Should high gas prices cause Congress to open ANWAR?

A commitment by the US to open its petroleum reserves especially ANWAR would signal to the world that we no longer will tolerate high gas prices and will do all we can to lower them. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi swears that Democrats are not ready to make the political sacrifices necessary to make that happen.
Last time Congress voted to open ANWAR in 1996 Bill Clinton vetoed the bill. With Bush a veto is out of the question so all Pelosi has to do is get the bill through the house and the Senate will probably follow suit. Does Pelosi have the guts (and the smarts) to get this done or do we just go on paying higher and higher gas prices?

Other reasons to open the ANWAR reserve include:

1. Alaskan's all know that the reserve is a mosquito ridden swamp. Ecological considerations are minimal and have been blown out of proportion by environmentalists. This land has no recreational potential now or in the future.

2. Development can be done safely with minimal environmental risks.

3. North Slope experience indicates development benifits wildlife by providing pads and roads for them to get up out of the swamps.

We definately should NOT be touching our strategic reserves.

We should have been drilling ANWR a long time ago.
Alaska wants it. Our national security demands it.

DRILL ANWR!!!

No we should not drill in Alaska or anywhere else. It's time to show the world that we don't need the oil and go green. We have electric cars. And cheaper versions on the way. Tesla Motors We have to get away from oil and two guys in Australia has made that possible with the Lutec 1000



I don't care about high prices in fuel right now and I've made adjustments for that by not driving around as much and not spending so much on other things. I want to see the technology availible at work and getting us off the dependant list for oil.

Our government don't give a XXXX about the gas prices. We (the taxpayers) pay for their gas. They get issued cars, gas cards, and basically UNLIMITED usage. Not to mention they make 6 figure salaries, so IF/WHEN they buy their own gas its no big deal....they have NO IDEA what it means to have a limited budget, to live paycheck to paycheck, and HOPE to find second and third jobs in some cases.

I am fortunate and have a good job that pays pretty good, but I know MANY who are having it rough right now....but again..NOONE up top on the hill cares....

THATS THAT!

So arguing/debating gas prices is a waste of air....we will pay whatever they want....because WE as a society spoiled ourselves with material BS and now its catching up with us. IMO of course...

I don't care about high prices in fuel right now and I've made adjustments for that by not driving around as much and not spending so much on other things.

reply to post by Solarskye


I understand. I like alternative energy soutions too but...

What do you say to the family just getting by who can't afford gas to drive to work? We've got the oil to solve the problem but we'd rather not use it because we might upset the environmentalists and liberals and we have an idea about free energy down in Australia I'd like to try?

reply to post by Solarskye

No we should not drill in Alaska or anywhere else. It's time to show the world that we don't need the oil and go green. We have electric cars. And cheaper versions on the way. Tesla Motors We have to get away from oil and two guys in Australia has made that possible with the Lutec 1000

Yes, I'll agree, go 'green'. But so far we haven't been able to go 'green'. There's a very good reason for this: we have an infrastructure that's based on oil.

There are ways to make electricity and fuel from renewable sources, but these things take time. The ethanol used to go 'green' had an unexpected side effect: higher food costs. Biodiesel has the same side effect. Nuclear power has the problem of the radioactive waste. Electric cars (or hybrids) still require energy, just in a different form, and the batteries have to be changed out every 4-5 years at a repair cost in the thousands of dollars. Not everyone can afford that.

We also need a solution now, not in a few years. Just like no one demolishes their home before building a new one, so they are not homeless during the construction, why would we want to simply stop using oil to wait for a new solution? It's far better for everyone to develop the solution first, then switch to it.

You have pointed out a few possibilities for energy production, but so far they are not available to the general public. A new 100% non-polluting, zero-point energy production technology is a great goal, but don't stop and sit while you wait for it to happen. Not to mention, all the research has to be powered by something. My shop, where I am presently working on ideas to produce 'green' power has to have electricity to operate the machinery and equipment. You shut off the oil and you dry up any chance to replace it.

