Pierre Tristam: Still places worth drilling for oil, but what does U.S. do after that?

[marmar]

from the Daytona Beach News-Journal:



Still places worth drilling for oil, but what does U.S. do after that?

The debate over oil prices took a turn for the useless the moment our Dear Leader and his party's heir began blaming $4-a-gallon gas on people who oppose drilling in the neighborhood of Florida's beaches or in Alaska's wildlife refuge. According to those two, the people in Jakarta and Sydney and London are paying more for gas because the people in Burlington and San Francisco and Daytona Beach were opposed to sucking up a few drips of oil from the Atlantic and the Arctic.

It's never wise to trust an addict, but George Bush and John McCain are also pushers with a considerable clientele for cracked-up ideas, like consumers who think nothing about railing against social programs that help the poor but somehow feel their $40,000, 12-mpg SUV is entitled to cheap energy. Now they're telling us that opening up more seas and federal lands to drilling will bring down the price of oil. That's about as logical as suggesting that curing cancer will save Social Security -- if by curing cancer more people will live longer and contribute more taxes to the Social Security trust fund. Even if it wasn't mathematically outlandish, generating more tax dollars shouldn't figure in the top 1,000 reasons to cure cancer. Just the same, there may be some reasons to drill for oil. Lowering the price of oil isn't among them.

And there are a few places worth drilling: The world isn't about to switch away from its oil-based economy overnight. Canada's gigantic oil sands reserves come to mind, as does that other off-shore prize more than 4,000 American soldiers and a few hundred thousand others have died for, so far -- Iraq's 100 billion barrel oil reserve that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are ready to tap again after being thrown out by Saddam Hussein in 1972. (This time, the consortium secured 58 permanent American military bases for its protection.) The war for oil aside, the price of that oil should reflect its decline as a resource and its polluting effects as a fuel. The higher prices should spur innovations. As far as fossil-energy costs are concerned, there's nothing more overdue than higher prices, especially if it blunts consumption.

Still, current prices won't stay this high. The market is most likely in an unsustainable price bubble. But drilling more to generate even an extra 1 million barrels a day 10 years down the line (because not a drop of oil will be produced until then) will make a difference in 2015 gas prices only in the minds of people who like their promises served up in crack pipes. Not that there's that much oil to be had here. America as an oil power is history. It can only remain so at the expense of others (hence, again, Iraq). But that's getting the drill too close to the mother lode of open secrets. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.news-journalonline.com/ColEssays.htm

[Hugin]

1. I just wish they'd get the alternatives on-line before they 'blunt consumption'.

Otherwise, it kinda comes across as gouging.