Free Dating Site    

Were congress honest they would impose a "windfall profits" tax on their own house. On average profits per gallon of gas are as follows:

Who keeps trying to get all the threads started by Conservatives deleted?

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that if the green light is given it would take 7 to 12 years to sell leases, do permitting, environmental reviews, etc. and that initial production could start in 2010 at the earliest. Assuming an optimistic scenario in which the mean expected technically recoverable oil in the entire coastal plain (not just the 1002 area) - 10.3 billion barrels - could be completely recovered (i.e. ignoring market pricing) the EIA estimates production of 600 million barrels a year. In comparison, US daily consumption is 18.5 million barrels a day, or 6,752 million barrels a year. Thus in this scenario ANWR, once on tap, would provide less than 9% of US annual usage (given that usage is trending upward..). Assuming a less positive scenario, at a market price of $24/barrel the mean estimated commercially recoverable oil is 5.2 billion barrels, and since the oil is in multiple plays rather than one large play the costs of exploting the oil will be higher.

Who keeps trying to get all the threads started by Conservatives deleted? Has anyone else noticed how often this has been tried in the last month?

I guess Congress and the liberal media aren't the only ones trying to silence us.

"We are kidding ourselves if we think we can drill our way out of these problems," House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said during the bill mark-up session."

What do you think about a party that's not interested in taking action within the laws of supply and demand that would lower your gasoline price and other related petroleum products?

The Charleston Gazette
June 10, 2008

Lands already open for drilling

Rahall committee report counters pro-oil complaint
By Ken Ward Jr.

Staff writer

The vast majority of oil and gas resources on federal lands are already open for drilling, according to a new report from the House Natural Resources Committee.

A little more than one-third of oil resources and 16 percent of natural gas reserves on public lands are off-limits to industry, according to the report issued by the committee's Democratic staff. Those are closed to drilling largely because they are underneath national parks or wilderness areas, the report found.

The 10-page report responds to continued arguments by Republicans and energy companies that opening more public lands to oil and gas production would help lower gasoline prices.

"The evidence is compelling that we cannot drill our way to lower prices at the pumps," said Natural Resources Chairman Nick J. Rahall, D-W.Va.

The report notes, for example, that since the 1990s, the federal government has consistently encouraged the development of its oil and gas resources. Drilling on federal lands has steadily increased during this period, from 3,800 five years ago to nearly 7,600 in 2007.

Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development on public lands increased by more than 361 percent. But gasoline prices have also risen dramatically, "contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices," according to the report.

The Rahall staff report also concludes that energy companies are not using federal lands that are already open to energy development.

In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued nearly 29,000 permits to drill on public land. Yet during that same period, less than 19,000 wells were actually drilled.

"Even if increased domestic drilling activity could affect the price of gasoline, there is yet no justification to open additional federal lands because oil and gas companies have shown that they cannot keep pace with the rate of drilling permits that the federal government is handing out," the report said.

Last month, the Interior Department issued a report that Rahall's committee said the "administration is using to delude Americans into believing that vast tracts of federal land with large concentrations of oil and gas are off-limits to oil and gas development."

Actually, the Interior report shows 40 percent of oil reserves on federal lands are currently open to leasing. Another 22 percent of oil reserves on federal lands are undergoing required environmental reviews before being opened to leasing. That leaves 38 percent of oil reserves on federal lands actually listed as off-limits.

For natural gas, the Interior report shows 16 percent of reserves are off-limits to production. Another 22 percent are undergoing environmental reviews before being opened to leasing.

The Rahall committee report also concluded that on the Outer Continental Shelf, 82 percent of federal natural gas and 79 percent of federal oil is located in areas that are currently open for leasing.

To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348-1702.
http://sundaygazettemail.com/News/200806091186

By Erika Bolstad and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?

Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba's shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

"China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon's research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production.

Vice President****Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, picked up the refrain. Cheney quoted a column by George Will, who wrote last week that "drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are."

In his speech, Cheney described the Chinese as being "in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to higher prices means more supply."

"But Congress says no to drilling in ANWR, no to drilling on the East Coast, no to drilling on the West Coast," Cheney added.

The office of House Minority Leader John Boehner defended the GOP drilling claims. "A 2006 New York Times story highlights lease agreements negotiated between Cuba and China and the fact that China was planning to drill in the Florida Strait off the coast of Cuba," said spokesman Michael Steel.

The China-Cuba connection also appeared in an editorial Monday in Investor's Business Daily, which wrote that "the U.S. Congress has voted consistently to keep 85 percent of America's offshore oil and gas off-limits, while China and Cuba drill 60 miles from Key West, Fla."

And on Tuesday, Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., wrote in the Modesto Bee that "China, thanks to a lease issued by Cuba, is drilling for oil just 50 miles off Florida's coast."

A spokesman for Radanovich said Wednesday that the congressman had read about a Cuban lease to Chinese interests in the 2006 Times article.
China's Sinopec oil company does have an agreement with the Cuban government, but it's to develop onshore resources west of Havana, Pinon said. The Chinese have done some seismic testing, he said, but no drilling, and nothing offshore.
Western diplomats in Havana tell McClatchy that to the best of their knowledge, there is no Chinese drilling in or around Cuba.
"I've never heard anything about this," said one diplomat from a country in the hemisphere.
The Western diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media about energy issues, said they believed there is no new drilling occurring off the coast of Cuba, just exploration.
Cuba's state oil company, Cupet, has issued exploration contracts to companies from India, Canada, Spain, Malaysia and Norway, according to diplomats.
But many oil companies from those countries have expressed reservations about how to turn potential crude oil into product. Cuba doesn't have the refinery capacity, and the Cuban embargo prohibits the oil from coming to U.S. refineries, Pinon said.
The most recent high-profile contract with Cuba went to Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras. Cuba inked a contract with Petrobras in January, allowing the Brazilian energy giant to search for oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico that are within Cuba's sovereign territory. Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, traveled to Cuba last month and talked up the oil business, along with a joint venture between Cuba and Petrobras to produce lubricants.
Most of Cuba's oil comes from Venezuela, with whom it shares an ideological bent and geographical proximity. Brazil's growing role in Cuba's energy sector is significant because Petrobras has been involved in some of the world's few discoveries of new and large oilfields.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/40776.html

The speculators, in fact, are good for the market.