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The Drill-Nothing Congress

Posted by Geek Perspective on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 11:16:55 PM

The Drill-Nothing Congress

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, June 09, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Energy: The average price for regular gas hit $4 a gallon over the weekend. Gas prices have risen 75% since Nancy Pelosi took over. Where's the energy independence Democrats promised two years ago?

In November of 2006, House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi issued a press release touting the Democrats' "common-sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices."

She accused the oil companies of "price gouging." The price of gasoline when the Democrats took control of Congress was around $2.25 per gallon.

The average price of regular gas crept over the $4-per-gallon barrier over the weekend, as measured by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

That represents a more than 75% increase in the retail price of a gallon of gasoline on Pelosi's watch. Call it the "Pelosi premium" we're all now paying.

It's a problem driven by domestic supply restrictions imposed by the Democratic Congress in the face of growing worldwide demand. The Democrats preach energy independence while they do everything in their power to prevent it. If the American people truly want change, this would be it.

A Gallup poll released in May showed that 57% of the American people wanted the U.S. to drill in coastal and wilderness areas. The percentage of Americans who bought Pelosi's line about price gouging fell from 34% in May 2007 to 20% in May 2008. It could be a winning issue for the Republicans and John McCain.

More than 15 billion barrels of oil have been sent down the Alaskan pipeline from Prudhoe Bay, some 60 miles to the west of ANWR, over the past three decades, much more than the six months' supply expected in the beginning by those who predicted a similar environmental disaster there.

The local caribou and other critters have thrived. Yet, Pelosi and the Democrats want to to keep ANWR's estimated 10.6 billion barrels of oil off the market and out of our gas tanks.

Buried in a Department of Interior Appropriations bill passed in December 2007 was an amendment proposed by Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., passed by a 219-215 vote in June, that prevented the establishment of regulations for leasing lands to drill for oil shale.

The Western U.S. is estimated to have reserves of a trillion barrels (yes, that's the real number) trapped in porous shale rock, an amount three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. On May 15, 2008, the Senate Appropriations Committee in a 15-14 party line vote rejected an amendment by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., to allow oil shale drilling and overturn the Udall moratorium.

The U.S. Congress has voted consistently to keep 85% of America's offshore oil and gas off-limits, while China and Cuba drill 60 miles from Key West, Fla. The U.S. Minerals Management Service says that the restricted areas contain 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

There are 3,200 oil rigs off the coast of Louisiana. During Katrina, not a single drop was spilled. More than 7 billion barrels have been pumped from these wells over the past quarter-century, yet only one thousandth of one percent has been spilled.

A study by Louisiana's Sea Grant college shows that there's 50 times more marine life around oil platforms that act as artificial reefs than in the surrounding mud bottoms. Some 85% of Louisiana fishing trips involve fishing around these offshore rigs.

The Flower Garden coral reefs lie off the Louisiana-Texas border. They are surrounded by oil platforms that have been pumping for 50 years.

According to federal biologist G.P. Schmahl, "The Flower Gardens are much healthier, more pristine than anything in the Florida Keys. It was a surprise to me. And I think it's a surprise to most people."

We would suggest that John McCain revisit his reservations about ANWR and run against the drill-nothing Congress. Energy development and the environment are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, we would suggest that the first joint town hall meeting with Barack Obama proposed by McCain be held on one of those offshore Louisiana rigs.

Tags: pelosi   oil  
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The Democrats' Oil-Drilling Flimflam

Posted by Geek Perspective on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 11:00:01 PM
 
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H. L. Mencken

Exclusive: The Democrats' Oil-Drilling Flimflam:

Betting the Public Is Too Dumb to Catch On
August 11, 2008 | Joel Himelfarb

The mantra from Barack Obama and congressional Democrat leaders is that they represent "change" - and when it comes to gas prices, they certainly have a point. The cost to heat and air-condition American homes is certainly "changing" in very negative ways for the American consumer, as is the cost of getting to work or taking a trip with the family.
  
Regular readers of this column know that I have been critical of Republicans' performance on many issues. But on energy today, the GOP on Capitol Hill has shown that it understands that oil supply must be increased, and lately it has been indefatigable in working to make this a reality. Even John McCain, a longtime advocate of costly, job-destroying legislation on climate change, is supporting offshore drilling and demanding that the Democrat leadership bring Congress back to Washington right away to debate energy. The Democrat Party, by contrast, is controlled by elitists who think they can profit politically by demagoguing against oil companies and commodities traders and making empty threats to induce OPEC to produce more. In reality, their policies would ensure that Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and corrupt government officials and pipeline saboteurs in Nigeria cement their power to send American energy prices sky-high.
  
