How much oil would ANWR be producing had we been allowed to drill by The Greatest President Ever?

what kind of discussion on race would we be having if the south won the civil war?

(seems about as relevant, no?)

so what do we do *now*? spend resources chasing something that is not going to make much of an impact on the supply/demand curve in the long term and especially in the short term when the effect both economically and psychologically is greater or put those resources to finding a way to ween ourselves off of oil?

I heard a joke recently that Clinton must have been in the pocket of big oil to veto the ANWR bill, because the oil industry would have been getting only $30 a barrel for so long rather than the $130 they can now get

Ron, do you know how long it's going to take to wean ourselves off oil? It won't happen in our lifetime.

We need to find alternatives, but we need oil now, and even in the next 5, 10, 15+++ years.

It really suks Cat. Even if it does take years to get at that oil, by passing the legislation necessary to drill offshore, or even in ANWR (which my outdoorsmen side is still queasy about, but citizen's budget's are important too, people gotta live), the financial markets would likely make adjustments in anticipation of the increased supply.

These morons in the congress need to stop drinking the environmental extremist koolaide

you are joking right Ron? We are not going to get "off" oil and natural gas for 50 years, under the best research, so why not use what are the most efficient and currently available resources until we can be properly weened?

???AOLI????

The area to drill in ANWR is tiny compared to the vast size of the reserve, kind of like your neighborhood's subdivision compared to your state.

ah, so that we can feed the unmet and still growing demand of china, india et al? are we going to close us shop and be totally self-sufficient in terms of oil?

or will supplying energy (thermodynamics) from other sources like wind, solar and nuclear make a bigger impact?

face it, we are not going to drill our way out of a problem. i guess these myopic populist ideas help mollify the conservative base...

I thought it was Bush and Cheney?

No, let's give up now. Throw in the towel, stop processing any and all crude oil in the US until we can get those windmills up and running, the solar panels made and installed, and nuclear reactors built.

I imagine you wouldn't mind riding your bicycle to deliver the pizzas instead of your Gremlin.

Quote of the Day dude!!!

so now fighting a strategic battle is giving up? i'm not big on doing things for the sake of doing them. 1) how soon will we realize the benefits of the drilling? 2) who is really going to benefit? do you think that it is consumers/the economy? is this the classic "the success of the oil industry will pull the economy along!" argument?

too bad we are in the middle of a textbook refutation of that argument.

i do think that the wayne's world gremlin would be a sweet ride. too bad i ride the subway everyday.

Ron, the estimates I've seen are somewhere in the 7-10 year range for realizing benefits from ANWR. By my count, you've already been in post-secondary school for seven years, and have gone back for a couple more. Does that mean it was a stupid decision for you to go to start school lo those many years ago?

I really don't even see how that's a feasible argument. There may not be an immediate solution, but there is something we could do long-term that would make things better - and by your logic, the fact that it's not immediate means we shouldn't even start? Build a highway to help solve congestion?! What, are you nuts?! That won't help anything for five years!!! ...or... Exercise and diet?! Why, that's going to take time! I want something that will solve all my problems immediately. And don't tell me that there's nothing I can do immediately - because if there's not, I'd prefer to do nothing!!!

I think, for all their willingness to capitalize on the trouble it's causing and blame Bush for it, leftists really aren't at all upset that energy prices are higher - why would they be?

Homer Simpson when he read the instructions for heating something up in the microwave - 30 seconds? Ooooohhhhhhh, but I want it now!.

i think the long term writing is on the wall though! we can add more aggregate supply but aggregate demand is simply going to be the controlling force and swallow that extra demand whole.

strategically, this wake up call should be about allocating resources for the next step.

fwiw, i do like having an excuse to ride the subway. and i don't blame bush at all. i owe the rise in prices/demand to the world economy; china and india in paticular.

Ron, there are two sides to the supply/demand equation. You can say all you want that it's not that much, but it's something, and it would certainly result in lower, not higher, prices. If it's not that much, why are you so concerned that oil companies might make money off it? It's not that much, after all.

BTW, nice shift from the time involved to the marginal impact argument.

While energy "independence" is an impossible dream, there's no doubt the U.S. has vast undeveloped fossil-fuel deposits. A tiny corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contains an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil and would be the largest producing oil field in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet the Senate blocked that development as recently as last month. The Outer Continental Shelf is estimated to contain some 86 billion barrels of oil, plus 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet of the shelf's 1.76 billion acres, 85% is off-limits and 97% is undeveloped.

Engineers recently perfected refining solid shale rock into diesel or gas, which may amount to the largest oil supply in the world – perhaps as much as 1.8 trillion barrels in the American West. That's enough to meet current U.S. oil demand for more than two centuries. Yet as late as 2007, Democrats attached a rider to the energy bill that prohibits leasing the federal interior lands that contain at least 80% of America's oil shale. The key vote was cast by liberal Senator Ken Salazar from Colorado, of all places.


----excerpted from the WSJ Online.....

And yet 6 of the 10 oil-shale test/pilot plants operating in the US today are located in Colorado...

Pay no attention to who is causing the real problems.

ANWR Exploration
House Republicans: 91% Supported
House Democrats: 86% Opposed

Coal-to-Liquid
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 78% Opposed

Oil Shale Exploration
House Republicans: 90% Supported
House Democrats: 86% Opposed

Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Exploration
House Republicans: 81% Supported
House Democrats: 83% Opposed

Refinery Increased Capacity
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 96% Opposed

j, with futures increasing by the day, you are convinced that we've found the equilibium price? sorry, but this is totally demand driven. the supply we add won't do much to stop it either. so, no, i am not convinced that it will "certainly" result in lower prices in any meaningful way. my concern isn't over the oil companies profiting, it is them profiting at the cost of consumers and the entire economy.

the "shift" relates to both points i've discussed here in this thread. i wasn't trying any funny business or anything.

oh, so while i (and others) are making arguments as to why the "drill drill drill" isn't to answer that it seems to be to the myopic, these are disregarded because republicans are omnipotent?

come on, pale.

No credence to the dollars declining value causing part of the price spike?

And time to develop new oil fields is a concern, but time to develop alt energy sources is no problem?

Any return on alt sources won't come for a decade, so therefore, according to Ron, why bother.

no credence because the demand forces are much greater than the exchange rate forces here.

the time isn't the concern (i mentioned time because people are clamoring for drilling as a solution when it will provide no immediate relief). the concern is about the writing on the wall.


did they teach you this logic at cuny law? alt energy in 10 years means far less reliance on oil. drilling to get supply increases which show no sign of finding an equilibrium price due to the rate at which demand will continue to climb is simply prolonging this vicious cycle but now with 10 years of investment in oil instead of something to transition away from oil.

the economics are trying to lead us to a solution but you and your ilk's stubborness/pigheadedness is clouding your analysis.