The Executive Ban? It's Gone! <sniker>

[lazs2]

moray. you need to read what I write instead of just putting words in my mouth..   I never said the price of oil was up only because we are importing so much.

It seems to be a complex combination of factors.. one of which is that we do not produce enough of our own oil.. 

Now.. it hurts nothing to drill for as much of our own oil as we can..  if we increase our production a couple of a million and reduce our consumption a couple of million.. it starts to make a difference.. even in the speculation and the value of the dollar.   

gas may never get below $4 a gallon again but.. it was due for a correction for a long time.   I may not go lower .. it never does but this is deja vu all over again..  if we drill.. it may be 5 years before we get the benifiet and it may small or it may be huge...  for sure if we don't it will go up much more in 5 years than if we don't.

Ten years from now if the price stays at $4 it won't seem so much.   just like in the 70's when it doubled..  10 years later it didn't seem so much.

Who knows where batteries and solar panels will be in ten years.. who knows where computers will be.

lazs

[Holden McGroin]

"The bigger our victories, the more bipartisanship there'll be in the congress."--Speaker of the House Pelosi

So bipartisanship is defined as demo victories...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls for the president to tap into the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, saying this would “expand available supplies and help reduce the record prices.”  She then turns around and describes as “an absolute hoax” the idea that prices would drop as a result of building supplies through increased production.

In November I hope we all remember that it is the entrenched in DC who are mucking up the works and vote out incumbants regardless of party.

[JoeA]

No, the analysis was produced in 2008. It does take in to account higher prices, it's just that they don't have much impact in the early years. Higher prices make it more cost effective to use advanced recovery techniques, but they mainly have an impact as a field declines.

The new report was from the EIA, not the USGS.  The USGS is the only US organization that can legally change the estimated amount of oil.  The EIA hopefully did the best they could and put new makeup on the pig.  The estimated amount of oil in ANWR was *not* updated to adjust for new recovery techniques, higher prices, etc and that is a real problem. 

The EIA report was issued in 2008, written in 2007 and based on the same old USGS data from the 1990s.  ANWR needs a new assessment.  For example, the USGS recently updated the 1995 Bakken oil field estimate (ANWR's estimate is from 1998).  The USGS now estimates the Bakkens have 25 times more oil then the USGS estimated from 1995.  USGS estimates are notoriously conservative.  Give the USGS a barrel of oil and they'd estimate it contained 5-10 gallons. 

[lazs2]

yep..  she says that 500,000 more barrels a day production of foreign oil production will save the day but one million barrels a day from ANWAR of our own oil will be nothing.  that a million from offshore drilling will do nothing...

the point is.. we can use more.. it is silly to not drill for more.

Both the liberals here on this board and the conservatives seem to agree that we need more for the forseeable future and.. it seems that we all agree we should drill for our own.. sooo.. it matters not who is at fault at this point.. Bush now says go ahead and drill...

Congress should say the same and let's get going.  to say that it will do no good for 5 years is beyond short sighted.  it is also the idiocy of not learning from the past.  we had an "oil crises" in the 70's.

So who cares who's fault the non drilling is..  let's get together here and start drilling.   Or is "bipartisan" in this case what holden says it is?

lazs

[REP0MAN]

Plain and simple, the congressional ban will not lift until Obama is elected and sworn in. I think the Dems will make this an election point a few weeks before the vote. "Vote for Obama! We'll start drilling for oil!" Sad really.

As Lazs said, it's not about who is at fault in the past anymore. We're beyond the childish, schoolyard name calling and blame pointing. Congress knows exactly what needs to be done here. Open drilling nationwide, allow Nuclear power to flourish and increase funding for alternative energy research and development.

[Holden McGroin]

We're beyond the childish, schoolyard name calling and blame pointing.

That's just the problem.  We have 535 professional chidlish name callers back to DC.

[bj229r]

Plain and simple, the congressional ban will not lift until Obama is elected and sworn in. I think the Dems will make this an election point a few weeks before the vote. "Vote for Obama! We'll start drilling for oil!" Sad really.

