the price of gas
In my humble opinion, which, as you know, is always excruciatingly correct, this is a pretty good article, something for the intellect to chew on for a bit.
Ask yourself if there is a candidate, anywhere, that can have any measurable impact on this kind of behavior.
We hear a lot about domestic sources of oil and natural gas, and a lot about why and why not we shouldn't be exploiting them. Like everything else, I see this as a tangled up mess of separate issues, not the least of which are these, (in no particular order) :
1) the environmental impact of exploration and exploitation.
2) the economic impact of these initiatives.
3) the issue of dependency on carbon fuels.
I am sure that there are more, but these three are more than enough to mentally chew on for decades, (the nation has not come to term with these issues since the seventies, you expect me to do it in a couple of paragraphs?); but if suffices to say that in order to make any progress, the country needs to separate these questions and get a clear understanding of what is involved and at stake, who stands to gain and lose, and the prioritize our responses.
I am not opposed to drilling offshore, to be blunt, the rest of the world is already exploting these resources, off our shores, why not us. The issues here seem to be how do we protect our environmental interests, and, since we are investing a bit of our own national capital in the effort, what is in this for the average citizen? I do not want to hear about our nations security and future and a batch of shit from the big oil companies, gasoline in Venezuela is selling for about 19 cents a gallon in US dollars. That is a tangible benefit to the average citizen from the investment made in terms of national capital. The oil companies are still raking it in, the government is still getting filthy rich from the various pools of graft and corruption that seem to sprout from sources of revenue like crabgrass on a manicured lawn, but there is a benefit to the average Jose' while we up north get screwed.
I'm just sayin'.....
The issue on ANWAR is something else. There is no competition, and the data that support drilling is a lot less conclusive. There are a lot of other untapped resources that are a lot less ecologically fragile, if big oil will just spend a bit of money looking for them rather than buying back their rather profitable stock.
That brings me to another point that is made in the artice cited above.
Why do we surrender much of our resources so a very few can get very rich screwing us out of what we own already? The energy industry is as close to an unregulated monopoly as there is today, and no one cries "free market" louder than they do. The energy consortium is owned, in large part by interests not based in the United States. They are in a position to use things to manipulate the market and therefore prices to artificially inflate the value of their holdings and sales, and to affect the economies of nations to the better and worse.
And we worry about some countries having the bomb. That friends is significant, but it is a ruse, it deflects attention from the real war.
Ask yourself who really gains and loses from the launch of a few rockets in the Persian Gulf.
You lose, to the tune of about $25,000,000 in profits per day. Those rockets? They might as well be bricks for all the military value that they have, but strategically speaking, they make the rest of the worlds arsenals look puny in comparison.
If we didn't think we were handing a box af ammo to the people holding us hostage with guns to our heads, we might be inclined to pursue a sensible domestic energy policy. But we all needa stake in it, and it needs to be a bit more than we get to go one giving all that we make to Chevron and BP and whomever.
That might be called socialism. So what? I call it progressive, and realistic. Definately necessary.
Finally. There has to be a better way. I cannot sit here at my computer and say what it is, but I know that if we do not adopt it, we will die off within another generation or two. If the nation/state is to survive we must take care of ourselves first, yes even to the exclusion of others, then reach out and help others adopt similar ways. We must be willing to negotiate, but not compromise.
I don't know if that is possible. I believe that the crop of candidates that we have know these things but continue to bellow the same old BS that resonates so well with TV camera's and pundits that have an attention span not much longer than, well, you know....
I'm glad I am the age that I am. call me a coward, but I really don't want to go through a lot of this.
Think this through, do what you think is best.
Stay focused.
Ask yourself if there is a candidate, anywhere, that can have any measurable impact on this kind of behavior.
We hear a lot about domestic sources of oil and natural gas, and a lot about why and why not we shouldn't be exploiting them. Like everything else, I see this as a tangled up mess of separate issues, not the least of which are these, (in no particular order) :
1) the environmental impact of exploration and exploitation.
2) the economic impact of these initiatives.
3) the issue of dependency on carbon fuels.
I am sure that there are more, but these three are more than enough to mentally chew on for decades, (the nation has not come to term with these issues since the seventies, you expect me to do it in a couple of paragraphs?); but if suffices to say that in order to make any progress, the country needs to separate these questions and get a clear understanding of what is involved and at stake, who stands to gain and lose, and the prioritize our responses.
I am not opposed to drilling offshore, to be blunt, the rest of the world is already exploting these resources, off our shores, why not us. The issues here seem to be how do we protect our environmental interests, and, since we are investing a bit of our own national capital in the effort, what is in this for the average citizen? I do not want to hear about our nations security and future and a batch of shit from the big oil companies, gasoline in Venezuela is selling for about 19 cents a gallon in US dollars. That is a tangible benefit to the average citizen from the investment made in terms of national capital. The oil companies are still raking it in, the government is still getting filthy rich from the various pools of graft and corruption that seem to sprout from sources of revenue like crabgrass on a manicured lawn, but there is a benefit to the average Jose' while we up north get screwed.
