Offshore oil will be sold to China or wherever - it will do nothinng to help our energy problem.

[grahamhgreen]

Every oil cmpany has stated the oil will go out on the open market, so the pretense the President is using that this will reduce our dependence on foriegn oil holds little truth.

[joeybee12]

1. Stop making sense!!!!

Obama is a genius...he went to harvard...he knows everything, we know nothing!!!!!!

[hayu_lol]

2. One could make a reasonable assumption...

that since refinery capacity is maxed out, that any new oil will be: 1. Sold offshore, possibly to Japan(where much of the Alaska oil went)or China or: 2. Shipped through the Canal to eastern refinery sites where the barrel price is marked up because it is offshore(foreign)oil. That gimmick was used with the Alaskan oil as well.

[Statistical]

3. Have you thought this through.

Yes oil is sold on open market however profits are maximized by selling oil closest to production.
This is a major reason we buy a lot of oil from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela.
We also produce about 1/3 of the oil we consume and almost all of that remains here and very little (about 5%) is exported.

Once again transports costs are reduced by selling oil as close to where it is produced. Just because refineries are maxed out doesn't mean that domestic oil won't replace foreign oil.

I mean just visualize it for a second. Say new wells produces 100 mil barrels (or any number).

Which makes more sense?

Scenario A
Reduce imports 100 mil barrels (replace then with 100 mil produced locally)
Foreign country exports 100 mil barrels to China instead (100 mil barrels of super tankers)

Scenario B
Produce 100 mil barrels of oil and then export them to China (100 mil on supertankers)
Continue to import oil from foreign country (another 100 mil on super tankers)
US supertanker exporting oil to China passes Foreign supertank importing oil to US.
Captains look and each other and say WTF? :)

[grahamhgreen]

6. So the assertion that offshore drilling WILL decrease foriegn oil consumption is untrue,

Whereas increasing solar, wind, hydro, tidal, and wave energy will make us more energy independant.

Which is why that is the direction the President should be headed in.

[Javaman]

7. The oil is sold before it is pumped out of the ground.

It's a speculative commodity.

the nation or corp that buys it, transports it. if exxon uses it's ships they charge the nation or foreign corp buying it a premium on transport.

It makes no difference.

People on DU keep trying to think that the oil (if any) that is pumped out some how entitles us to it first due to it's location. It's all about about price. The higher the better for the oil corps. If a country is 10,000 miles away and is willing to buy it, so be it. they get the sale and the cost of transport.

Once people realize that whatever oil that is extracted holds no nationality, then they will understand that just by pumping more or exporting for more or opening more lands for more, does nothing to lessen it's cost.

If the price gets too low, the corps pump less. If there is a sudden glut, they refine less. If there is too much refined product, they store it in tankers off the coast.

this is nothing new.

The days of embargo, etc are over, those were destructive procedures that helped no one (the rich anyway). The better option is controlling the price via owning the spigot or limiting it's flow.

[MadHound]

8. Nicely played words there

Yes, only about five percent of US crude is exported. However what generally happens is that we take our crude, refine it into gas and diesel, then export the finished product. Roughly that means about another ten-fifteen percent of US oil is exported, only in the form of refined products.

Nice word play there, but not quite slick enough.

[dmallind]

4. The two are not mutually exclusive

The less concentrated the oil production is in the hands of a few potentially troublesome Middle Eastern theocracies the better. Obviously if we produce more oil it will lessen our dependence on foreign oil. If we produce X% of world oil output now and X+Y% in a few years then Y will be the decrease in dependency even assuming perfectly fungible commodity markets with free allocation and no restrictions based on country of origina at all. You can argue abiout the impact of that (which I too suspect will be minimal to moderate at best) but the fact that we will sell our oil on the global market just like we, and damn near every other oil producing country, does right now does not mean that more US oil production is a bad thing for the oil market as a whole, us included.

[skeptical cynic]

5. Consider that the children of America's poor are dying in the

Middle East to ensure a stable environment for oil production, while the bulk of U.S. oil imports come from Canada and Venezuela, and it all makes sense. That isn't about security, it's about making the world a friendly place for multinational corporations, the biggest ones being all about oil.

By approving offshore oil drilling, Obama throws Big Oil a bone. By not allowing drilling off the coasts of California and Alaska, he tosses liberals a bone.

It is as simple as that.