On Capitol Hill, the House Republican Whip's office has been distributing a chart titled "What was the Democrat Congress Voting on as Gas Prices Skyrocketed?" The chart shows that while the Democrat Leadership in both houses has done everything possible to block Congress from voting on expanded drilling for oil, it has had plenty of time to spend on feel-good resolutions and trivial measures that do nothing to alleviate the hardships caused by soaring energy prices.
  
For example, on January 29, 2007, when gas was $2.22 per gallon, Congress voted on "Congratulating the U.C. Santa Barbara Soccer Team." On September 5, 2007, when the price had risen to $2.84, "it was "National Passport Month." By February 6, 2008, ($3.03), Congress was voting on "Commending the Houston Dynamo Soccer Team." On May 14th, the issue was "National Train Day," ($3.77) and on May 20th it was "Great Cats and Rare Canids Act" ($3.84). By June 10th, with the price at $4.09, Congress was considering the "International Year of Sanitation" and by June 17th, having pushed the price up to $4.14, the great change agents on Capitol Hill were discussing the "Monkey Safety Act."
  
To their credit, House and Senate Republicans appear to have found their voice on the energy issue: contrasting their efforts to support offshore oil drilling and exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) with the Democrat leadership's efforts to block it at every turn. House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell have spent the past two months doing everything possible to show the link between the Democrat leadership's intransigent opposition to drilling and the crushing burden of higher energy prices the American people. While discussing weighty matters like primates, soccer teams and the like, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and their allies have dedicated themselves to preventing Congress from voting on efforts to expand energy supplies.
  
In the House, Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a liberal Wisconsin Democrat who has served in Congress for 39 years, has spent much of his summer trying to pass spending measures without letting the House vote on drilling. In June, Obey let it be known that he would not bring up legislation funding the Interior Department; the legislation contains a yearly renewal of a ban on drilling in ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf. Had the Interior measure come up, Republican supporters of drilling would have in all likelihood defeated Obey and the Democrat leadership and their environmentalist allies. Then, Rep. Jerry Lewis, California Republican, offered an amendment to the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill that would have forced multiple votes on drilling. In response, Obey, realizing he would likely lose this vote as well, adjourned the committee rather than permit an up-or-down vote.
   
The Democrat Leadership in Congress has embarked on a two-part strategy to pretend to support drilling while continuing the status quo - that is, continuing to carry water for the radical environmentalists. Before the Congress left town on a five-week break, the Democrats pushed though the House an energy bill titled the "Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands (Drill) Act." The bill doesn't open new lands to exploration. Instead of opening ANWR, which contains known reserves of 10.6 billion barrels, it opens something called the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR), which contains an estimated 10.4 billion barrels. But a careful examination of the Democrat bill shows it to be laden with booby traps.
    
For one thing, it contains boilerplate language mandating that oil leasing be done in an in an "environmentally responsible manner" (ill-defined wording that sounds reasonable but in reality will ensure that environmentalist lawyers keep the issue tied up in litigation for years). Moreover, it is worth noting that the area of ANWR that would be open to exploration would be just 2,000 acres. By contrast, the NPR fields are spread over 23 million acres. In addition, the ANWR area is just 75 miles away from the current pipeline infrastructure, while the NPR fields are more than 250 miles away. And there is no production in the NPR right now because of - you guessed it - ongoing litigation.
    
"By focusing on a patch of Arctic tundra more spread out that ANWR, a greater distance from current pipelines, and subject to lawsuits not addressed by the legislation, the Democrats chose to respond to American cries for expedited drilling in such a way that would have made it harder to produce energy," Rep.Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Moreover, the Democrat bill contains language that Obama, Reid and the entire Democrat Party have embraced that would cripple new exploration: so-called "use it or lose it" language which bars the government from issuing any new exploration or production leases unless the applicant can certify to lawyers' and judges' satisfaction that every lease currently held is being "diligently developed." But, contrary to the Democrats' propaganda line that companies are hoarding leases and refusing to develop them, the truth is that these companies pay fees upfront, in addition to annual rent payments, regardless of whether oil production actually occurs. The delays result from the fact that exploration is a difficult, expensive, time-consuming process in which success follows years of failure and frustration.
    
"In the real world," Rep. Bachmann notes, "forcing companies to 'use' their leases immediately or lose them means making exploration more cost-prohibitive. It will ensure that less exploration will take place. It's akin to forcing a pharmaceutical company to develop a cure for cancer in some arbitrary number of years or else lose the ability to seek the cure."
     
But, in a nutshell, that's exactly what the Democrat Party's energy solution is: offering phony "solutions" and "compromises" which guarantee that new drilling never takes place and that OPEC and hostile foreign powers remain in the drivers seat - and betting that the American people are to dumb to catch on.
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