Democrats’ Crisis Of Choice
Readers of this blog know that I’ve used the phrase Crisis of Choice with regards to the gas crisis. I just talked with Erick at RedState about that terminology. Erick agrees that this crisis is a crisis of choice.
It’s time that we pinned this tail on the Donkeys. It’s time we pinned this tail on the Donkeys every morning, every afternoon, every evening, each day of the week, each week between now and Election Day.
These days, the major difference between the GOP energy plan and the Democrats’ energy plan is oil production. Democrats utterly refuse to even entertain the thought of increasing oil production. If they thought about increasing oil exploration or production, they’d have their knees cut off by their allies in the environmental movement in a NY minute.
While Democrats make their case for their energy plan, they’ve used several phrases that IBD debunked. Here’s one popular Democrat mantra:
“We can’t drill our way out of our energy crisis.”
Actually, we can. As we’ve noted before, conservative estimates put the total amount of recoverable oil in conventional deposits at about 39 billion barrels. Offshore, we have another 89 billion barrels or so. In ANWR, 10 billion barrels.
In oil shale deposits, we have more than 1 trillion barrels of oil. In perspective, that’s about four times the total reserves of Saudi Arabia. And if estimates of shale reserves as high as 2 trillion barrels prove true, we’ll have about a 300-year supply of oil just from shale. This compares with current estimated total U.S. oil reserves of about 21 billion barrels.
Democrats have filibustered every piece of legislation that would’ve opened up oil exploration. In fact, had Bill Clinton not foolishly vetoed that bill, ANWR would’ve been pumping oil and natural gas long before this Crisis of Choice.
Here’s another myth:
“Oil companies are sitting on 68 million acres of oil leases and refuse to drill.”
This is yet another slander of “Big Oil” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one that has become a major talking point for Democrats in Congress. It’s completely dishonest.
Oil companies have spent billions of dollars for those leases. Drilling has increased by more than 66% since 2000. They are searching for oil even as you read this. Some parts of those 68 million acres will have oil, some won’t. But at $145 a barrel, you can bet oil companies have plenty of incentive to find it.
That said, 68 million acres is in fact a minuscule amount. Some 94% of federal lands, 658 million acres, remains off-limits to exploration. Another 97%, or 1.7 billion acres, of federal offshore properties likewise remains off-limits. These lands contain tens of billions of barrels of recoverable oil. It’s there for the taking, now.
These are only some of the statistics that dispel the Democrats’ myths. Democrats have brought up alot of these statistics to distract people from the central issue, which is their opposition to fossil fuels. They’ve had their heals dug into their position since Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance” book was fist published.
Democrats have used these myths to create this crisis. It’s time that Democrats were forced to defend these myths. Let’s ask them why we can’t drill our way out of this crisis of choice. Let’s ask them why they’ve dismissed even the possibility of drilling as part of the solution.
In House and Senate races, let’s ask them why they won’t go against the wishes of their environmentalist allies. Let’s ask them who they represent, their environmentalist allies or their constituents in their district/state.
In short, let’s let them own this crisis. After all, they created it. They’ve paid for it. Now it’s time for them to own it.
Technorati Tags: Gas Crisis, Crisis of Choice, Earth In The Balance, Al Gore, Environmentalists, Nancy Pelosi, ANWR, Oil Exploration, Oil Production, OCS, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
July 7th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
What an original idea!
Of course, when you venture out there with some asinine mantra, you’d better be prepared to defend yourself. Your problem is that takes facts, and once again, the facts have a liberal bias.
It was not the Democrats who had to go beg the Saudis to pump more oil, and were told to stuff it.
It is not the Democrats who have the responsibility to work diplomatically with our oil producing partners, and it is not the Democrats who have failed to deal with the price collusion going on between OPEC and the Saudis.
It is not the Democrats who were in charge when the current energy policy was debated and enacted, and it was not a Democrat who inserted the “Enron Loophole” into the act. We know who is responsible for the loophole — Phil Gramm, advisor to John W. McCain. What we don’t know is who was included in on the energy policy formulated by the Cheney administration, but we know one thing for sure: there weren’t any Democrats present.
