A) The Exxon Valdez disaster was NOT the result of off shore drilling - it was a shipping problem.
B) There is a lot of off shore drilling now in various places, how many oil spills are attributed to those operations?
C) Not every piece of land an oil company has a right to drill on has significant amounts of recoverable oil.
D) If there is the prospect of more oil available in the future, the price comes down now - that is the way futures markets work (people are betting on what will happen at some point later).
E) We need to do something to keep the country moving between wher we are (oil), and where we need to be (other). The other tech can't be available tomorrow, so what do we do for the next 15-20 years while the technology is developed and the infrastructure to support it is built?
F) Being over-the-top reactionary hate everything Bush at all costs will not solve any problems.

Kong, I know that about Exxon Valdez,the point was to show how careless,and then obstinate, Big Oil was in their "cleanup",and the complete destruction of a once-thriving fishing community...if you want specifics, it can be blamed on Single Hull Tankers, far less safe than the double-hulled once thought to be required...but those wily GOP Big oil enablers passed new laws that said it was a-ok for single-hulled tankers to do the same duty,you see,it was cheaper,not safer,cheaper...enter the drunk captain,who was literally asleep when the good ship E.V. hit land,alas, the accident happened.Had the Exxon Valdez been double-hulled,this would not have happened.Chances are,one hull would`ve been pierced,but not two. ...no reactionary over the topness going on,Kong. Sadly,Bush/Cheney are proven liars who cannot be trusted on any single given subject matter,I believe the rest of the country now holds that opinion, I may be wrong, but we`ll see in a few months just what this country thinks of Big Oil, GWB, and the NeoCon approach to things in general. Now,those oil companies know their time is almost up, their bat boy/emissary is going away,so they are trying to grab as much as they can in the short time they have... I say tell them to f-off, and drill in the millions of acres of land they already have,or are they too busy counting yet another consecutive record-breaking profit in this upcoming quarter? And how many record-setting quarters in a row is this now?

quote:

Originally posted by King Kong:
D) If there is the prospect of more oil available in the future, the price comes down now - that is the way futures markets work (people are betting on what will happen at some point later).

Not quite.
Wow, let’s try to clear up a few glaring misconceptions here, in layman terms if I can.
What are futures?
Most major U.S. newspapers report the one-month NYMEX futures price.
How far in the future do long term futures contracts extend?
Contracts can be 84 months, but that is rare, the bulk flip much quicker. (This is why strikes, bombs, plant disruptions, etc, cause such volatility – Long term contracts went out of style with disco)
Lifting the ban had no measurable effect on futures prices because contracts do not extend that far out into the future, and it didn't change the fact that we only have a finite supply. (You have to keep in mind that we already know there is some oil offshore and in ANWR, it is not a new discovery, or a new technology, that would have immediate effect on the futures market)
Why do the Oil Co.s want the leases?
Simple, so they get them before any other entity gets them. (If you think they are going to go for broke punching holes in the ground, ask yourself why they are holding US refinery output around 85%, and why they have closed hundreds of refineries in the last few decades)
Lifting the bans just puts a few more ace$ in the oil company’s hand, but it doesn’t guarantee any increased supply or production, short or long term.

OK, let's remove all oil company profits - turn them into non-profit entities. How much would the price of gasoline change?

Exxon sold something in excess of $400 billion, and made around $40 billion, a return of a little under 10% - not too over-the-top, but healthy. So if they made no profit on consumer products (for simplicity I am assuming the same profit on all products. I know this is not true, they probably made a hell of a lot more profit selling oil on the world market than gas to us, but I don't have figures) the price of gas would drop 10% - so is $3.60 that much better than $4.00/gal? How much more oil and gas would this bring to market? Would we really be better off in the long run?

quote:

Originally posted by Local Hero:
If you think they are going to go for broke punching holes in the ground, ask yourself why they are holding US refinery output around 85%, and why they have closed hundreds of refineries in the last few decades.

I find this intriguing. I have done considerable research on what makes up the cost of a gallon of gasoline. Everything I read says that refining capacity is stretched to the limits, has been for many years, and why storms or explosions at one refinery touches off price increases to lower demand until it can be rebuilt and brought back into production.

What source shows this statistic about 85% capacity? Did they maybe get confused with electric power generation being less than full capacity?

By the way, my research is pointing to state and federal taxes (40.1 cents per gallon in Iowa, higher yet in Illinois) being the second largest contributor to the cost per gallon, exceeded only by the cost of crude oil. Profits are pennies per gallon and spread between the huge tanker that brings it from OPEC, the refinery, the pipelines to the fuel farms in Bettendorf and Iowa City, the trucker that delivers the semi load to the gas station, and finally the retailer. All together, these "profits" are maybe half of what the taxes are.

