President Bush Asks Congress To Lift Ban On Offshore Drilling, Dems Are Opposed To Lower Oil Prices

If only President Bush had been more forceful on this issue two or more years ago before the Dems took control of both houses of Congress. It would have been much less of a fight and oil and gasoline prices wouldn't be where they are today, at least not for American citizens.

But the Dems are opposed to giving any kind of relief to Americans who are hurting because of high energy prices. In fact, their response was pretty much the same-old same-old that they are being told to give by the radical environmentalists who control them.

From CNN:

President Bush asked Congress on Wednesday to permit drilling for oil in deep water off America's coasts to combat rising oil and gas prices. "There is no excuse for delay," the president said in a Rose Garden statement. ... Bush also renewed his demand that Congress allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, clear the way for more refineries and encourage efforts to recover oil from shale in areas such as the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Bush said that the basin potentially contains more than three times as much recoverable oil as Saudi Arabia's proven reserves and that the high price of oil makes it profitable to extract it.

Of course, the Dems, who seem to be completely ignorant of economic reality are opposed to any of this. Liberal Dem Bill Richardson of New Mexico made the wild claim that gas prices wouldn't be affected for 30 years, although the Saudis and other oil producing nations know that the global price of oil can be brought down in less than one year after drilling operations commence. I should also note that CNN made no effort whatsoever to impart this latter information to their audience.

But here is something very interesting that was part of a sidebar of the CNN article:

Oil Production Cost Here's what the price of a barrel of oil needs to be for different sources of petroleum to be profitably extracted: - Accessible land: $19 - Shallow water: $20-60 - Deep water: $60 - Shale mining: $30-50 - Oil sands: $50-60 Current price per barrel: $134 Sources: U.S. Govt. CERA, Rand, EnCana

With numbers like that, it becomes clear that Bill Richardson has no understanding of economics whatsoever and was merely parroting what he was told to parrot by the greens. With costs being cut in half, it would be only months before world oil prices began feeling the deflationary effect of increased American domestic production. That would be good for Americans.

But in press releases after the President's call for lifting the ban, the Dems were quick to reject it, although they used canned responses and made wild accusations with nothing to back them. Here is one example of their pathetic statements:

"After eight years, President Bush and [Vice President] Dick Cheney have turned the GOP into the Gas and Oil Party. That's the legacy that they are going to leave," said Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "The White House has become a ventriloquist for the oil and gas industry, repeating the requests of the oil and gas industry."

No substance. No data to back it up. No understanding of economics. Just flurry of insults from a mouthpiece for the radical greens.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Bush Asks Congress To Clear Way For Offshore Oil Drilling
Ed Henry, Richard Greene, Brianna Keilar, Hussein Saddique and Ali Velshi
CNN.com
June 19, 2008

Senator Domenici Introduces The American Energy Production Act (S. 2958)

It would have been nice if this legislation had been introduced and passed two years ago when the Republicans still controlled the House and Senate. But if nothing else, this bill will definitely show how the Democrats have beholdened themselves to special interest groups, even when such groups push agendas that are not in line with the well-being of the American people.

The Press Release for the American Energy Prodcution Act (S. 2958) can be accessed here:

Summary Of The American Energy Production Act S. 2958
U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources
May 1, 2008

Here is the executive summary:

The American Energy Production Act, introduced today by Senator Domenici and Senate Republicans, will address America’s soaring gas prices by focusing on common sense measures that will increase production of oil and gas in America. If enacted, the American Energy Production Act will produce up to 24 billion barrels of oil—enough oil to keep America running for 5 years with no foreign imports. And that doesn’t include billions more barrels of potential fuel from oil shale and coal to liquids in the bill. By expanding production offshore and in Alaska, and removing obstacles to domestic production in the West, this bill will help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

That sounds really good to me and if you are concerned about rising gas prices and the fact that we send $40 billion annually to nations that have anti-American agendas, then it should sound good to you too.

As such, I have written my Senators to express my support for this bill. I encourage all who are reading this blog to do likewise. Just copy and paste the following, then print it out and mail it to your Senators:

Dear [Senator's name], I am writing this letter to ask you to support and/or co-sponsor the American Energy Production Act (S. 2958) introduced by Senator Domenici (R-NM) on May 1st, 2008. This bill would provide the American people with a potential 24 billion barrels of oil which we can sell to ourselves much more cheaply rather than paying an annual $40 billion to buy oil from overseas. The benefits of this bill are many-fold. Not only will it help ease the price at the pump by increasing supply, it will also help reduce the amount of money we send overseas to buy oil, much of that money going to fill the coffers of governments that actively pursue an anti-American agenda (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.). Additionally, the money saved by supplying ourselves with our own oil can go into research for truly viable alternative energy supplies. The price of gasoline has gone up for many reasons, most of which can be attributed to the policies enacted into law by this very Congress. For example, the mandate of using ethanol, despite its supporters’ promise of bringing down gas prices, actually drove the price of gasoline up as it also drove up the price of food. The end result: people now have to pay more at the pump in order to get to the store to pay more for food. This has also had a worldwide impact as food prices have gone up globally resulting in food riots in Mexico and Egypt and people starving as close to home as Haiti. Further, there was also a promise of lower carbon emissions, but since it requires the burning of 1.5 gallons of petro-chemicals to produce a single gallon of ethanol, that promise was nothing more than fantasy as well. The main reason for the high price of oil is simple supply and demand. Nations that have been aggressively developing the industrial sectors of their economies (India and China) have been using more and more oil which means demand has gone up. As any first year economics student knows, when demand goes up, so do prices. But, when demand goes up and supply does not keep pace, or even goes down, prices rise even faster. Evidence of this can be seen every time OPEC announces there will be reduced production. Prices are pushed up. Domestically producing oil would help ease the supply issues that we now face and would help ease the burden on the American consumer. That is one of the best actions Congress can take to help bring us out of recession. Please support S. 2958 so that we can get our economy back on track and stop funding those who would do us harm. Thank you.

This is the reality we live in now. We need to bring our Congressional representatives out into this same reality.