As far as ANWAR goes, yes we should be drilling in it, but not for the cost. We have plenty of oil now; there is no shortage. But we need to use our own resources wisely and that does not mean sitting on them while talking about how beautiful they are. Using our own oil means increased national security because the other countries won't have us by the short hairs economically.

It's the same kind of thinking that survivalists use: Produce it yourself whenever practical. I am growing a garden so I will have food even if beans go to $50 per pound. I am starting a chicken house so I will have meat should it become outrageously expensive. I am planning a geothermal system so I can be assured of heat and cool during the winter/summer months. I look for new power resources in order to prevent my power from disappearing. I couldn't care less if the neighbors think I'm loony or not; I care about reality and how my actions will impact my family. Maybe for once, that's what we need to be thinking of as a nation.

DRILL TILL ALASKA LOOKS LIKE A PIECE OF SWISS CHEESE! The polar bears can fish in the holes!

TheRedneck

Originally posted by plumranch

I don't care about high prices in fuel right now and I've made adjustments for that by not driving around as much and not spending so much on other things.

reply to post by Solarskye

 

I understand. I like alternative energy soutions too but...

What do you say to the family just getting by who can't afford gas to drive to work? We've got the oil to solve the problem but we'd rather not use it because we might upset the environmentalists and liberals and we have an idea about free energy down in Australia I'd like to try?

There's really not much I can say but to deal with it and be smart about it. I'd love to go to the mountains but there's no way I'm going with this price of fuel. I know it has to be very hard on some who live paycheck to paycheck and don't have much to go on. Get rid of cable, git rid of the cell phone for awhile and try the best you can to say no to buying this or that.


Originally posted by TheRedNeck
"Yes, I'll agree, go 'green'. But so far we haven't been able to go 'green'. There's a very good reason for this: we have an infrastructure that's based on oil."

reply to post by TheRedneck

I know, that's the hard part. Even if the lutec 1000 and the Tesla cars come into the picture it will take years before everyone has that technology and we'll have to deal with the oil prices until then. I personally think the free market works and gas prices will go down just like other times in our history. It's just hard all around and I hope people use their brains and sacrifice a few things to pay for the higher prices. You TheRedNeck are doing the right things by preparing for the worse.

[edit on 5/10/2008 by Solarskye]

[edit on 5/10/2008 by Solarskye]

reply to post by Solarskye

I personally think the free market works and gas prices will go down just like other times in our history.

I agree completely. The fuel crisis is temporary. It's a bubble, just like housing or gold. We have a large group of people in this country (and I assume around the world as well) that produce nothing but money, by buying and selling anything they can find to buy and sell.

It started way back in the 90s with the dot-com stocks. A few companies made good money and suddenly anyone with the $$$ to invest wanted in on the deal. That drove the prices of companies who really had no marketable plan high enough to create the crash that followed. When the stocks crashed, the money went into other more traditional stocks and kept the economy sound.

Some of it went into housing and real estate, mainly due to the huge number of salesmen selling a 'guaranteed' income for life with 'no money down'. It worked for a few, but a lot of others who came into the bubble late are now caught with their pants down. Then the money began pouring into the gold market, driving prices up again and creating another bubble. This one has yet to burst, but rest assured it will do so.

Now the money is pouring into the oil market and it is creating another bubble. This too will burst and prices will fall, but the problem is that while gold affects only those items that are made of gold, and housing affects one aspect of the economy (construction), oil affects everything. So I do expect the worst, although I seriously hope for the best. The worst is a full-blown depression that will spread globally and reduce cities to some perverted Mad Max movie, while forcing other areas to take drastic measures to protect themselves. I expect governments to fall, and industries to disappear. First-world countries will become third-world, and third-world countries will undergo genocide from hunger and disease.

But the world will rebuild, and I fully plan on having enough to buy some diesel equipment that I would love to have. It's way out of my price range now, but when they are too expensive to run, I bet I could pick up a nice small dozer and backhoe for a song. Those who can survive without help will emerge on the other side in a very advantageous position, as always occurs with depressions.

TheRedneck

Maybe I've grown too cynical as I've grown gray, but ANWR oil would probably just be sold at the same price as oil from elsewhere. ANWR oil doesn't know it could be cheaper. A barrel to Asia, a barrel to the lower 48...what's the difference?