As Lazs said, it's not about who is at fault in the past anymore. We're beyond the childish, schoolyard name calling and blame pointing. Congress knows exactly what needs to be done here. Open drilling nationwide, allow Nuclear power to flourish and increase funding for alternative energy research and development.

Actually, the ban MAY end before that....if it doesn't, won't be as much as Dem landslide as it initially looked
link

Although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have blocked Republican efforts to end the 27-year moratorium on offshore drilling, few people realize that Congress is required to approve the prohibition on an annual basis.

Tucked away in the annual spending bill for the U.S. Department of Interior is a section that forbids the federal government from spending any money to offer leases to oil companies off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic seaboard.

Earlier this summer, Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., a member of the House appropriations committee, offered an amendment to strike the ban from the bill. House Democratic leaders responded by canceling all committee votes on the measure.

But because the government runs out of money at the end of the federal spending year on Sept. 30, at some point the House and Senate must approve a temporary spending bill to finance the Interior Department. That could give House and Senate Republicans a chance to offer an amendment to end the ban.

Hopefully they can't weasel out of an actual vote by some sort of procedural rulewhich prevents the topic from coming up

[Sabre]

Regarding ANWR, I just heard on the news this morning that some of the prime spots to drill are only 70 or so miles from the Alaskan pipe line.  So, the estimate of 10 years to see production is nonsense, and even five years borders on outlandishly conservative.

Pelosi's double-speak (releasing Strat reserves will help but increasing domestic production will not) is so rediculous I can't believe SHE believes people can't see it.  And if the past is any indication, IF Congress lifts their ban on off-shore drilling, we'll see an almost immediate drop in the price of a barrel, just as we did when Bush lifted his.  If ANWR were opened up as well, it would further deflate the price.  The speculation bubble is ripe to put a pin in it.

[Elfie]

Yea I know there are several different types. The problem is, it's unlikely anyone of those types could supply the entire country. The fuel needs to be the same across the entire country.. Hence the reason I say natural gas is likely the one one fuel that can do it all.

Fuel does not need to be the same across the entire country, it isn't now, there is something like 200 different blends of gasoline being used across the country as I type this.

Here's two links to one type of bio diesel that if it takes off could supply the entire country and possibly enough left over to export as well.

http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2003/Anything-Into-Oil1may03.htm

http://www.changingworldtech.com/

That is just one example.

[REP0MAN]

IF Congress lifts their ban on off-shore drilling, we'll see an almost immediate drop in the price of a barrel, just as we did when Bush lifted his.  If ANWR were opened up as well, it would further deflate the price.  The speculation bubble is ripe to put a pin in it.

It's still dropping. $4 yesterday. Pelosi is an idiot. Anyone who agrees with that twit needs to donate their brain to science. They aren't using it anyway.

[bongaroo]

Anyone who agrees with that twit needs to donate their brain to science. They aren't using it anyway.

i reckon anyone with a different ideology should be entitled to say the same of you?  just saying 

[REP0MAN]

Is it too early to call it a trend?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/oil_prices

By ADAM SCHRECK, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 3 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Oil prices tumbled more than $3 a barrel Tuesday as Tropical Storm Dolly grew increasingly unlikely to threaten supply, knocking out one more reason traders had to prop up prices.

The sell-off was a throwback to last week's sharp declines, and dragged crude to its lowest level since early June. A stronger dollar helped keep prices in check.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery fell $3.09 to settle at $127.95 a barrel in its last trading day on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier the contract, which will be replaced by September crude Wednesday, dropped as low as $125.63. It was crude's fourth decline in the last five sessions.

An interim report released Tuesday by a federal task force set up to examine the sharp run-up in oil prices said that fundamental supply-and-demand factors are most likely to blame.

A number of lawmakers and other critics have blamed the historic rise in prices on speculators that they say are manipulating prices.

The Interagency Task Force on Commodity Markets, chaired by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was formed last month to examine investment practices and fundamental market factors.

