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Oil shale development gets boost from Bush

I absolutely agree. Our dependence on foreign oil is distroying this country. We are forced into wars in order to protect foreign oil reserves, our economy, the world economy, is held hostage by and we empower despotic, sadistic killers who offer us conversion or the sword. I look forword to the day when we can tell OPEC that we don't need them any longer and they can go back to roaming the desert. But until that day, we need oil. Until we find a usable, renewable energy resource, we need oil. We can't stop using oil immediately, it takes time to make the switch and until then, we need oil. The Democratic party is constantly telling us that they are the only hope for the poor (I think they're liars), if they are truely concerned about the plight of the poor they should insist on exploiting our national oil resources, but of course they won't. They need the poor to stay poor so they can mine votes.

Opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, lifting the ban on off-shore drilling, and drilling in the Green Basin are not a fix for anything other than feeding the insatiable appetites of Americans for oil, oil, oil. Let's feed our greedy, lazy, want-everything-now attitudes instead of making large long-term shifts in priorities.

Instead of drastically cutting back our oil usage and making small sacrifices toward a greener and healthier planet, we just dig more, drill more, ruin more. That is what Bush wants. That is what McCain wants, and that is what every American wants that won't make a change in their own lives to get us off of this neverending spiral of self gratification and self-ruin.

I hope Congress is smarter than our president. I will definitely be taking action to write to Congress and show my distaste for any of these 'quick-fix' ideas that really aren't a quick fix for anything.

Doesn't the shale sit on School Trust Lands?

If so wouldn't the money from the oil produced go to the school children of Utah?

We could pretty much do away with property taxes and have one of the best funded education systems in the country instead of the worst funded.

Of course the feds would probably come in and snatch up the land...

This is a safe position for President Bush to take--he can urge Congress to take action, which is totally out of his control (but which they darned well should!) while he refuses to lift the executive order, something about which he does have control. If he'd lift the order, maybe Congress would get serious.
I feel like this is grand-standing and will simply allow Congress to continue to listen to the combination of foreign oil interests and environmentalists, who got us into this oil situation in the first place.
It is ridiculous to say that oil drilling destroys the environment and then buy oil from other countries, none of whom are our friends. It puts us economically at their mercy and, if oil drilling is bad for our environment, it can't be good for theirs--and we should be concerned about the environment of the whole world, not just our little corner of it. While we STRONGLY need to find all sorts of alternatives to our mad dependence on oil, we should be developing our own oil resources and building new refineries.

Read the facts, folks. Drilling oil here, building refineries, and getting that oil into production for public use is estimated to take 7-10 years to be effective in getting us off our dependence from other countries. We have the technolgy in that amount of time to wean ourselves off oil and have strictly alternative fuels. Who doesn't want that to happen? Gas and oil companies. It doesn't take a genius to understand why.

Willow, I think everybody down to the staunchest conservative understands that we need to make a fundamental shift in how & where we get our energy. And I think almost everyone supports that. Everyone knows there's no more cheap oil, everyone knows we buy oil from countries that hate us. In time, I have no doubt that we WILL be basically oil-free.

But it won't happen overnight. If we don't drill, we jeopardize our immediate future. I know you want us to stop using oil 100% today, but what would it do to the world economy? Would you be willing to sacrifice your job to stop using oil?

You're right in the long term, but you have to realize that oil is part of our future for at least the next few decades......we need to consider that and drill our own.

I know Chris Cannon has been pushing Shale for years now. I saw him on Glenn Beck last night talking about getting government out of the way so we can have some common sense domestic energy policy and access our own reserves.

I don't think oil is the end-all solution but we have the resources here - let's use them for crying out loud.

poor poor Willow, or maybe its rich rich Willow. This doesn't sound like a quick fix at all. It sounds like there is enough oil to supply America for a long long time. Even after gas prices go down I don't know anyone that would not invest in making their car more fuel efficient even if gas was at 1.50 a gallon.

Willow said it nicely. Bush is pushing a comfortable, enabling choice for Americans to continue doing nothing about the national dependence on fossil fuels. He's urging us to remain asleep on one of the most pressing problems of our times. Status quo may be comforting to the republicans but it's a lethal choice. I hope congress has the nerve to send him packing.

Drilling for oil in America is not a solution. The shale oil they talk about requires as much oil and energy to extract and nullifies the process.
We need to not find more oil to consume but rather find a renewable energy source.
Why cant people see that? Oil will always be non-renewable and therefore will cause stress on our economic base.
But telling that the hordes of Rush Limbaugh freaks is impossible. It is like trying to teach an infant to file taxes.

My friend who lives in North Dakota has a farm that produces corn, this corn is then turned to ethanol and fuels his cars. He then charges his friends 35 cents a gallon. I know that ethanol from corn has it's problems such as food shortages etc, but i am just trying to get the ball rolling on different ideas for energy.
The last thing we need right now is Bush and his Big Oil buddies finding ways to make even more money on oil while the rest of suffer.

I don't want to destroy our environment, but I do think we need to think about the future. It will take time and brains to figure out ways to get off oil completely, if ever. We can definitely reduce our dependence a little more every year if we try, but if we go totally 'Green, immediately' we'll be jeopardizing our economy and the world's. If we are blessed as a country, we will eventually be able to use new forms of energy. Some people may make a case for public transportation, but that will never work for some people, like myself, who can't even take a walk down the street in temperatures much above 72 degrees. Don't ever get Multiple Sclerosis! Also, I've been though a lot of the Escalante/Staircase National Monument. Some of it is beautiful. Parts of it are so ugly, an oil pump would improve the view!