Looks like no matter how much oil enters the world market in the future, it would be sipped up by developing nations. Alaska oil went to Asia. Any ANWR natural gas would go to Asia also.

If Americans want to stop paying high prices for oil, we'll have to stop using it so much.
What's stopping the United States from becoming a world leader in green technology?

Looks like no matter how much oil enters the world market in the future, it would be sipped up by developing nations.

reply to post by desert


Thanks desert,

Thanks for your post! I'm a firm believer in basic economics that says that there is an elastic demand for oil. More oil causes the price to go down. Oil has always been that way. Only one reason oil prices are high. Demand is up, supply down. How do you solve that? Put more oil on the market or put up with high prices. Basic economics, it wins every time.

The good news for us in the US is that many (or most) countries pay more for gasoline than we do, sometimes several times more . But that is due to their incredible gas taxes for which they have only themselves and their governments to blame. See Highest Gas Prices around the World Some countries tax their gas 3 times higher that the cost! 75% tax. How do they do that? Well they just elect a lot of liberals, the liberals raise their taxes as liberals always do and then the citizens complain about the taxes. Go figure!

Think we should elect Hillary or Obama now?

reply to post by Solarskye


I would love to see this on the market but as you would know we never will

The oil companies of the world and the govs of the world are making way to much money from us

They will buy the rights and put it on that shelf with the rest of the tec we have invented

We can not do # about it

reply to post by plumranch


Plumranch, now I'm thinking this. Not enough oil can ever be drilled for other nations to consume it at the US rate of oil consumption. Hence, how could the price ever come down (that is, the price exclusive of that caused by commodity trading)?
One way for prices to lower would be to have a glut. But, again, I don't think this will happen, since, even if there were a glut in the US, there will never be a glut worldwide anymore.

Although I don't agree with everything Thomas Friedman says about everything, I do think he is right on about the US needing to use less oil, and for us to be a green superpower, for our own security and position among leading nations. Again, what is wrong for America to be a world leader in meaningful green technology, as it was when we wanted to send a man to the moon?

I believe that as long as America ties its security and world leadership position to oil, we will be the worse and sorrier for that. We need to grow up and quit being dependent on oil, as a child grows up and stops being dependent on parents. 9-11 was a wake up call to America, but not only about the scumbags who would kill innocent people. We should have realized that our security can no longer depend on a global market for energy.

What we should have done after 9-11 was not to go shopping for more plastic crap from China but to invest in energy alternatives for our country. The oil market will be the global merry-go-round, and we have to quit riding it so much. Let other countries pay the high prices and go to war for their security.

Originally posted by desert
Not enough oil can ever be drilled for other nations to consume it at the US rate of oil consumption.

No doubt. Even if you could get all of the 10.4B barrels of oil out of ANWAR, at the current U.S. oil comsumption rate (20M BD) it would last about 17 months. Hardly a long term solution to the problem.

reply to post by dbates


Agreed.

Then again it is not meant to be a long term solution. It's meant to be a short term help. We continue to pay skyrocketing importing costs for foreign oil when we are sitting on our own natural resources right here at home. Why should we not be using the resources provided to us by our own country, instead of relying on other countries?

I honestly can't believe drilling in our own country is such a big issue. It seems to me these people that get up in arms about destroying our own country could care a lot less about the environments we are "destroying" in other countries.

reply to post by plumranch


You really think that our gas prices are due to a shortage of crude? Our gas prices are caused by collusion, price fixing, and the unwillingness of our government to contest the huge oil lobby in order to do anything about it.

Drilling ANWR will give us a lot more crude oil. All this means is that the fuel companies will have more product stored up to sell to you at the same grossly inflated prices. You see... the laws of supply and demand don't apply to a largely monopolized market of an essential product.

ANWR is not beneficial for the people of America, and certainly not for the state of Alaska - the oil companies will hire out of state and foreign workers to do the building, but it will be subsidized by the state government - meaning that dollars go flying out of Alaska. As all the things the workers will spend money on will be provided by the company (not a lot of businesses on the North Slope, y'know?) even the paychecks of workers won't filter into the Alaskan economy

[edit on 13-5-2008 by TheWalkingFox]

Originally posted by nyk537
Why should we not be using the resources provided to us by our own country, instead of relying on other countries?

