Today Fox and all the right wing talk radio shows are pushing offshore oil drilling. You'll probably encounter someone at work or at the coffee shop who thinks it's a great idea.
So here are the top five reasons why expanding our oil drilling is a dumb idea (with one quick link each for your further edification):
#5: High oil prices are good for the environment and reduce your love handles. As of now, we've traveled far less than the same month last year.
The Department of Transportation said Monday it had seen the sharpest monthly drop in driving since it began keeping records. In March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles than in March of 2007.
#4:You'll lose the Keys and Miami Beach. Subsidence of the land surface (especially barrier islands) as a result of production from oil and gas fields has been documented by previous studies in south Louisiana, coastal southeast Texas, California and Canada.
The subsidence has been directly correlated, spatially and temporally, to the extraction of large volumes of oil and gas from the subsurface.
When you pull oil out, sedimentary terrains go down. NOLA was probably a meter lower due to oil drilling, and the loss of the bayou "speed bumps" was a big reason Katrina was so devastating. You can walk the shores of California and see the nodules from decades-old spills, since we have no real way to clean them up.
#3: They can't get to it any time soon.
But as oil trades at more than $135 a barrel — up from $68 a year ago — the world's existing drill ships are booked solid for the next five years. Some oil companies have been forced to postpone exploration while waiting for a drilling rig, executives and analysts said.
#2: It won't help anyway. A big hunk of the gas prices today is due to speculation
In 2000, the infamous energy trading company Enron sought and won exemption from federal oversight for energy commodity trading. Federal regulatory bodies, in their monitoring and intervention, prevent the price of commodities from being artificially inflated beyond real market dynamics. The loophole allowed excessive speculation and energy price manipulation, according to advocates for regulation
Another big hunk is the plummeting dollar.
#1: And finally, any oil they finally pump won't go to us anyway! There is nothing in the contracts we let that requires any of it to go to the United States...and given the value of the dollar and our debt for the Iraq war, it's unlikely. There's a reason that the oil companies prefer Alaska drilling, and aren't building refineries here--and it has nothing to do with regulation. (No one has even asked for a permit.)While the US flirts with alternative technologies, Asia is running toward addiction at breakneck speed, anxious to spend the money we owe them.
The whole of Asia Pacific has already surpassed the levels of the USA and Europe and at a much steeper curve (a change since 1965 of 649%. China’s rise seems more gentle because of the scale: if you isolate China and bring the scale down to fit (Chart C9), the frightening rise in that country’s oil consumption is clear. The percentage change over the 40 years is a whopping 3328%.
We owe China and Japan a trillion dollars for Iraq. Our dollar will be worth far less moving forward. To whom would YOU sell your oil?
Never doubt: The oil boys know this is their last chance to loot the U.S. economy for awhile. So they are going all out.