Cynthetiq

Seems like the Dems had no choice but to join in the chorus. It may not make a difference for election day pricing, but isn't it more important to look past that? Yes, there is a need for alternatives, but until those alternatives are online and readily available to Main Street and Urban areas, it isn't a viable option for most.

Do you think that this was the wrong thing for the Dems to compromise on? Should Pelosi have stayed her ground even if she didn't have the support? Or is this just politics as usual?

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jorgelito

It is an interesting twist. While I disagree and was hoping the Dems would have denied it, they did alter the bill limiting offshore drilling to beyond 50 miles from the coast. Since most of the known oil deposits are within the 50 mile lines, the Republicans were pissed off.

My opinion is we don't really need to open up new areas for drilling simply because as I understand it, the oil companies already have lots of existing places they haven't yet tapped. So they should drill there first before we talk about opening up new ares for oil exploration. In the meantime, then we should be exploring other alternatives aggressively.

In any event, oil has been dropping steadily. We are near the $90 mark if not below. That's a $60 dollar drop since the "panic" began.

And yes, I think Pelosi should have stood her ground. They really need some tough action there.

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scout

All the time, money and effort that has went into this compromise has been a huge waste of taxpayers money. Allowing drilling 50 miles offshore is nothing more than the Democrats attempting to look like they are concerned about gas prices for poor joe blow down the road. Nothing more, nothing less. I think the compromise didn't go far enough and instead of placating the masses it's going to do nothing but piss them off more and it may cost the Democrats a seat or two this upcoming election.

dc_dux

The whole "drill, baby, drill" debate has been a sham....from the Republican 15-day show on the House floor during the latest recess to this Democratic bill.

Under any circumstances, new OCS drilling will have no impact for at least 20 years, and even then, the impact on supply and price will be marginal.

One provisions I like in this Democratic bill is that it ends the waiver on lease payments by big oil for drilling on public lands and the OCS....and commits that money to developing alternatives. But Bush will never sign a bill with that provision, even if were to pass through the Senate.

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roachboy

first off this "drill baby drill" petro-inferno meme is the stupidest ever. even by the low standards of republican memes, this one is stupid. speaking of republicans, i am not sure i see much but republicans everywhere at this point. moderate republicans call themselves "democrats" by some quaint naming convention.

my favorite example of conservative "debate" about this came from cspan, one of those special session streams that allows members to talk to the empty chamber and the cspan audience which i suspect is not much more populous. a representative from florida. he had a chart. he said that, unlike everyone else, he had actually visited anwar. he said that the whole thing was based on a hoax, that there was no wilderness there. he said he asked his guide where the trees were and his guide said there were no trees for hundreds of miles only tundra and the congressman said there are no trees so there is no wilderness. therefore all of this was a hoax perpetrated with the sole intent of saving little critters who do not even live in a wilderness because there can't be one without trees.

such is the discourse that travels within the confederacy of dunces.

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dc_dux

I do agree with this assessment from the article in the OP:

The issue has become, to some extent, the Republican answer to any and all questions that come up on the economy. McCain returns to it in nearly every speech on the subject, even though drilling has as much to do with the collapse of Wall Street financial firms or the falling job market as abortion does. The drilling issue may even help explain his choice of running mate — Sarah Palin's one area of true expertise can be said to be the politics of energy extraction.

-----Added 17/9/2008 at 07 : 43 : 51-----
Two other myths and debate "talking points" that continue to be perpetuated by the Republicans:

The US needs to start drilling for off-shore oil because China is taking "American oil" off the coast of Cuba, just "60 miles off the coast of Florida." In the words of Dick Cheney, "Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply."

Not a drop of oil was spilled in the Gulf during hurricanes over the last few years....when in fact in 2005, Katrina and Rita caused 124 offshore spills for a total of 743,700 gallons. The largest of these spills dropped 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a "major spill." The impact of Ike has yet to be made public by the Interior Dept...perhaps for fear that it might further contradict their talking point.

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ASU2003

The problem is what is the point of buying alternative fuel vehicles if gas costs $2 or $1? (besides nuclear waste battery powered cars that could get unlimited miles and cause major traffic congestion) The republicans don't want to help the environment, they just want to help their pocketbook in the form of cheaper gas for their cars and SUVs and more profits for the oil companies.

