The oil non-crisis

America has lots of oil reserves -- in Alaska, offshore, etc

And Democrats don't want us to access ANY of it. And if they had their way we wouldn't.

Nor will Dems allow new efficient oil refineries to be built in the US. More of the refinement takes place overseas.

Also, the Dems at the state level have enacted a hodgepodge of regulations, forcing oil companies to produce dozens of variant gasoline grades in order to keep state law.

It would be like if each state had to have it's own variation of Cheerios. What would happen to the price? Up Up Up to pay for the manufacturing.

Senate Blocks ANWR Oil Exploration

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 3:17 PM

By: E. Ralph Hostetter Article Font Size






The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday, May 13, to block oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the offshore areas of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

It is indeed remarkable how quickly the U.S. Senate can organize a negative vote when the issue is of such magnitude and importance to the economy and welfare of the nation.

To reverse the damage this vote has done to America's energy independence will take months of endless hearings, making certain that every dissident is heard.

The National Center for Policy Analysis also on Tuesday, identified the U.S. Congress as the responsible party for the high price of gasoline and summed it up in this manner: "Over the last 28 years, Democrats in Congress and a few Republicans have again and again opposed our drilling for oil in Alaska's ANWR; during the past 31 years Congress has repeatedly prevented us from building any new oil refineries; most recently congressional Democrats defeated and discouraged any bill that would let us drill in the deep sea, 100 miles out."

Equally damaging to energy independence is the envirocrat crowd who manage to capture the moral high ground of environmental issues and use it to advance their own political agenda.

The dominant media has a stable of such envirocrats ready at the call to make statements that for some reason or other seem to be accepted at face value by the Democrat majority and a few Republicans in Congress.

The Daily News-Miner of Fairbanks, Alaska, was quick to find such a person, and in an interview, reporter R.A. Dillon quoted Arctic Coordinator for the Northern Alaska Environmental Center Pam Miller as saying the vote against drilling in ANWR was a resounding show of support for protecting the refuge for future generations.


That's it. That's all it takes to intimidate the majority in Congress for the foreseeable future.


No recognition is given to how little of the ANWR reserve is brought into play for the entire development of the oil drilling site that would yield 1 million barrels of oil a day from its billions of barrels in reserve.

The footprint, so to speak, that is necessary for full development of a drilling operation to deliver the 1 million barrels is a mere 2,000 acres.

This tiny footprint represents one one-hundred thousandths (0.0001) of the total area of ANWR's 19 million acres. This is equivalent to one large farm in a state about the size of South Carolina......

Of course, research should continue to find abundant, affordable energy supplies for the future. But forcing technology to advance by arbitrarily and unnecessarily prohibiting the use of currently available energy supplies makes no sense. The price of both existing supplies and alternative technology is artificially increased. To write this foolishness into law is even worse.

Every time government sticks its nose into the marketplace and attempts to manage it, government makes a mess. The ethanol mandate, for example, inevitably results in price increases for food - for everyone. The arbitrary increase in fuel efficiency standards inevitably results in smaller, lighter automobiles - and more crash-related deaths. The much touted cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions will inevitably result in taking money out of the pockets of wage-earners and transfer it to the pockets of people like Al Gore, who created the "hot-air" store and sells his goods only because government forces people to buy them.

Every time a person fills up at the pump, he should visualize the billions of barrels of oil that are waiting in Alaska, and the billions of barrels of oil that are waiting in the Dakotas and Montana, and the billions of barrels of oil that are waiting just off shore - and curse the environmental extremists who are forcing him to pay far more for his transportation than is necessary.