offshore drilling saves lives, makes rainbows and produces sweet fluffy puppies for every family in america!
What’s funny to me is our revered leader admitting that lifting the ban on offshore drilling would take years to have an effect, but then turns and directly blames Congress for the current price of gas because they refuse to lift it & open the arctic refuge to more drilling.
So help me figure this out. Is he trying to tell me that if we lift the ban, oil companies around the world will rejoice and praise allah, and tomorrow we’ll wake up and gas will suddenly become cheap again? Is that what he’s suggesting? And that the answer to our sick and self-destructive dependence on a finite resource is to umm, I don’t know… use up even more of it? The white house insists there are no quick fixes to the problem (because the problem is the problem, duh) but Bush/mccain’s so-called energy plans seem to be nothing but quick fixes. I don’t fucking get it. Tell me 2 + 2 = 4 and I understand. Tell me 2 + 2 = 8 and I have to wonder. Tell me that 2 + 2 = infinity and it’s going to take a lot more than these little white pills to get my acquiescence.
I just don’t see how we can continue raping every inch of this fucking world so that we can gather our miserable families in the car, drive to some lousy too hot too loud too crowded vacation spot where we can eat and drink our fat selves into oblivion and not think about the horrible things our country has done to give us this “right” of ours.
And if I hear one more story about how us poor deprived americans will have to spend the 4th of july at, my god, HOME, because gas is just too expensive…well I think I’ll have to start cutting myself again. At this point only the feel of warm thick blood on my fingers and lips can make me feel better.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
Of course Bush is going to say that… that’s politics. It’s an election season. Everyone says ridiculous things about each other. Unfortunately, the energy problem isn’t as easy as 2 + 2.
Supply and demand play a large part. The infamous “speculators” (a much more evil sounding word for what they really are: commodity investors) play a part. Government restrictions play a part.
Solving the problem in the near-term purely from the demand side is simply impractical. I’m no fan of oil, but we simply are not yet living in a world where we can just scale back our dependence on it.
Truth be told, if everyone felt the way you appear to, that’d be great. High prices suck… paying $65 to fill up my little Honda sucks. But it DOES change behavior. I can personally handle the pain if it helps drive investment into alternative energies and whatnot.
However, those who think these prices are the result of evil oil companies who deserve windfall-profits taxes or whatnot… well, that’s just silly, too. If you think prices are too high, let the oil guys drill. If not, no reason to tax.
Follow-up: Thanks to the guessing game of futures markets, if you announced that off-shore drilling was being allowed there is a good chance that oil prices would fall at least a little bit… possibly a lot.
A lot of the current price no doubt has some uncertainty as to the ability to meet demand in the near future. It seems reasonable to me to think we may have hit peak oil in many of the current reserves, and if so, oil will only get more expensive in the future as demand increases and supply is unable to keep up.
So to that extent, even the announcement would likely relieve some of the significant upward-pressure on oil futures.
… not to justify Bush’s accusations though, most of that is still just politics as usual.
Last follow-up — I don’t know how I forgot this one, I’ve been railing on this for a while now… another major factor in oil prices — inflation. Probably a bigger factor than most people think.
My hero. *swoon*
As the world is slowly (or not so slowly as we would like to think) is over exploiting every natural resource we have even the alternatives have consequences ie. bio fuels mean less food production hence higher prices for basic food stuffs..grain etc. Perhaps the western world is really heading for a major collapse. If america thinks it is paying a high price for fuel now have some consideration for us in the uk, a litre of diesel costs on average £1.30 not sure what that is in US dollars but it is rising every day by one or two pence…our credit crunch is hitting home now and we are still paying for a futile war as more of our soldiers are being brought home in body bags..eight killed in the last ten days and for what for…oil!!
