Can We Start Drilling Offshore Now?

Everybody is aware of the horrible accident that occurred on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana which has resulted in 11 missing workers. The oil rig suffered an explosion and the resultant fire and has now slipped below the surface, but guess what? There has been no leakage of oil.

No environmental disaster which all of the enviro weenies constantly harp about and use to fear monger to block the further exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas in the offshore fields that have been identified. This of course is horrible news for the environmental crowd.

There is no crude oil spilling from the sunken oil rig off the Louisiana coast, an official told "Good Morning America" today, easing fears of a massive environmental disaster.

"We've been able to determine there is nothing emanating from the well-head," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said. "That being said, we have positioned resources to be ready to respond should a spill occur... We will continue to monitor 24/7 for the next several days."

That information is contained in a print version of the report on the ABC news web site, but see if you catch any mention of it in the video report.

Now guess which version of this report will have a bigger effect.

Of course this won't matter one bit in the minds of the apocalyptic mindset of the liberals who seem to see the destruction of the planet just around every corner.

The incident is horrible and I am not trying to make light of it, but it does provide empirical data, that means provable and concrete for those who worship at the altar of Al Gore, that we can drill in the waters off of our coasts safely. The cause of the explosion of course needs to be investigated completely so that the cause can be determined and steps can be taken to prevent such a thing from happening again, but there is no reason to continue blocking the expansion of the oil companies efforts to tap into these resources.

It is time to stop the politics of fear that the liberals engage in. Basing arguments on unseen boogey men with specious and unproven arguments has got to end. Exchange woulda, coulda, shoulda with proven information from solid sources and quit scaring people with their imminent demise.

Our efforts to reach the moon also met with some failures and loss of life, but it also provided some of the best examples of what it is that used to make America great and highlighted our indomitable spirit and good old Yankee ingenuity and know how. It is time to try and recapture that spirit and quit living in fear of what happens if we fail.

How Many Jobs Does This Create, Barry?

The president in training pants is at the helm of a train that is taking the express route to hell and taking this country with it, and he just keeps on pouring on the coal. I don't think any president has done so much to hurt this country in such a short period of time.

To his list of shameful acts in regards to Gitmo and the handling of the terrorists housed there, and his unbelievably socialistic spending program, add backtracking on exploring and tapping our own natural resources.

Just earlier today he told his adoring masses that he wanted to wean us off of our dependence on foreign oil. Well, apparently he wants to get us off of domestic oil too.

This is San Fran Nan's response to Barry O rolling back the order that President Bush had approved for exploring off shore oil reserves.

"Today, Interior Secretary Salazar unveiled a new approach to reviewing the energy potential of the Outer Continental Shelf. With this announcement, the Obama Administration has taken a critical step toward a comprehensive energy policy.

"From beginning to end, the Bush Administration maintained a single-minded focus on oil and gas drilling above all other forms of energy -- releasing a draft plan to vastly expand offshore drilling just four days before President Obama's inauguration.

"The new Administration is stopping this headlong rush to open new offshore areas of drilling, calling for a thorough review, with much greater public participation. And Secretary Salazar is wisely initiating a review of the potential for offshore renewable energy, and moving forward with long-stalled rules to ensure that offshore renewable energy projects can proceed in an environmentally-responsible manner.

"We cannot drill our way to energy independence. But by harnessing all of our domestic energy resources, and aggressively pursuing new technology to unleash them, we move a giant step closer toward energy independence."

Earlier this month Salazar had removed 77 tracts of land in Utah from the bidding process for oil exploration.

So just where are all these jobs he is promising going to come from, and even if he creates them how are the people supposed to get to them with an ever shrinking oil and gas reserves?

Cross posted over at my place.

No, No, No, You Can't Drill Here No Mo'

Hey Nancy, how many jobs does this cost us?

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to announce today that 77 parcels of land which were up for lease in Utah to oil companies for exploration will be withdrawn.

This follows the usual storyline. President Bush opened up the area for exploration, the environmental groups swooped in and started filing lawsuits, finally found a sympathetic judge, and now 110,000 acres are once again off limits.

The Bush administration conducted the lease sale in December, but environmental groups went to court to block the winning bids encompassing roughly 110,000 acres near pristine areas such as Nine Mile Canyon, Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument.

Just before Bush left office last month, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina issued a restraining order on the lease sales, postponing the final transactions until he could hear arguments on the merits of the case.

You do understand that the Democrat approach to America's energy problems is not to make us energy independent, but rather it is to reduce us to a zero energy consumption country. They are going to do this by passing ridiculous legislation in congress which will impose impossible emission standards on businesses and power manufacturing plants along with autos, draconian so-called CAFE standards, using their proxies in the courts and in the environmental movement to tie up any attempts to conduct exploration and recovery of any fossil fuels as well as blocking the construction of nuclear and coal power plants.

I long for the day when other states quit selling energy to California so that a permanent blackout descends upon the state and maybe, finally, those ignorant dunces in Hollyweird, along with their environmental goofballs who all worship at the Temple of the Goracle, will finally get a clue.

Well, It's About Time

The high price of oil has created a boom in domestic oil drilling and production.

We need a lot more of it. Now if we just started drilling in ANWR.

George Stapleton has been in the oil business for 30 years, helping plumb sands and shale across the Middle East, Asia and Europe. Now the chief executive of MegaWest Energy Corp is drilling deep into Missouri farmland.

In a non-descript pasture bordered by a pecan grove and a fish pond, Stapleton's company has hit black gold -- and in doing so is demonstrating how record prices of more than $100 a barrel are fueling a modern-day American wildcat oil era.

In other words, the higher prices and profit motive has generated a boom in oil exploration/drilling/production.

Indeed, as giant oil and gas conglomerates focus on key resource sites in Alaska, off shore and abroad, a new breed of speculator is emerging to dig deep into hard-to-mine areas abandoned when energy prices sank in the late 1980s. New technology has made many formerly abandoned U.S. oil fields easier to access, and recent high prices have made using that high-cost technology profitable.

More than 17,000 new U.S. oil wells were tapped in 2007, the most active pace since 1990, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a leading U.S. trade group.

So the higher prices have made previously costly to access oil now a reasonable source to tap.

The bottom line here is we don't have to build expensive, government grant-funded ethanol plants, we don't have to take millions of tons of grain out of the food supply, and we don't have to try to invent expensive new energy sources. We just have to let the law of supply and demand work in the oil industry, watch the higher price cause some efficiency and drop in demand, plus watch the profit motive generate an increased supply.

I expect to see a significant surplus of supply in the future.