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Best damn thing Bush has done in a while....now give him his due

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by ScribePharisee, Jul 14, 2008.

  1. Grimace

    Grimace Guest


    It's not like there's a big faucet on the bottom of the ocean and all you have to do is turn it on, connect a big hose, and pump it directly into our cars.

    I'll say it again: Anyone who thinks it's that simple is ignorant and borderline stupid. Do some research.
     
  2. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    So there's no money to be made in making more rigs?
    We're always bitching about jobs being outsourced to other countries, and here's a plan that lends itself to homegrown manufacturing jobs. Welders, pipefitters, machinists, oil field workers, jobs like that. You can't outsource those jobs because it's damned difficult to ship an oil rig across thousands of miles of ocean. It's hard enough to move it a few hundred miles.
    It's only one sector of the economy, sure. But again, it's a chain reaction. That's the way our economy works. One part booms -- or busts -- and it takes another five parts with it. Even if this leads to no sources of oil, bad as that would be, isn't it worth it to create some new jobs?

    And if it's pointless, why bother at all? Let's just use an exercise bike to generate electricity in our living rooms, or run to work in giant hamster balls.
    Here's a link to that USA Today story I mentioned earlier. It's a good read:
    http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-07-13-offshore-drilling_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
     
  3. MartinEnigmatica

    MartinEnigmatica Active Member

    Why would it be worth it to go spelunking, then have a bunch of useless equipment sitting around?

    One thing I rarely see addressed is trying to diminish demand. Here we are looking for more oil, even if it's only going to tide us over until we can find another source of energy, then produce more, more, more of that, max that sucker out. But what about trying to find ways so we don't have to use so much of anything?
     
  4. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]
     
  5. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    If this drilling does in fact lower oil costs (which is a big if), won't it do more harm in the long run?

    Look, high oil prices are driving competition to make more energy efficient vehicles among other things associated with oil. It's the market place at work and more likely than not this is a good thing despite the $4 a gallon price tag.

    But with the government stepping in and saying "Look here's more oil...business as usual!!" it just zaps all the incentive out of innovation.

    Plus oil is a finite resource. Drill all you want, but we're either at or close to the time when we run out of cheap oil. As far as I know we'll need the stuff for trucks, air planes and the like for the foreseeable future.

    We should be doing the very best to kick out the absolutely unnecessary usage of the product at all costs.
     
  6. 2muchcoffeeman

    2muchcoffeeman Well-Known Member

    Yeah, great move, Shrub. I'll give him his due: He's a total moron who can't plan any further along than this week's grocery list.

    [​IMG]

    This is nothing more than playing politics to try to win in November while not actually doing anything worthwhile to solve the very real problems facing the country.

    Long-term solutions do not involve crude oil. Period.
     
  7. old_tony

    old_tony Well-Known Member

    Except we also were told that in the 1970s, and yet oil was cheaper and more plentiful in 1999 when gas plummeted to 89 cents a gallon.
     
  8. old_tony

    old_tony Well-Known Member

    You conveniently overlook the fact that lower gas prices are good for us. Higher prices? Not so much.
     
  9. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    30 years of drilling + China + India . . . changes the equation just a little.

    You can't just conveniently parallel EVERYTHING in the past to EVERYTHING in the present.

    Saddam was not Hitler.
    Iraq War is not WW II.

    And the gasoline crisis in 2008 is not the gasoline crisis in the 1970s.
     
  10. zagoshe

    zagoshe Well-Known Member

    No I certainly think drilling is not the answer. A much better answer is to lower the speed limit to 55 mph.

    That will be the silver bullet, the thing that kills this crisis forever.....

    Everyone start driving slower........
     
  11. Thumper0

    Thumper0 New Member

    Haven't posted here in years but considering this is something I know about* ...
    Drilling offshore will have little impact on the U.S. and global oil market. If, for example, an oil company pointed to spot at the bottom of the gulf and said we'll drill here it would take at least 10 years for the oil to get to market and that's on the optimistic side for several reasons.

    1. Drilling for sub sea oil is a massive undertaking that takes years of prep work on the ocean floor, months if not years, actually drilling to depth and then more months prepping the site for oil to pump.

    2. All that is dependent on there being a rig or ship in place, which is unlikely because most rigs are made piece meal all over the world, shipped to a shipyard for assembly and then transported in large sections. Of course that is if you can find a shipyard that is open right now and the bottom line is you can't. Shipyards from Korea to the North Sea to the U.S. are backed up right now because shipping via ocean liner is more efficient that anything else currently devised and that market is booming.

    3. By most estimates, the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) contains 3% of worldwide oil reserves. By the time oil is flowing from the GoM worldwide demand will have increased 20-30%, which means pumping the GoM oil will account for pennies on the dollar at the pump by the time the oil hits the market.

    4. As has been stated before, the U.S. infrastructure to refine oil to gas isn't in place. It will take years (decades perhaps) for the U.S. infrastructure to catch up. And that's if we start building refineries now.

    5. Unrelated to GoM oil reserves, but on topic ... no one actually knows what quality or quantity of oil lays beneath ANWR. The oil companies are estimating what could be there based on similar geologic features in Canada. Because of the status of ANWR there has been no hard exploration of what oil fields could (key word there, could) lay beneath ANWR. By the time companies explore, drill and pump, the first drops of oil from ANWR could take longer to reach market than GoM oil. And there's the tricky part of actually getting the oil to a refinery. Got to build a pipeline through some of the most hostile land in the world.

    So what is the answer? Finding new sources of energy. It's not going to happen over night, it's not going to be easy, but it's clear that oil/gas will no longer be an energy source for the masses. Of course this isn't unprecedented. What do you think woodsmen were thinking when someone came climbing out of a hole in the ground with a chunk of coal in his hand? Or what did buggy builders think when the cars become popular. It's called progress. It's not painless or easy, and it does not come without sacrifice or without worry, but it's inevitable and it's for the better. This is not the end of the world, just a change of the status quo.

    * I was a sports writer for eight years before heading to PR several years ago. I currently work for an agency that represents a company that manufactures parts for ships and oil rigs and I've been party to many discussions about this. Those at the company know drilling for oil in the GoM isn't a long-term answer, but they'll take the orders/business and use the income to diversify protect themselves long term.

    The truly sad thing is that politicians know this too, it's the reason the likes of Charlie Crist have long been against off shore drilling, but they are changing the stance because they think (and are probably right) that the American public isn't smart enough or curious enough to seek out the truth and it's an election year. The other sad aspect of all this is the media's role. Most of the stories related to this don't push the politicians to back up their assertions with facts or plans. It's just, "We'll drill and there will be oil" but no explanation of how they plan to get that oil to market.

    I will now go back to commenting in my head. Sorry for the intrusion.
     
  12. suburbia

    suburbia Active Member

    Unfortunately, this is very typical of politicians. And they get away with it because most voters are unwilling or unable to evaluate these issues more thoroughly. They just take whatever short, simple soundbyte sounds the best to them right now.
     
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