Crockett. B ush just lifted the Presidential ban on offshore drilling. What is holding up the DEMOCRATIC led Congress from lifting their ban?
Why is it, if it was so Important that Bush waited until there was a Democratic Congress to try and get it passed? Humm I mean he only had 6 years do do something before but quite ironically he waits until the Democrats take control of Congress in a presidential election year.
Then again I guess one could argue the same thing about..
Boarder security
Port Security
ect..ect..
You guys trying to act like this is just a Democrats attempt to make Republicans look bad, need to pull your heads out of the sand. Arguing about ANWR has been going on since the 70's. The two times that it was almost opened up, within a few days to a week there were major oil spills causing it to be stopped. The first one was the Exxon Valdez spill that covered coastline the length of California and the second one was a oil line spill that dumped 200 thousand barrels of oil.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the oil companies that can't seem to work around the world with out at least one major oil spill per year and many smaller ones on a monthly basis. Hell just this year in July there has been a spill in Austria of 400K gallons of crude.
Also btw those that keep listening to the talking heads preaching not a drop of oil was spilled in the Gulf during Katrina don't exactly have their facts straight.
As a result of both storms, a total volume of 17,652 barrels (or roughly three-quarters of a million gallons) of total petroleum products, of which 13,137 barrels were crude oil and condensate, was spilled from platforms, rigs and pipelines. 4,514 barrels were refined products from platforms and rigs. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/19/opinion/main4275167.shtml?source=mostpop_storyIt also appears there has been a crude oil spill in China in the last 10 hours but not much news up about it just yet.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=677&icid=3&d_str=20080718Another article from yesterday.. telling us how off shore drilling is much safer but small spills are a regular occurrence..
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5897424.htmlHere is an article about a oil spill from earlier this year when two tankers ran into each other..
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/rehabilitated-penguins-released-following-oil-spill-uruguay/So just because you don't "hear" about oil spills doesnt mean they aren't happening. As someone who lives right next to the beach and happens to like my beach with out oil.. Well I think it's fairly easy to say why people don't want oil rigs off their shores.
It's very easy for you guys sitting in land locked areas to act as it's no big deal.. However if you are the ones that are directly affected by the decision then it's a whole different ball game.