It looks like the two largest areas to make a dent in gasoline prices are the government taxes and the OPEC costs. H-m-m-m, except to impact OPEC prices we need to lower our demand for their product, so they can drink it while reading their morning paper. Maybe we should price our corn at a per bushel price matching OPEC oil. Drill, drill now, and demand alternative sources for our future generations. What a novel idea!

I know that I have mentioned this before, but again I say that about 5 years ago I was a stockholder in Chevron. In their annual stockholders statement they were bragging that they have lowered the actual cost of refing a barrel of oil to less than $5 each not including the cost of oil. A barrel of oil is 42 gallons. On the average 19.5 gallons of gas is refined from each barrel. They also get numerous by products from each barrel to be sold elsewhere. Ther is really no waste. Every drop is sold somewhere. Ther is one hell of a building boom in all the middle east oil countries that is fueled by our money.

For starters, let’s address the drill drill drill canard.
The only thing the president is currently advocating is release release release. (As in release the federal land leases)
Do any of you honestly think the president will mandate how or when the leases are utilized, given his recent veto threats regarding use it or lose it clauses?
If we hand over the leases tomorrow, the oil Co.s will utilize them when they are darn good and ready, and not a day sooner. (They don’t have capital in their corporate plans to utilize all the leases they have now, so I’m very curious where some of you think they are going to crap out the capital necessary for more expansion, lol)
The devil is in the details.
85% Source? Forbes, although I cannot vouch for their research.

However, with refiners operating at 85 percent of capacity during the January-April period, the shipments represented a much a larger share of total U.S. oil products produced.

quote:

Originally posted by Local Hero:
For starters, let’s address the drill drill drill canard.

canard? if these areas were open to drilling the price of gasoline would drop tomorrow...windbag gas to the contrary notwithstanding

quote:

Originally posted by Poppy:
Sounds like an oilman who still has money in natural gas rights. If you heat your home with natural gas, you will have noticed that the cost has quintupled in the last 5 years. It is, like oil, a resource which we will also run out of. His plan to switch a bunch of cars over to natural gas as an interim measure would be expensive to the public as you would have to switch over to something else as the natural gas ran out. It would also run up the cost of heating our homes.

The generating of electricity using wind is potentially huge once you get by the NIMBY's. I think we will start seeing more windmills as we go around the countryside. Dupont and Danesco have a combined effort going to make Ethanol from switchgrass and biomass in an energy efficient system. Many more options are on the horizon but they all take time to develop and implement. That is why drilling is not the long term answer, but is a short term solution to keep us going as we make the slow transition to renewable sources.

Discussion of wind on CNNMoney. The oil man has his hand in wind - upwards of $60 mil a year from the government.

oh yes...it would drop like .2 cents. quit buying into the giant GOP-big oil lie...they have how many million acres sitting fallow right now? try drilling on those first, ok? what a bunch of crap, lies,sophistry to get more land,ops for big oil to run amok...we cant drill our way out of this. capeche? Yes, GOP in complete domination for 7 years, no energy policy but to steal another country`s natural resource under the guise of "fighting terrorism" ...what an energy policy, and no wonder these people work in total darkness.Hell to pay once we get a look/see at the criminal enterprise Bush2 ran. I predict the courts will be clogged once we get a look at the Truth.and dont think the GOP isn`t sweating bullets over this.
I like T. Boone Pickens` approach,btw... now, that`s straight-talkin`,more of what we need. Get us off of the oil teat.

now,that said, there are some areas we DO need to explore... oil shale holds potential,once we figure out how to get it for less operating costs...I am leery of anything that can negatively impact other long-standing forms of business,such as fisheries,for ex., and even drinking water.
at this point,though,having 2 oil guys running things seems in hindsite, a horrible experiment gone awry... years from now, Cheney will be viewed as the man who destroyed the GOP as we once respectably knew it. Rove,too...

Short supply, prices go up. Large supply, prices go down. Suggestion of more supply drives price down. Look how much the futures went down when W removed the restriction on off shore drilling. Now if the Democrats had removed the Congressional restriction, the price would still be going down!

Watch the prices plumment as soon as the oil speculators realize we are serious with developing alternative sources of energy. If we had something that took away our need for their product, it would become so cheap that we would go back to oil instead of using the new sources. That is why the economics of supply and demand have interferred with developing new sources. Well, that and a political party holding up access to bountiful oil deposits until every last drop is suctioned out of every crevice at any cost.

news breaking of speculators being investigated for amping the price up ,hmmm...not the silver bullet,but certainly pulling them out of the equation cant hurt.

quote:

Originally posted by cleve:
news breaking of speculators being investigated for amping the price up ,hmmm...not the silver bullet,but certainly pulling them out of the equation cant hurt.

OMG! I might faint!

Cleve finally admits it was not the evil satan President and Vice President that caused this! Will miracles never cease?