In case you haven't been paying attention, the hue and cry for drilling offshore now is based on half-truths, misconceptions, and outright lies.

FACT: expanded drilling will nothing to improve gasoline prices until several years from now.

FACT: even when the added supply of oil actually hits the pipeline, it will be a tiny portion of the oil bought and sold in the USA - too small to have any significant impact on prices.

FACT: there is no reason to believe that the 'new' oil will enter the US markets. It will be sold to the highest bidder (so much for helping lower gasoline prices).

FACT: even the die-hard apologists have admitted that conservation will impact consumption - and prices - immediately and significantly. The tire pressure/tune-up tactic can produce immediate results that will absolutely reduce costs for Jane and John Public.

And the biggest current reason for ignoring new drilling as a panacea for energy costs: All the new drilling that the oil industry demands will not impact - after many years - our oil supplies much. Wild-ass guesstimates range in the 6%-10% range. More cautious estimates are that offshore and ANWAR drilling would increase supplies less than 2%.

Do the math. And then consider that the US Government https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html tells us that 12.6% of oil produced in the US is exported. Forget all the new drilling crap - all of the oil that we think we need is being produced already - but it's being sent overseas. Keep that oil in the USA and the world's oil producers will be at our door begging us to buy more from them.

Add in sound conservation and re-opening previously abandoned wells.... oil prices will tumble, and we will once again be dealing from a position of strength. It sucks to have a bunch of 3rd-rate humans having us over (metaphorically speaking) a barrel - an oil barrel. We need to have Americans take back America from Big Oil.

Labels: anwar, big oil, cia, offshore, oil exports, oil production

The USA uses one-quarter of the world’s oil. We possess less than 3 percent of the world's petroleum reserves.

The oil industry and its apologists have managed to convince a lot of people that
accelerating the pumping of those 3% will somehow improve our oil supply problems
the place to do that accelerating is in areas currently NOT available for drilling & pumping

Those positions are full of errors in fact and in logic

• With accelerated production of "new" oil, those 3% of world reserves will disappear faster. The time and resources applied to developing that oil would be much better used creating new long-term solutions
• As billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens says, "we can't drill our way out of this problem."
• Most of that 3% is NOT in contested regions like ANWAR and "offshore." Nearly all of the 3% is in areas currently in production and in the 68,000,000 acres already leased by oil companies, but not yet used.
• refineries are already operating at nearly 100% of capacity; if there were spare capacity, then when a refinery shuts down for maintenance, some other refinery would use its excess capacity to refine the oil that is supposedly 'backing up in the pipeline'; that doesn't happen - instead, prices rise because of diminished supply
• We are sitting on oil reserves that dwarf that 3% mentioned before.
  

Our number 1 source of petrol is CONSERVATION. There are hundreds of ways to 'create' oil by simply using less. Every barrel not used now is

• one more barrel available for the future
• one more barrel's contribution to favoring the consumer in the supply/demand arena.

There is another untapped reserve that is not counted in that 3%: in decades past oil was cheap. It was so cheap ("how cheap was it?") that oil producers capped wells that were too costly to operate when oil was selling for 1/10th of today's prices. Those "old" wells might not be as productive as newer wells might be - go heavy on the 'might'. So what's the problem? Why aren't those 'old' wells being raced into back into production?

It's not for purposes of production and marketing that many of those wells sit idle. The real reasons have to do with accounting and taxes. Consider the tax and subsidy implications. It would be hard to get Congress to subsidize existing wells. There are huge subsidies (cash, building infrastructure such as roads and utilities) for new constructon. The equipment used to operate the old wells - all of their depreciation write-offs were taken decades ago. With new wells whose productivity is not documented, oil companies can play fast and loose with tax rules regarding resource depletion and equipment depreciation. With old wells, the depletion rates are well known, and don't account for much.

It's the bean-counters who are holding back the supply of existing oil.

And there is the biggest reserve of all: use of alternatives.

• Alternative energy sources and their contributions to preserving our oil supply are well known.
• There are also the possibilities of non-fuel alternatives to the non-fuel uses of petroleum. For example, prior to WWII, Henry Ford was producing auto body parts out of plastics made from soy products. Nowadays, oil-based plastic auto body parts are commonplace. Imagine putting Americans to work and boosting farm production by growing auto bodies....
  

My point: drilling in areas that are currently out-of-bounds is worse than useless. We need to be drilling and pumping ideas.

Labels: alternatives, anwar, drilling, offshore, oil, reserves