The fact your overlooking is that price of gas has increased too dramatically too fast — at least so as to explain away with simple market supply and demand fluctuation. Ironically, this is a crisis of choice but you’re just shooting blanks with this accusatory line of reasoning. You’re assuming that big oil and their republican enablers didn’t want this price spike, now.
If you look at it from this viewpoint, it all begins to make sense. McSame gets an issue that garners public support. Big Oil gets away with obscene profits. The Saudis get to flex a little muscle. Bush the criminal makes out like the bandit he is. And the republicans get another topic to bloviate.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Well here’s a summary of the usual arguments
“Its not going to help for another (pick a number) years.”
So why are still setting around? Keeping America American is a long term plan, always has been. I dont know where some of these people plan to be in 10 years, but (Lord willing) I plan to be here. That was one of the arguments we heard when Cliinton vetoed ANWR drilling in 1995. If we had started drilling more then we could be pumping over a million more barrels a day of our own oil now, and be telling “Ugo” and others to shove it right about now.
“We cant drill ourselves out of this problem”
Maybe not but entirely, but it could sure as hell help, along with our other technology. We have 76 BILLION barrels of recoverable oil on the offshore banks alone by governement estimates, and thats not counting how much in oil shales in Wyoming and Montana. Do we want to do something for the economy or not?
“Oh but were hurting the environment!”
This goes along Harry Reid’s brilliant observation that coal and oil makes us sick! Duh!
Of course it does, Harry, thats why they dont sell it at Alberson’s. You want to close down the coal mines too? That’d really help wouldn’t it?
To those who believe this nonsense, its perfectly logical not to develope our own energy resources. To the rest of us, since the Santa Barbara spill in 1969, the offshore oil drilling has become one of the safest and cleanest industrial activities in the country. (National Academy of Sciences) In fact the biggest risk to the environment comes from overboard spills and discharges from foreign flagged tankers importing foreign oil, and not built to US maritime specs.
By the way, the US Mineral Management Service, finds that spills of imported oil are 13 times more likely to cause environmental harm than domestic shipments or production, and natural seeps cause 150 to 175 times more oil in the ocean than off shore drilling. In other words, the earth is polluting itself naturally more than we are!
July 8th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
You know, I’d sure like to hear what the jackass definition of “obscene profits” is.
Yes, $17B is a lot of money.
No, less than four cents return on the dollar invested is not a whole bunch of profit.
Now, Bucko, how much has the government invested to earn their profits on each gallon of gas or diesel sold?
I thought so.
July 8th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Well Carlos, since the current national debt is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 Trillion dollars, I guess the government has
spentinvested more than “their profits.”July 9th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Yep, investment to a liberal means taking denying the people more of their income to piss away in the Federal trough, on the fat, lazy and illegal.
The problem Rocky is not income it’s spending more than they have.
Every working John outside the beltway has to budget. Only the crooks in Washington get to spend like drunken sailor in a whore house.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:32 am
We’re talking investing money to realize a return on investment here, Rocky, not paying folks to sit on their duffs and whine ’cause the wine’s not cold enough or that the T.V.’s not a big enough HD. And (personal opinion, of course) it would be nice to see agriculture weened off welfare, too.
Last I checked, not a whole bunch of that $10T was involved in getting oil out of the ground, transported to a refinery, refined or transported to a pumping station.
Only thing I see invested in that whole process is how to keep the oil in the ground, how to make it more difficult to transport (except for the highway system itself - thank you, Dwight), how to keep it from being refined, and how to keep it from being stored in tanks to pump from. All from college-educated socialists who wouldn’t know a threat to their blessings if it slapped them upside the head. Like both Hussein and John-boy are both doing.
And that, it seems to me, is having a much bigger effect on the price of a gallon of fuel than the relatively measely profits of the oil companies. Even Exxon’s.