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Why is no one calling them on their lies? Senate bill would extend deepwater offshore drilling leases. How quickly they want us to forget...Senators said Wednesday that a bill extending exploratory leases in the Gulf of Mexico will encourage drilling — and help bring down the price of oil.
"All offshore energy producers in the Gulf of Mexico are currently being penalized for the mistakes of a few companies responsible for the Deepwater Horizon accident," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, referring to the April 20, 2010, BP drilling rig explosion that sent oil flowing into Gulf of Mexico for three months. A little more than a month after the blowout, the Interior Department issued a six-month moratorium on all deepwater offshore drilling.
"The drilling moratoria forced energy producers with exploratory leases to sit idle while still having to pay the expenses of the lease and their employees," Hutchison said. "This is fundamentally unfair."
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D$(imwit)-La., is a co-sponsor of the legislation.
What is fundamentally unfair is the way that the "drill, baby, drill" meme is continually pushed through the mainstream media - that this is "our oil" and it will be "for Americans"
What no one has the courage to admit is that all oil belongs to Big Oil, and it will be sold to the highest bidder, America and the environment be damned. The oil from Alaska transported through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (completed in 1977) was touted as "American oil, for Americans". The requirement was that no Alaskan crude was to be shipped to non-American refineries. Okay. But what happens after that? It's still not your oil. These "people" (thank you SCOTUS; corps are people): BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Chevron Corporation - own the pipeline, the refineries, the distribution lines...they can do whatever they want with "their" oil. Which includes selling to the highest bidder. And if ANWR is opened for drilling...
Set the WayBack Machine for 1995 and the Seattle Times, when late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was still in Congress...
Even with an export ban on refuge oil, Alaskan oil could still be sold overseas. If the refuge oil were to meet all the domestic needs of West Coast markets, producers could put oil extracted from other North Slope oil fields that aren't subject to an export ban on tankers bound for Asia, Even with an export ban on refuge oil, Alaskan oil could still be sold overseas. If the refuge oil were to meet all the domestic needs of West Coast markets, producers could put oil extracted from other North Slope oil fields that aren't subject to an export ban on tankers bound for Asia, Even with an export ban on refuge oil, Alaskan oil could still be sold overseas. If the refuge oil were to meet all the domestic needs of West Coast markets, producers could put oil extracted from other North Slope oil fields that aren't subject to an export ban on tankers bound for Asia, Sam Van Vactor, a Portland, OR-based energy consultant, said.
But he saw little reason for concern: Because oil is traded around the globe, the U.S. is in a better strategic position if it has more oil to trade, Van Vactor said.
"The companies don't like to argue this, I think, because they seem to think the American public doesn't understand economics very well. So they use these security and supply arguments that don't really make a lot of sense," Van Vactor said.
(Sen. Maria) Cantwell countered that oil exports from Alaska, even if they don't trouble economists, do nothing to reduce U.S. reliance on a global petroleum network.
"If you're thinking about security, this isn't going to answer the question," she said. "The best solution is to get off of dependence on fossil fuels in general."
(John) Katz, the Alaska lobbyist, said that while he considered exports a nonissue, they could make sense in economic terms.
"The problem is that in political terms it takes eight seconds to say, 'Well, they're exporting Alaskan oil abroad.' And it takes a long time to explain how oil is fungible and an export in one place might lead to an import in another place." Van Vactor said.
--- The Seattle Times, April 1995
Sixteen years later, and times have not changed. The bought-and-paid-for Congress (most of them) are still singing from the same hymnal...
"It's time for this administration to be a better partner to this industry," said Landrieu, who's been a vocal critic of the Obama administration's handling of the spill and the drilling ban. She criticized the Interior Department for following the six-month moratorium with a "permitorium," by only granting one deepwater drilling permit since the drilling ban was lifted last year.
The LEASE, or Lease Extension and Energy Security Act would give energy companies affected by the Gulf drilling moratorium an additional 12 months on their leases to make up for the lost time.
The bill has been referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where it will draw opposition from environmental groups, but where it also has support from Landrieu, and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the panel's ranking Republican. The bill's fate in the full Senate, though, is uncertain.
The senators said the bill will promote drilling, increase supply and ultimately bring down gasoline prices. According to AAA, a gallon of regular cost $3.52 Wednesday, up 40 cents from a month ago.
The "drill here, drill now" mantra is also a hoax. All Big Oil wants is money in their already over-filled pockets. Searching for an answer to the question "how long does it take to get gas in your gas tank from a newly-drilled well?" yielded few results, but the timeline cited (when I was in geology in the late 80s) was six to eight years from the well to your gas tank. The market will be manipulated to cause the greatest pain in order to loosen controls and silence any opposition...
Crude Reality: Gas Prices Rocket Because They Can
And the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) sees the market veering into an even sharper incline: "Given where prices are today, this year Americans will pay higher gasoline prices, on an inflation-adjusted basis, than at any time in U.S. history," says Mark Cooper, CFA's research director. That would put the price beyond the record of $4.17 per gallon set in early July 2008.
Consumers can be forgiven for their disbelief at the market's lightning-fast reaction to events that—while certainly historic—have not actually caused any real shortage of oil. But on the crude futures markets, where oil is bought and sold, a majority of traders are betting that the wave of rebellion in North Africa and the Middle East eventually will curtail petroleum supplies.
"We like to say they rise like a rocket and fall like a feather," says Troy Green, national spokesman for the auto club AAA. While drivers are often quick to focus their outrage on the seller at the front line of this supply chain—the gas station owner—such ire would be misplaced, say those who monitor the market with consumers in mind.
"Truth be told, gas station owners make more money selling you 12 ounces of coffee than selling you 12 gallons of gasoline," says Green. "They are just using gas to get you in to buy doughnuts, coffee, and other things inside with a much larger profit margin." Green says data showed that during the 2008 gas price run-up, some retail stations were making 1 or 2 cents net profit per gallon—much less than 1 percent.
Cooper maintains that the only response to the mounting gas prices that can make a difference is to reduce demand. U.S. oil consumption did fall slightly after the 2008 price peak and subsequent recession. But it has been climbing recently as the economy has recovered.
"The most important thing you can do in the short term is to make a long-term commitment to use less gasoline," Cooper says.
That's it in a nutshell...And the Congress that has been bought and paid for by Big Oil are going to use conditions in the Middle East to ratchet up the rhetoric with the media echo chamber to drill in inaccessible places, and with no regulations - with a resulting high toll on human life, animal life, and almost certain environmental catastrophe, and only a few of us can see through the smoke and mirrors.
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