About time we all said no more
Brasten — high prices are created by limited supply and endless demand … insane reaction in markets to “bad news”, the cheap dollar.. our dollar buys less… China… they are industrializing at a fantastic pace ….people are getting rich in their new market economy and they are buying cars. they are also building a highway system that makes ours look like a wagon trail. 1.3 billion new people buying cars and driving them everywhere.. oil is finished
Christa I know a cutter.. shes very pretty and is very sad sometimes.. she cant stop..
maybe I’m a cynic or a dummy, probably both, but I just don’t think oil prices will drop significantly if we announce we’re going to start offshore drilling. I just read that china said they were raising fuel prices and crude oil dropped a few dollars a barrel. Which meant gas here dropped two or so pennies. Wow. I’m going to be able to really splurge tomorrow!
I believe we DO live in a world where we can scale back our dependence. Of course we can. Maybe our lives won’t be as comfortably luxurious, but we’ll get through it. I’m no fool, I know it’s going to take time before energy alternatives are 100% viable, but we have to start somewhere. standing still at the bottom of a hill saying it’s just too high won’t get us over it. we have have to start, step by step, and keep going.
I’m not complaining about the price of gas. Like you brasten, I see the good that can come of it, if it spurs change and leads us away from oil. I inwardly groan every time I see the price at my station down the street go up another few cents. and I curse exxon and mobil every time I pass them, as well as all the cars who continue to go there for their gas.
but I get it, you know? I understand. those companies are in it to make money and I don’t begrudge them that, or their record profits. I wish I had shares! it’s the game. But they are cheating, shutting out all the other players and not letting any new ones join in. big oil wants to be the only player in an open and free market, and they have an ridiculously unfair advantage. it drives me nuts!
I just want a fair game and I want everyone to have a chance to get their piece of the pie, including alternative energies.
sigh.
I blame china for everything. and bush. bush and china.
and gordon’s mother.
bush, china and phyllis, all ruining my life.
and I feel for you in the UK, Julie. I do. your country is fighting in OUR war, your citizens are giving up their lives for us, and it’s just not right.
These days, I generally blame Bush, China and Phyllis for my problems, too.
I should clarify, I don’t expect anything to drop the price of oil back to $30/barrel. The money supply has increased nearly 4-fold since 1995, when oil was nearly $30. Therefor, based on inflation alone, oil would be justified at, say, $110/barrel. That’s assuming that there were no supply problems, which obviously there are… as well as bear-ish oil investors which is not the case.
My point being, the China announcement didn’t change much in terms of reality, it just changed some people’s outlook. Announcing that we’ll open off-shore drilling will have a real, fairly substantial affect on future supply — which will probably be enough to drive oil futures down (just pulling figures out my ass here) to $125? $115 maybe? Maybe less, maybe not.
Overall, competitive forces have created an oil market that is fairly efficient. American oil companies have profit margins in the single-digits (~9%). That’s a profitable business, but not stellar. Apple’s profit margin flirts with 30%, for example… much higher than Exxon’s. And both companies re-invest a vast majority of those profits.
There’s not much we can do about foreign oil cartels and whatnot. But for OUR oil, opening up as much drilling as we can stomach is the easiest way to allow market forces to work on the price of oil.
Good stuff poeople …..
well my stomach says we can’t open up any more drilling, as the damage it creates, both direct and indirect, is not worth the cost.
and my stomach is always right, aren’t you stomach?
I LOVE ELECTION TIME!!!
The off-shore drilling process itself doesn’t cause all that much damage. As for carbon emissions, I agree. But we’re holding up one of the quickest, cheapest ways of fixing that problem — nuclear power.
The truth is, the answer isn’t one or the other, it’s all. Drill now, build for the future… which will include nuclear, wind, solar, wave power… maybe even some magical Telsa energy-out-of-thin-air device… :-)
My $0.02.
1 US gallon of deisel is about 4.65 in the Chicago Burbs.
Roighly 4 liyre in a gallon. Right now the Pound is worth $2 us… unbelievable not long ago a Dollar was worth a pound 40!!
so a gallon of dieel is 10$ plus!!!!!in UK!!