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We all know that drilling ALONE will not do the trick BUT let's remember that it IS a time-tested and proven trick.
I remember when in the '80s Reagan started some government synthetic fuels production program and gave enormous incentives for oil production - the result? In 1981 when Reagan took office Oil was about $70/Barrel He got all of these incentives into play and by 1982 Oil had fallen below $50/Barrel and by 1985, the price had fallen to about $20/Barrel. Oil remained low and plummeted to $12/Barrel in 1998 under Clinton.
Why did this happen? Because we looked and acted like we were serious about solving our problems ourselves, so OPEC flooded the market, forcing prices down and Our synthetics operation which can produce oil from coal at $40/Barrel was deemed a waste of money.
Our cars and trucks run off of OIL products right now... We cannot wait for synthetic/alternative energy, we must ease the financial burden on our People, Trucking Companies and Airlines right the hell NOW. We damn sure better pursue those alternatives (Except Food-Based Ethanol) like it was a Moon-Shot type vision. Those too caught up in the touchy-feely limpwristed environmentalism need to realize that communist china and russia are rapidly staking their claims to all of the oil and natural gas and coal they can. Where are their records on environmental damage compared to ours???
We cannot touch oil right off our east coast BUT the damned communist chinese and cubans have partnered to slant drill oil wells (Slanted toward US BTW) just 54 miles off our own coast. The Destin Dome, just off of Pensacola,FL, was leased by Chevron some time back. They found little oil BUT they did find 2.6 TRILLION cubic feet (That's 2,600,000,000,000 cubic feet) of clean burning natural gas. The government told Chevron that yeah... sure... you can drill there but, we are not giving you permission to bring the product ashore. So, Chevrons exploration money went down the tubes and we all had to pay higher and higher NG bills. This is not the only instance of the government not allowing petroleum to be brought in where a lease was purchased but it certainly is a glaring example. This was thanks to the idiot, GHWB. HE is the one who stopped the leases on the east coast.
ANWR is a barren wasteland. Or should I say the 2,000 acres that is slated for development is a barren wasteland... 2,000 acres is less than 2/3 the size of my uncles place! We need this oil, we need it now. We should cut all of the red tape and streamline every hurdle to allow drilling everywhere there is a proven reserve. Montana is sitting on a gigantic oil-shale reserve that we have not began to fathom its' scope yet. We are the "Saudi-Arabia" of coal. We were pioneers in nuclear technology. In our worst nuclear disaster, nobody died.
ANWR has between 6 to 16 BILLION barrels of oil and an estimated 34 TRILLION (34,000,000,000,000) cubic feet of natural gas! Lets go get it!!! The Bakken Oil Fields holds an INCREDIBLE estimated 100 to 400 BILLION barrels of oil. The Saudis only have 260 Billion Barrels. (I don't believe him but Leigh Price, an oil scientist had estimated Bakken to contain as much as 900 BILLION barrels.)
WHY aren't we ALL beating our congressman's doors down over this? My congressman and both senators hear from me regularly about what ever I am ticked about paying for unnecessarily whether it's the tax bill or the high cost of energy that we must use to work. The cost had risen so much that I no longer work for myself but took a job with a local publisher. I had 2 employees -they're still looking.
To those who compare ANWR with Yellowstone -Get a life -AND a CLUE. It would be like some idiots we have here calling a local swamp a "sensitive wetlands eco-system" that they want to 'protect' from hunters.
Boiling it all down, Our enemies, The arabs, the communist chinese, the russians and the cubans are all in a massive oil and energy production race. Europe did not listen when Ronald Reagan warned Europe against the russian oil pipeline, now Germany and other countries are being leveraged by the damned (boy i would get a PNG for using the expletive I wanna use) russians and were, this week threatened with an energy shut-off. Are you awake yet folks? The globalistmoronidealists (Like Bush 1&2, Clinton, McCain, Osamabama) believe that economic inter-dependence between countries can only foster peace - very very foolish. Individual independence is the only thing that can protect a nation from tyranny and extortion. We must get out of the way of our industry and let it do what it does best - WORK. I don't care much for Calvin Coolidge but he said one thing I read as a child that has stuck with me: "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." (Commonly shortened to "The business of America is business.")
Let's bring on the Hydrogen and fuel cell technology, synthetic fuels, non-food ethanol, nuclear power, coal, hydroelectric, solar, wind and all of the other forms of energy that we have not even thought of yet - AND the vehicles and equipment designed to most efficiently use all of them - BUT let's go get that oil NOW, my car, your car, the police car, the ambulance, the planes, the helicopters, the tanks, the ships, every item we produce that uses plastics DEPEND on oil. We must have it now, we must have it cheap and if it takes 10 years to get it, which I do not believe, especially if we wisely put in an express lane to do this, at least we started TODAY because we will need the energy no matter when it finally arrives on the market. Do these things aggressively and the 60% speculation bloat now in the price of oil will be GONE.
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Thank you and have a nice day!
