I’m hearing a lot of people complaining that the Democrats are blocking offshore drilling. “If they’d just let the damned oil companies drill we wouldn’t be paying four dollars a gallon for gas…”
Here’s the deal. The Democrats aren’t necessarily against offshore drilling, or even drilling in Alaska if need be. The thing is that congress has already given the big oil companies nearly EIGHTY MILLION ACRES of land to drill on. That’s 80,000,000 acres they already have rights to use. But the oil companies aren’t using that land, and are demanding that congress give them yet more land. All the Democrats are saying is if the big oil companies aren’t gonna use the land we’ve already given them, they need to give it back before we give them any more land…
This is a debate that I’m really sick of. One of the biggest problems is that any new oil wells take 2-5 years to come online and another 2-5 after that before they start paying for themselves, and another 2-5 after that before they are really producing. (The four corners is big oil country and I have a few friends who are “roughnecks”.) So whether the oil companies drill on the land they have or we give them or trade them new land, it’s almost a decade or longer before any oil is produced that would make a difference in gas prices. We can’t wait that long anyway.
So instead of using the land they have, they just whine “just let us drill here, just let us drill there”. That takes more money up front and is another excuse to raise gas prices – “oh, we need the money for all these new wells you wanted, remember?” – all the while sitting on 4 billion dollars in profit (and that’s just the American oil companies.)
This issue is one of the best examples of how the two-party system in America doesn’t work. The Republicans blame the Democrats, the Democrats point back the the Republicans and the real problem is the greedy idiots running the oil companies.
I saw some guy on the discovery channel who builds all kinds of wierd cars build one that runs on water (well, hydrogen, but extracted from water). I’m seriously thinking about doing that to the minivan.
It’s funny how George Bush (the older one) isn’t mentioned when it comes to the ban on new offshore drilling. Of course it was Old George who signed the bill.