OFF-SHORE DRILLING WILL DO NOTHING FOR THE PRICE OF OIL FOR SEVEN (7) TO TEN (10) YEARS.
THE OIL COMPANIES HAVE 68 MILLION ACRES OF LAND WITH THE RIGHTS TO DRILL AND THEY HAVE NOT. MORE THAN HALF OF THAT IS OFF-SHORE
I WANT TO KNOW WHY JOHN MCCAIN AND HIS OIL COMPANY BUDDIES ARE PUSHING FOR OFF-SHORE AND ANWR (ALASKA) DRILLING WHEN THEY ALREADY HAVE NEARLY 40,000 ACRES OF OFF-SHORE DRILLING APPROVED AND LEASED BY THE CONGRESS
This is just another one of the Republican Party’s huge repertoire of prefabricated issues that contain more heat than light.
And again like a hungry bunch of voracious locusts eating everything in sight, the American population starving for an answer to outrageous gas, food, commercial transportation costs, etc is ready to take any solution that a duplicitous politician like John McCain comes forth with and swallow it whole hog.
I heard John McCain on television last evening quoting one of his oil buddies that the price of gas could drop dramatically if the federal government would allow off-shore drilling. How dumb does the McCain campaign think the people of this country are?
Well, let me tell you that our Republican friends are counting on our stupidity but push off-shore drilling when in fact it will be a minimum of seven to ten years before we see the first drop of oil and we will be lucky if it occurs that quickly.
Now Obama is refining his position indicating that if allowing limited off-shore drilling will help get a comprehensive energy bill through immediately he would be willing to make minor compromises.
I do not know if the American people are just plain cockeyed optimists who are so easily persuaded they will believe anything if it fits into their way of thinking, or simply extraordinarily naive.
Without studying or even being slightly familiar with the facts, the voters want to believe that opening up off-shore drilling to oil companies such as Exxon-Mobile that just made $11.6 billion dollars in the last quarter the price of gas will do down spectacularly.
Hey, none of us like to have gas costing us over $4.00 a gallon, but you will recall that you (not me) voted two oil men into the White House not once, but twice.
You will recall the Dick Cheney called an energy commission together in Washington, D. C. You will recall that Mr. Cheney refused to relate to the press or any other party where the meeting was being held. You will recall that the Vice-President refused to release the names of those who were present at the meeting that would determine this country’s energy policy for the next eight years. You will recall that later through some infamous leak, we discovered that nearly every person in that meeting was connected in some way to the oil/energy industry.
When this meeting was called gas was $1.46 per gallon. Today that same gallon of gasoline is $4.00. I do not now what happened in the energy commission meeting and neither does anybody else, but one of the policies that came out of it was, “Let’s screw the consumer.”
Bush and Cheney and Halliburton and all of the friends and families of the Bush Associates and supporters have made a fortune off of the backs of the consuming public. And like fools, even after the private energy meeting and all of the other treachery the Bush Administration has pulled off, the country re-elected “the shrub” (the name given to George W. Bush by the now deceased, Molly Ivins, a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist from Texas) meaning small bush and his herd of cowboys from the Texas Oil fields.
Nancy Pelosi told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week that the oil giants have leases approved by the Congress and the President for years if not decades for 68 million acres of federal land, 40 million of which is off shore and they have done nothing.
With all of the potential oil assets in those 68 million acres why in the name of the eco-sphere do they need more and why, if not for purely, political pandering would McCain flip flop again and along with his Republican honchos now demand that the Congress come back into session and grant the voracious oil companies with valuable off-shore sites in addition to the 68 million they already have in their little greedy fists?
More importantly, why has not one oil company or energy related company built a new refinery since 1979? One oil executive said it wasn’t worth the expense. When your company is making a profit of over $10 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2008, you will never convince me that an investment of a few billion is not worth it, In fact, some of those quite knowledgeable in energy business have suggested that we have plenty of oil, what we need is more refining capacity
MSNBC reported that “As of this week, the industry is producing gasoline and other end products at something like 98 percent of capacity. And with the overall growth in demand for motor fuels and heating oil showing no signs of slowing, prices will continue to be driven as much by tight refining capacity as by the recent run-up in crude prices.”
Bloomberg also reported that Kuwait is interested in doing a joint venture with a medium sized oil company in America such as Marathon Oil to build a new refinery. Our environmental restrictions are so exacting that oil companies are less than enthusiastic to building them. But two or three states have expressed an interest to bring new business and thus new jobs to their state.
World-wide, refinery capacity in 2007 according to Bloomberg was running at 95% and that limited capacity is the primary cause for the recent and spectacular increase in gas prices. Therefore, why increase refining capacity that will only result in a lowering of gas prices and a reduction of the colossal profits of the oil companies.
McCain and his desperate Republican colleagues in the Congress hit the nail squarely on the thumb again, If we have a huge shortage of refining volume you can drill all the holes in the ground you want, but until you build refineries, there will not be any more gasoline and therefore no reduction in the price at the pumps.
That is why Obama has been calling for a well-thought out energy policy and plan that will cover all of the bases and allow the U. S. once and for all to free ourselves from our reliance on Middle Eastern Oil and fossil fuels in general.
McCain lurches forth with over simplistic answers to very complex problems. His intellect is quite shallow; perhaps that is why he finished 5th from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy.
He hit Obama’s response to a question from a member of his audience who wanted to know some simple things that we as individuals could do to reduce our use of gasoline. Obama suggested that if everyone inflated the air in their tires and tuned their car’s engines regularly, they could decrease our use of gasoline 3% or 800,000 barrels a day or about the same amount of gas as off-shore drilling would produce. McCain’s team laughed themselves into a frenzy and then got the bright idea to send out tire gauges with OBAMA’S ENERGY POLICY printed on the side.
It was only when the federal government’s Department of Transportation, the AAA, NASCAR and others all came out and said that Obama was correct, that inflating the air in your tires and have your engine tuned regularly will save on gasoline, did McCain finally turned off his spigot of derision and sheepishly agree that Obama was right.
As a Florida home owner, drilling off-shore is a little frightening and it should be to everyone who has an interest in spending their vacations at the beach, or swimming in the Gulf, the Atlantic or the Pacific, or boating in the open waters of the ocean or simply preserving the beauty of our shorelines. If it were not for the fact that the oil companies have had 68 million acres of U. S. property approved for drilling for years and have done nothing should tell you this is another Republican gimmick that sounds great, but is worth nothing when it comes to solving the real energy crisis of our nation.
John McCain should go back to Arizona and spend some time with his staff in developing a viable energy policy that will unshackle this nation from the chains of Middle Eastern volatility and its oil that has driven our foreign policy and our economy far too long.
10:36:35 PM 
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