Yes, and these reasources include perfect coastlines to harness energy from the oceans (wave, tidal, temperature difference), abundant wind (which the Old West used in their now quaint windmills), and plenty of sunshine for solar, let alone geothermal and any human resources to further research into alternative energy/conservation. Our future is only limited by how much oil we want to use.

We are at a point in this country when we must decide now, not later, what our future will look like. If we stick with a petro based life style and don't diversify enough (and it is for to maintain this life style why we are stuck in Iraq, not to maintain a life style of freedom and democracy), then we will continue to fight over oil/natural gas.
If OTOH we can bring down our level of dependence on oil by infusing our national energy policy with an abundance of alternatives, then we will be that much richer.

If we continue our current energy policy, we will break ourselves as a nation, as Spain broke in harnessing the economic power of gold and Russia broke in harnessing military power. Surely that is not what a patriotic American wants, not an American who truly loves this great country and doesn't want to see it go sliding down the oil drain.

Oh, and don't give me the crap about not wanting to see windmills, solar plants, tidal plants, wave systems on the coastline. There are multi-million dollar homes in Santa Barbara, Calif., that look out on oil rigs in the channel. Have been for years. Personally, I'll take looking at a renewable sources structure versus oil or nuclear any day.

the oil companies will hire out of state and foreign workers to do the building, but it will be subsidized by the state government - meaning that dollars go flying out of Alaska. As all the things the workers will spend money on will be provided by the company (not a lot of businesses on the North Slope, y'know?) even the paychecks of workers won't filter into the Alaskan economy

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


Hi Fox,

Couldn't disagree with you more on that idea. I live and work up here. The people who work on the "slope" (our north slope oil fields) spend almost nothing up there. They bring it all back to their homes in Alaska to support their familys and Alaskan lifestyle. There are a percentage of lower 48 workers up there as well but that's because Alaska simply cannot provide all the skilled workers needed. As a businessman I'm very aware of the benifits of North Slope commerce to Alaska in general.

Most Alaskans favor development of ANWAR. We think you lower 48 people are very silly indeed for treating ANWAR as some sort of a wildlife refuge that shouldn't be developed. You have been fooled into believing the environmentalist's crock of baloney!

Is $4.00 gasoline high enough to change your minds? How about $6.00? Or $10.00? When there are nothing but government vehicles, service vehicles and cars belonging to rich people on our highways, will it be alright to drill in ANWAR and off shore California and Florida? What will it take?

Does anyone still think the country can continue doing nothing when we could be:

-Opening ANWAR for oil drilling?

-Permitting drilling and production off shore in California, Florida, Alaska and any other state or territory?

-Passing legislation permitting construction of a network of modern nuclear power plants?

Any politician that stands in the way of any of these measures is anti American and probably in the pocket of special interest groups such as environmentalists and others who benifit from high gas prices IMHO.

Originally posted by dbates

Originally posted by desert
Not enough oil can ever be drilled for other nations to consume it at the US rate of oil consumption.

No doubt. Even if you could get all of the 10.4B barrels of oil out of ANWAR, at the current U.S. oil comsumption rate (20M BD) it would last about 17 months. Hardly a long term solution to the problem.

This reasoning is flawed and misleading. It assumes that suddenly we would stop getting oil from anywhere else. Yes, if we got oil ONLY from ANWR, it would last 17 months supposedly.

What I'd like explained is why the Democrats want to sue OPEC for keeping supply low, but won't allow our own oil to be drilled. To me it's the height of hypocrisy.

Drilling is not the answer. If they started yesterday, you wouldn't see one drop of oil for at least another decade, and will have further destroyed the environment in the process. don't we have enough global warming problems as it is?

The problem lies with the speculators and refineries. These two groups are the ones causing the price of fuel to go through the roof. The speculators need to be severely regulated, and the refineries nationalized.

[edit on 6/21/08 by LLoyd45]