search for the lowest risk.
Intermission time!
I got this campaign ad via e-mail yesterday morning. It's for Texas Senator John Cornyn (R). His video had everyone in stitches at the recent state convention although they dared not show it:
"Big John"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0...h?
v=0vcB7uCqdFk
Ensley! MMS is federal earther agency for North America continent and has no authority for inshore infrastructure! They only excercise force outside 3 mile limit like craven targs! Deep gulf carbon extraction industry is far from shore!
To solve problems of future, we must look back to the glorious past, such as the days of Kayless when we chanted to the moons and ate fresh gach under their bloody illumination!
During your WWII great quantities of human blood were shed and oil spilt on the sands of your Florida as the Wolfpack of German underwater craft sank tanker vessels like thin skinned Ferengi freighters! These fluids will spray again and again until you discover more powerful and dangerous power sources! Kerplach!
May not represent the opinions of the Klingon High Council.
Who wants that on Florida's white sand beaches? Or California's rocky coast? Raise your hand!
F'in Librul | 06.19.08 - 10:22 am | #
The only thing I want to see recovered from my part of Florida's offshore is spent Shuttle SRB's...
Well, I guess I was wrong..... it is mission accomplished in iraq with the oil companies getting back in there...
http://www.independent.co.uk/new...raq-
851036.html
So, why the big push newt/bush/mcbush for drilling suddenly? A concerted effort here. I know they trot it out every few years but really. Drilling and 45 new reactors...
a few of the perfectly safe, undamaged oil rigs after katrina
http://images.usatoday.com/weath...katrina-
rig.jpg
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/
2...__430x279,1.jpg
http://www.the-american-
interest...erswald3Big.jpg
http://www.roanokeslant.org/Oil%...g/Oil%
20Rig.jpg
http://dsc.discovery.com/
fansite...gger4_hzoom.jpg
fun stuff
US Blues -- There is a middle-ground between big corporate energy grids and everyone having their own solar power. There are small local, maybe municipally owned power companies that use local wind or solar or hydro or tidal or what have you.
but you are right, it hasn't been done yet because big money doesn't see profit in it. We need to stop thinking money is the most important value and start seeing money as a tool for The People.
Evil -- Greater availability only causes the price to fall if there is competition. We see no competitive pricing in the oil industry.
Everyone -- Read Sara Robinson's article about the long-term look at oil at http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-en...e-100-year-
view
America's infrastructure is based on oil. All the trucks, planes, trains, ships, that deliver all goods to market run on oil. All automobiles, as well as all the gas stations across America run on oil. All petroleum based products, run on oil. Although alternative fuels most definitely should be developed, in the mean time America must have oil to keep our economy from screeching to a halt. In addition, our national security requires energy independence ASAP, so that we are not transferring all our wealth to foreign countries who do not like us, and who can cripple us by turning off the spigot, disrupting oil transport to us, or arbitrary oil price hikes. These are all reasons why we must be drilling for more oil right now and right here in the U.S.A. ... ASAP. Nancy Pelosi and her cronies stubborn commitment to petty party politics, instead of realistic concern over our national interest, even in the face of 76% of Americans who want off shore drilling now, will end up in bringing America to its knees.
Howard -- drilling will NOT get us "more oil right now". The earliest new rigs could get us oil is ten years. We could be oil independent by then if we try.
Nor does drilling make any sense in the face of BushCo going into Iraq specifically to stop Iraq from putting a lot of oil on the market and lowering the price! They didn't start a war in Iraq to get Iraqi oil, but to stop Iraqi oil! They didn't want the competition.
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