Do you think "off shore dilling plan" is good for US?
John McCain went to Houston, Texas, Tuesday to talk about expanding drilling for oil off the coasts of the United States as a short term solution to the nation's looming energy crisis – a shift in position for him in the face of growing concern over rising energy prices.
But regardless of his shifting his policy, one should do that if he sees the benefit, I'm wondering if it would benefit us, what do you think?
i don't see any problem with drilling off shore. If there is alternative way of getting fuel, the story would be different but with the gas prices rising above $4 a gallon, either drill here now or regret it when other countries start drilling first. (i believe china is already drilling off of our shore 50 miles away) start drilling in Anwar which has 40 billion gallons of oil which we can use for the next 35~40 years.
I think that anything that makes us more independent as a nation is something to look into. We need to get back to being a nation that can stand on its own. Then again I have no idea what kind of implications an offshore oil drilling rig has on the economy.
Considering how safe off shore drilling has become I see no reason why we can't open up the Continental shelf to oil drilling. After Katrina hit the oil derricks there were no leaks if we can build them strong enough to withstand that monster we can do it to with stand almost anything!
As McCain said we still need to look into a long term solution and we should continue to look into alternative energy sources.
Another thing! Yes! Or we can let China and Cuba drill the Oil a sell it back to us!
Is there any proof that China/Cuba are drilling off shore? I keep hearing this claim but I've yet to see proof of it.
No nation will ever be independent again, that day has passed us by. What I hope we can accomplish as a nation is getting to a point where more people need us. We should be drilling offshore, we should be drilling ANWR we should be building refineries, we should be building nuclear power facilities as well.
Anyone who says no is misinformed. We pay more for the oil because the countries we buy it from know we have no other solution. This would give us one. Once they see that we need them no longer they will lower the price dramatically. Just the threat of drilling in Anwar and the shelf plus using the oil shale in ND and the other states will give us leverage to lower the price.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling for their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, “Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).” The sobering conclusion:The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.
And the impact of the projected 7% (!) increase in lower-48 oil production that might result in 2030 thanks to opening the OCS is … wait for it …… any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.
For AEO2007, an OCS access case was prepared to examine the potential impacts of the lifting of Federal restrictions on access to the OCS in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Currently, except for a relatively small tract in the eastern Gulf, resources in those areas are legally off limits to exploration and development. Mean estimates from the MMS indicate that technically recoverable resources currently off limits in the lower 48 OCS total 18 billion barrels of crude oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (Table 10).
Although existing moratoria on leasing in the OCS will expire in 2012, the AEO2007 reference case assumes that they will be reinstated, as they have in the past. Current restrictions are therefore assumed to prevail for the remainder of the projection period, with no exploration or development allowed in areas currently unavailable to leasing. The OCS access case assumes that the current moratoria will not be reinstated, and that exploration and development of resources in those areas will begin in 2012.
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...it is assumed that local infrastructure issues and other potential non-Federal impediments will be resolved after Federal access restrictions have been lifted. With these assumptions, technically recoverable undiscovered resources in the lower 48 OCS increase to 59 billion barrels of oil and 288 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as compared with the reference case levels of 41 billion barrels and 210 trillion cubic feet.
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Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.