And I doubt the supply had much to do with the price increase. It was speculation, worry, and greed that caused that.

ratbastid

Pump money into the oil business, baby, pump money into the oil business!

How can it not be completely transparent who's behind this? How can people actually think this is going to make a difference?

Hoo-bingo. Two for two.

aceventura3

If true (the sham part), why would a company pay real money for the rights to drill?
If true will the real money paid not have an impact on state and federal budgets?
If true (the 20 years part), should that be the reason not to do it?
If true should we confiscate the OCS crystal ball and use it for other things, since we must assume they are going to be dead on accurate?

O.k. no more rhetorical questions. The opposite of drilling must be true. Not drilling will solve our problems.

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asaris

1. I'm guessing that most of the 'available oil' cited is in fact prohibitively expensive to reach. So the claim is technically true, but misleading. But that's just a guess.

2. I doubt the money paid will be enough to make a large impact on the federal budget, and even less on the state budget.

3 (and the real point I wanted to make) it's not so much that the 20 years part means it's a bad idea; it's that drilling off-shore is being touted as a solution to the high gas prices we're suffering now. So the fact that more drilling won't make a difference for at least 10 years means that it's probably being used as a cheap political ploy.

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dc_dux

ace...I would put it another way.

We are supposed to be the country of great innovators, technology development, entrepreneurship.....

If, as a nation, we made a serious coordinated national commitment to alternative energy, we could probably have affordable solutions in place and on a wide scale before (within 15-20 years) we would ever see a drop of oil from the areas of the OCS currently under a drilling moratorium.

Start with T Boone Pickens' plan that could reduce our dependency on foreign oil by 20-30%

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aceventura3

Improving technology is making difficult oil easier to get, while have a smaller impact on the environment.

Every little bit helps.

Drilling off-shore is a bad idea? I disagree.
-----Added 17/9/2008 at 12 : 36 : 02-----
I don't think the need for oil will ever go to zero. I support continued exploration and development of oil resources and investing in alternatives. Basically, I agree with you, but we seem to differ perhaps on our future needs for oil. If there is a 20 year tail, I don't want our nation to be caught in a period where we could have a supply but failed to invest in it 20 years prior.

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loquitur

dc_dux, this is an unsupported leap of faith. I agree with you that this is a nation of innovators, but with the possible exception of the space program and perhaps the military (and even as to those, it's an issue of characterization), the government doesnt' and cant' force or direct innovation. Innovating is overwhelmingly done by people with some form of profit motive.

I'm not a physicist or engineer, so I'll just state that the following is my understanding, not gospel: "alternative energy" right now is problematic because nothing has the energy density petroleum has (meaning that it packs the most energy punch into the smallest mass of matter). Other forms are either less dense, more space intensive or location-locked (meaning that transportation of the source is problematic) or net energy negative after costs of production and delivery are factored in.

But that's today. Clearly there will be improvements in efficiencies, which will make some alternative forms of energy feasibe, especailly if petroleum prices stay high. But they will be complements, not substitutes, because they will never be compact/dense enough or transportable enough to substitute. Even if we switch part of our power generation over to wind, geothermal and biomass, we still will need petroleum (AFAIK we are already using all the plausible sites for hydro). So having a new source coming on line in 10 or 15 years will be helpful.

If you're proposing that there will somehow materialize a new source of energy we don't yet know about that will magically replace petroleum, I wonder where it can come from or what it would look like? What else will have as much "punch" and convenience as petroleum? This isn't a mystical or religious exercise; it's a scientific one. Is there any science about alternative energy sources that points to a plausible petroleum substitute?

The closest thing I have seen to something like that was an article in a British newspaper (let me find it........... ah, here it is) that discussed a recent biological breakthrough - some scientist found a way to engineer microbes to eat waste and excrete petroleum. To my mind that is the best possible alternative to our current method of relying on the world's worst regimes to supply us with our most crucial resource: it will require virtually no infrastructure adjustment by users; it's infinitely renewable; we know how to minimize pollution from it already. Is it scalable and commercially feasible? I don't know. Time will tell. But it's still petroleum.