The drop in prices Tuesday offered further evidence that investors who only a week and a half ago drove prices to a new high above $147 a barrel are now quickly pulling money out of the market. It was also a reminder that the lack of major news can push the market down in the same way that incremental supply concerns previously pushed prices sharply higher.

"This is more of the long exit from the market by the hedge funds," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates. "A lot of these investors who have been supporting prices are hitting the road."

There are also new indications that high oil prices are killing off demand, especially in the U.S., the world's largest oil consumer.

In its weekly pump spending survey, MasterCard found U.S. gasoline demand dropped last week for the thirteenth week in a row. Demand fell 3.3 percent compared with the same week a year earlier, according to the survey. Since the start of 2008, gasoline demand is down 2.2 percent.

At the same time, three more airlines posted hefty quarterly losses — including a $2.3 billion charge by No. 2 carrier United — primarily because of rising fuel costs.

Oil prices rose Monday as Tropical Storm Dolly bore down on oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico, but that did little to dent the steep declines left over from last week's sell-off.

"Most people I knew were looking for a stronger price rally," Ritterbusch said. "When we can't muster up much steam," he added, large investors dump bets that prices will rise because they sense there is little support for sustained gains.

At 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday, the center of Tropical Storm Dolly was located over the Gulf about 230 miles southeast of Brownsville. It was moving west-northwest at about 12 mph, putting it on course to miss major U.S. oil and gas platforms.

"Unless new projections put the storm on a more northerly track, it is unlikely to have a bullish impact on oil and natural gas prices," Addison Armstrong, director of market research at Tradition Energy, said in a research note.

Oil prices came under added pressure from a stronger dollar. The currency rose sharply against the euro after Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and a voting member of the Fed's Open Market Committee, said the central bank will probably need to boost interest rates "sooner rather than later."

The dollar's decline has been a major factor in oil's ascent, as investors bought dollar-denominated crude contracts as a hedge against inflation and a weakening greenback. When the dollar strengthens, such currency-related buying often unwinds.

Other energy commodities followed crude sharply lower.

Natural gas fell below $10 per 1,000 cubic feet for the first time since April. Prices for the power generation and cooking fuel dropped to $10.032 per 1,000 cubic feet, down 47.8 cents. Earlier, prices dipped as low as $9.889.

Natural gas has plummeted since early July, when it reached its highest point in more than two years following a sharp run-up fueled by expectations of strong summer demand.

"We're not getting a real hot summer as some had forecast," reducing the need for gas-fired electricity to power air conditioning, Ritterbusch said. "Natural gas had a much larger rally than crude this year. Now we're seeing a much larger decline."

Oil's decline lifting some weight from motorists. Retail gas prices continue to fall away, with the cost for a gallon of gas dropping more than a penny overnight to $4.055, according to AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.

It is the first time since January that gas has fallen for two consecutive weeks, analyst and trader Stephen Schork said. Still, a gallon of gas still costs 30 percent more than it did last year, or more than 80 cents, he said.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil sank 6.97 cents to settle at $3.6782 per gallon, while gasoline futures tumbled 7.01 cents to settle at $3.147 per gallon.

In London, September Brent fell $2.27 to settle at $129.55 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

[bongaroo]

I need to find the link to back it up but I've read that this is contributing the most to falling oil prices:

1) Bush and crew backing off the war with Iran talk
2) Demand for next year seen leveling, not increasing as before

[Holden McGroin]

I need to find the link to back it up but I've read that this is contributing the most to falling oil prices:

1) Bush and crew backing off the war with Iran talk
2) Demand for next year seen leveling, not increasing as before

But one key section from the above Yahoo story is:

Oil prices came under added pressure from a stronger dollar. The currency rose sharply against the euro after Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and a voting member of the Fed's Open Market Committee, said the central bank will probably need to boost interest rates "sooner rather than later."

The dollar's decline has been a major factor in oil's ascent, as investors bought dollar-denominated crude contracts as a hedge against inflation and a weakening greenback. When the dollar strengthens, such currency-related buying often unwinds.[ /quote]

[bongaroo]

That is certainly a major issue.