The Democrat Canard: Use it or Lose it

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Braindead Caucus; including the Messiah have drummed out another slogan that the intellectually bankrupt left is gobbling up and regurgitating everywhere.

You’ve heard them breathlessly screaming “The oil companies have 63 million acres now; why aren’t they drilling on it?”

There’s a few billion acres on the moon too but we aren’t drilling there; I wonder why? Maybe because there’s no frigging oil there and even if there was, it would certainly not be economically sound to go after it.

Here’s the truth. There are three KNOWN potentially huge oil reserves, ANWR and the OCS west of Florida and California. I know there’s a lot of talk about shale oil and stuff but these are KNOWN pockets of sweet crude. Not one of Reid’s 63 million acres are anywhere near these deposits.

In spite of this, the oil companies are drilling. In fact they have been drilling more and more but realizing little success because of the restrictions placed on them by the enviro-wackos.

Exploratory and development drilling has increased across the board since 2000.

Drilling of (oil and natural gas) exploratory wells (2000-2007) up 98%;
Drilling of (oil and natural gas) development wells (2000-2007) up 92%;
Drilling of exploratory oil wells (2000-2007) up 138%;
Drilling of developmental oil wells (2000-2007) up 89%.
73% of all exploratory and development wells in 2007 were for natural gas.
• Over the same period (2000-2007), however:

Domestic crude oil production has decreased 12.4%;
Domestic crude oil production has fallen to levels not seen since 1947; and
Imports of crude oil have increased 10.4%.
The 946,000 barrels per day increase in imports is almost as much as ANWR would be producing today if it had not been blocked in 1995.

Oh yeah and opening ANWR would create over 500,000 good paying jobs! Some estimates has it as high as 750,000 jobs.

Seven of the top 20 U.S. oil fields are now located in analogous deepwater areas (greater than 1,000 feet) in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2006, Chevron discovered what is likely to be the largest American oil find since Prudhoe, drilled in 7,000 feet of water and more than 20,000 feet under the sea floor. The Wilcox formation may have an upper end of 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil and should begin producing by 2014 – perhaps ushering in a new ultradeepwater frontier.

Just today there was a fire reported at a California refinery. Within 10 minutes oil had jumped over a dollar a barrel. This is because oil is a commodity that is in growing demand against a restricted supply.

The announcement of opening ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf would drop gas prices by $.50 overnight and Congress has the power to do it.

Category: Politics