Baraka_Guru

If you look at the numbers and crunch them a bit, it might further convince you that this offshore drilling issue won't have much of an impact on oil prices, especially when you look at the global market:

With the estimated reserves of offshore oil, it would provide enough to fulfill 2.5 years of consumption in the U.S. economy.

With the estimated gas reserves, it would provide enough to fulfill 3.3 years of consumption in the U.S. economy.

Is this a long-term strategy or is it meant to bring prices down? You can't have both, and you might have neither. My guess is that it might provide some security in terms of supply in certain situations, but I sincerely doubt any amount of U.S. drilling offshore will have a significant impact on prices.

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jorgelito

Through misinformation an misunderstanding.

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dc_dux

loquitor...do you think the Pickens Plan is a leap of faith....to generate 20%+ of power generation needs through wind power in 10 years.

Creating the wind power is relatively simple and requires little innovation...building the pipeline/infrastructure to deliver it nationwide is the challenge...but it is a $$ challenge, not an innovation challenge. And in any case, would require government coordination.

The other challenge is converting vehicles to natural gas....utlizing the natural gas saved by converting power plants to wind.

Who will benefit most from this plan....probably Pickens...but thats fine with me. Isnt that how capitalism (with some government stimulation and coordination) is supposed to work.

No one is suggestion replacing the need for petroleum completely.

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asaris

Ace, please don't misquote my position. I never said drilling off-shore is a bad idea.

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roachboy

loquitor: what your post doesn't touch on, but which seems to me central, is the claim that drilling off alaska would produce results in a manner that the benefits outweigh the costs. that seems to be absent across the board from the arguments of the "drill baby drill" set.

but your post is interesting. it simply bypasses in an elegant manner the question at hand.

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loquitur

RB, surely you realize that the premise of your question is that there is a consensus on the "costs" and "benefits" of drilling in Alaska. Assuming you mean "economically," then the simple answer is that if there is no realistic profit opportunity the people whoa re able to exploit the opportunity won't do it. But if they think they can make money, they will. I suspect, however, that that's not the analysis you're making. Just guessing there, but you'd prefer to identify costs and benefits in ways that are not cleanly quantifiable and thus manipulable by people with political viewpoints.

My post was not limited to the idea of drilling in Alaska, which is why I didn't formulate it by reference to that. I'm sorry if you perceive that as sidestepping. I was addressing the more general point of whether we should be doing more petroleum exploration than we are doing, whether in Alaska or elsewhere. Economically speaking, the very mention of drilling within the US and its territorial waters applies downward pressure on prices as the market assesses, discounts and factors in the prospect of some quantity of additional petroleum coming online in a given time frame. (That's because it means that petroleum is less scarce than it had been previously). That happens even before the first hole is drilled. The progress of actual projects will improve the information, and thus allow for better precision in the pricing effect, but the raw fact of the prospect of additional production is already applying downward pressure on the price.

I'm not sure that's elegant, but it's fairly simple economically. I would hope that by the time the actual stuff comes up out of the ground, we'll be well on the way to much more diversity in our energy sources.

Yes, I think that proposed level of substitution (wind for petroleum) is unlikely and unrealistic. We don't have enough land with enough wind for the number of wind farms we'd need, and the environmental/esthetic blight it would cause would curl your hair if it isn't already curly. I'm happy for Pickens to try, and I'd be thrilled if he succeeded, but I think he's just talking this thing up in order to get backing (financial, legal, governmental). We'd be lucky getting a fraction of what he's proposing in terms of energy. I'm pretty sure, though, that he'd put together a deal for himself in which his downside is protected. More power to him.

As for LNG, how is it conceptually different from petroleum? It comes out of the ground, it's a hyrdocarbon, it releases pollutants of one kind or another (different ones from gasoline, true, but pollutants nonetheless). Oh, and it can explode if it leaks. It may not even solve the geopolitical problem, because a lot of LNG occurs in proximity to petroleum (though a lot does not). Again: I'm not averse to adding LNG to the mix of alternative energy sources, but we have to be realistic about what is likely to happen.

dc_dux

The US has the largest wind corridors in the world....several, the high plains and tex/ok panhandle with very high energy producing ratngs:

Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States

As to esthetic blight in these relatively low population areas....compare it to oil derricks in Beverly Hills....or even worse, ravaging the land in shale oil recovery.