I'm just sayin'.....
The issue on ANWAR is something else. There is no competition, and the data that support drilling is a lot less conclusive. There are a lot of other untapped resources that are a lot less ecologically fragile, if big oil will just spend a bit of money looking for them rather than buying back their rather profitable stock.
That brings me to another point that is made in the artice cited above.
Why do we surrender much of our resources so a very few can get very rich screwing us out of what we own already? The energy industry is as close to an unregulated monopoly as there is today, and no one cries "free market" louder than they do. The energy consortium is owned, in large part by interests not based in the United States. They are in a position to use things to manipulate the market and therefore prices to artificially inflate the value of their holdings and sales, and to affect the economies of nations to the better and worse.
And we worry about some countries having the bomb. That friends is significant, but it is a ruse, it deflects attention from the real war.
Ask yourself who really gains and loses from the launch of a few rockets in the Persian Gulf.
You lose, to the tune of about $25,000,000 in profits per day. Those rockets? They might as well be bricks for all the military value that they have, but strategically speaking, they make the rest of the worlds arsenals look puny in comparison.
If we didn't think we were handing a box af ammo to the people holding us hostage with guns to our heads, we might be inclined to pursue a sensible domestic energy policy. But we all needa stake in it, and it needs to be a bit more than we get to go one giving all that we make to Chevron and BP and whomever.
That might be called socialism. So what? I call it progressive, and realistic. Definately necessary.
Finally. There has to be a better way. I cannot sit here at my computer and say what it is, but I know that if we do not adopt it, we will die off within another generation or two. If the nation/state is to survive we must take care of ourselves first, yes even to the exclusion of others, then reach out and help others adopt similar ways. We must be willing to negotiate, but not compromise.
I don't know if that is possible. I believe that the crop of candidates that we have know these things but continue to bellow the same old BS that resonates so well with TV camera's and pundits that have an attention span not much longer than, well, you know....
I'm glad I am the age that I am. call me a coward, but I really don't want to go through a lot of this.
Think this through, do what you think is best.
Stay focused.
posted by eccentric recluse at 12:59 PM
3 Comments:
This is an issue that I seem somehow to stand alone on with my peer group. I do not think that exploration and production are going to help our immediate problem. The infra structures to produce oil, refine and ship it are going to take at least 8-9 years to implement.
In many ways why would the oil companies even want to do this when they can make even large profits based on OPEC prices and not have to spend the billons that it will cost them in production costs? Now I know that if you have your own oil you can sell it and make more money: this would be the incentive to the oil companies to go ahead and do the domestic exploration and production and of course the government with its outrageous tax on us, the people, not the oil companies, wants the money too.
I am under the impression that even if American Oil Companies produced more domestic oil that they still would only have around a 10% market share which means that OPEC would still control the price of a barrel of oil.
To that end, the oil companies get rich, the American government gets rich and we the people get screwed.
On the thought of the impact to the environment, I do not think that we should be drilling for oil in wildlife preserves. For Gods sake, how greedy are we as a nation? We have limited resources with too many people trying to use them. People need to stop reproducing like rats and immigration needs to be seriously looked at. What if we found a crap load of oil reserves or natural gas in the Everglades we should just burn them down and go in and glut glut glut?
The immediate and only solution is that the American people need to take a hard look at them selves in the same way an obese person needs to approach a diet. Consumption = fat. A lifestyle choice to be slim and fit has to be adhered to and implemented and followed not just while there is a weighty problem, but for life.
I would suggest that the immediate fix is to downsize our vehicles, to recycle plastic products or not use them at all. Any measures that can be taken should be taken. In then end if we as a nation do not make the correct choices we will die. It is time to stop blaming everyone else for our problems and make the commitment to fix ourselves.
Oh I forgot to say that apparently US oil companies have to buy over 50% of the oil that they sell domestically
I tend to agree with you as far as it goes, I don't think that drilling offshore is going to help us as a nation in the short term, or as consumers at all, but we may as well have some control over our borders and our territory if somebody is going to drill, (and somebody is--right now). On the issue of the wildlife and conservation areas, I admit that I can be swayed, but not at the price of the possibility of somebody getting rich, it needs to be a proven advantage for the country with control in the hands of government, (and a government a lot more given to accountability than the one we have in place now). In other words, I want to see us able to rebuild on our own terms, to be able to be a bit more independent of the new energy barons, who are no better than the old ones, they just speak a different language and deposit the checks elsewhere.
I agree that we should lead the world away from the carbon economy thatb exists today. we should leverage the advantages that we have left and go with them, but to do that, we need to take care of our own citizenry and infrastructure needs first. It will be painful, for some more than others, and it will shake our vision of ourselves in the world, but it must be done.
ER
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