I think you are also missing the point on the LPG..... it would taking the LPG we already produce for electricity generation (to be replaced by wind energy) and using the LPG for vehicles...thus reducing the demand for foreign oil by as much as 20%.

Reducing demand for foreign oil by 20% in this manner is far more than would be result by drilling on the portions of the OCS currently under a moratorium.

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loquitur

well, as I said, I'm happy for Pickens to try. I just am highly skeptical that it can be done on the scale we are talking about. We can't put windmills in the ocean where Walter Cronkite can see them, so I gotta wonder where we're going to put the tens or hundreds of thousands of mills that we would need to produce the volume of energy we are talking about. There are opportunity costs in land use, and even if we have huge wind corridors, I doubt we'd want to or could lock up all the land in them for use for windmills.

roachboy

loquitor--thanks. i agree with much of your post regarding time-frames.
nothing in the argument works either way with respect to alaska drilling, which is as i think it should be, as i think it is.
the linkage seems a political canard more connected to the internal logic of how conservatives have framed a variety of questions surrounding this matter (which resulted in that stupid slogan) than with the energy situations themselves.

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loquitur

Wow. Effin' wow.

roachboy

this odd fiction they call reality has the advantage of being unpredictable, don't it?

after spending much of the day watching the Big Trainwreck of the Financial System, something like this seems easy,

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ASU2003

After seeing how dependent people are on oil and power companies the past few days, I think it would be a good thing if we started to decentralize our energy production a little. Have the grid as a backup, but use more solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, LNG, even nuclear to produce power where appropriate.

There are plenty of ideas and innovation in the clean power business, and I think it would be good if we had a wide range of different energy production and transportation types out there.
Hyperion Power Generation
Nanomaterial turns radiation directly into electricity - tech - 27 March 2008 - New Scientist Tech
Next Big Future: Direct conversion of radiation into electricity using carbon nanotubes and a separate new approach to thermoelectrics

I would be in favor of giving the Los Alamos guys a grant of $300 million and the promise of $300 million more (McCain's idea) + some profits of the sale of these small nuclear batteries with the idea that they could develop this in 4 years if you throw enough physicists, chemists, and engineers at it. They did it once already in the New Mexico desert, they can do it again.

The_Jazz

Interesting that no one else has brought this up, but deep-water oil exploration, which is what is being proposed, requires very specific equipment that is both rare and not easily manufactured. The proper equipment required to drill in the Gulf and Atlantic, in the field proposed, would require this equipment (i.e., you can't plop a drill rig out there and expect them to hit oil - it's too deep).

The equipment designed for this sort of thing is booked until 2012. And that's for the drilling, not the pumping, which would take another 2-5 years to construct.

Add that to the issue that drill rigs are renting at all-time highs and that those available to work in ANWAR would simply be shifted from other sites with known deposits, and this is moronic.

It's a fix that won't work anytime in the near future, and when it does won't actually accomplish much.

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jorgelito

I wouldn't mind if we replaced the need for petroleum completely. Or at the very least, marginalized it drastically.

I think our main problem is political will and powerful lobbies. We really should have had all sort of alternative energy sources and stations etc up and running years ago. And not just one type, but rather a mix of different energy sources most suitable to the area they're in.

EX: Wind mills off the coast of Massachusetts (in progress), solar power in the southwest etc.
-----Added 17/9/2008 at 09 : 44 : 58-----
Massachusetts is already in the process of putting in windmills off shore. California is committed to two very large solar plants. I believe windmills (I agree are an eyesore) can have dual use on the land. For example, could you use the land for grazing as well? There's an opportunity cost for oil too. I am confident with some effort, political will, and support, alternative energies can be very successful. I think we owe it to ourselves to give it a shot. And I mean real effort, not a half-assed one.
-----Added 17/9/2008 at 09 : 45 : 58-----
Agreed. This is an excellent point. Unfortunately, the media doesn't really report this so the majority of people don't know and aren't well informed.

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