The lack of understanding of economics toward the pricing of oil is totally being misrepresented in many news articles. This one includes the same error I heard Obama say on the news the other day. The big error is that the price of gasoline will not be reduced quickly once changes like those proposed by Bush or McCain are enacted. That is totally and unequivocally false.

Prices will drop at the pump within days of a congressional passage. Two things are are affecting the current price 1. current supply and demand and 2.future supply and demand. The increase in prices of late are from the projectd future supply and demand of gas. Increase the projected supply of gas and current prices will decrease immediately.
Simple as that.
I approve of Bush's plans here for private industry to increase oil supply and pray that we will increase usage of alternatives fuels so we can minimize our dependency on foreign nations for our energy supply.

Thinking man, if we DO drill, we risk our immediate future. It will take several years for that oil that we drill here to be put into use here. By that time we could have and should have implemented alternative fuels and newer technologies. Drilling here won't do us any good because of the timeframe involved, as xscribe has rightfully pointed out in his/her comment. It won't fix a thing right now.

But making fundamental changes in our lifestyles will. No one can stop using oil 100%. Oil is used for more than just cars. But the good news is, if millions of people make SMALL changes, the cumulative effect is HUGE and we won't need to depend on foreign oil period, and the oil we have access to here already will do just fine without even having to tap into the ANWR or drilling off-shore.

(Some) Americans are intelligent enough to insist upon alternative fuels and energy. We have the technology, the brains and the dollars to do it. We just have to do it. There are no excuses.

I have to applaude Utah for having the forsight and will in building the mass transit system they have. I understand that there will be an addition to the airport. Think of how much the dependence on gas and oil this move has lessened, and the diminished carbon emission. Here in DesMoines, the city and surrounding burbs are tearing up the old commuter track. Due to developement, it will never be reclaimed. At the same time theyre developeing on fertile farmland, megamalls in suburbian sprawl.
NOW i HAVE A QUESTION. Why aren't any of the presidential candidates talking about spending our diminishing resources to making life and transportation in the future more viable? We need more mass transport in large, small cities, and good size towns. We need to revive rail transport in the US. We need to reduce the carbon footprint of residences and business. These are easily acomplished and can even have a pleasent outcome in stress, comfort, and money savings.
Drilling for more oil in preserves and using every last drop of oil to maintain this lifestyle is not the answer.

I agree with Willow. We should use our time and resources to get off oil as much as is possible. In the meantime, I think we can all learn to conserve. My wife and I now combine trips, we carpool with family to our cabin in American Fork cabin (even if it involves small inconveniences like staying up there a few hours than we like), we take the Sedan more than the Pathfinder these days (even though we hate dealing with rear-facing carseats in the Sedan), and I now work from home once a week.

These changes weren't easy, but are necessary. I'd rather learn to deal with the inconveniences than have oil pumps everywhere. My wife is from Bakersfield, CA. Anyone ever been there? Oil pumps in supermarket parking lots, church parking lots, on the side of the freeway, and sometimes in residential areas. No thanks! I'd rather learn to get by on less that disturb Mother Nature (and myself) that way.

Some people are literally addicted to oil. With rising prices, they want a "quick fix" to the problem. Time to break the addiction.

How is it that we, well that is Bush, who campaign was helped mightly by Halliburton, an energy company with whom dubya had ties, invaded a very oil rich country for a reason no one can quite explain, and after the invaison, Halliburton was awarded a massive contract to help "rebuild the country" that our country is now suffering from an oil shortage and needs to drill in places we haven't been able to before, something GW(oilman)Bush has been pushing for since his first day in office.
How is it thet we need to deplete every last drop in the US. I would think it would be better to use theirs first and save ours in any case.
And why do the Oil companies keep posting obscene profits, are called in front of congress to give some crap excuse, then let go after the furor dies down to start the cycle over the next quarter when they again post record profits.
Follow the money kids.

Some great comments though I have to nominate Andrew for the winner thus far. His quick explanation of future price IS oil speculation.

A speculator signs a contract and agrees to buy a certain number of barrels of oil at a set price at a set date. Speculators look at our energy policies now, throw in the debt/dollar, and war and see the policies getting worse not better. So they are in a rush to by tomorrow's oil at the best price they can. So they buy tomorrow's oil for $155/barrel because they think it will climb to $170/barrel.

And who are these evil "speculators"? Of course the actual transaction is handled by brokerage firms on Wall street. These speculators happen to be retirement funds, insurance companies, Union/labor funds. Translation, so much of this speculation money is our money being reinvested into the economy.

So before we thrash the "speculators" we may need to look in the mirror. I would bet that retirement, employee, etc funds right here in Utah are doing this. That means YOUR money is being used to speculate.

Not pretty but how the market works.

Opening ANWR/Off-shore/shale-oil would drop futures almost immediately.

And Chris Cannon may be awkward and geeky, but he got this one right as well.

And of course we need to improve technology so we can get the economy off oil. Until then...

Follow up to And another thing,
Here here. I agree totally. The US is really an odd place. Years ago if you invaded an oil nation you would have taken all of their oil for yourself as spoils. See the Romans/Greeks. If that were the case we would have most of the oil in Iraq and Afganistan flowing to the US. Of course then the locals would not have liked us very much. So we play nice guy let them have their oil and we have shortages and many there still do not like us.
The corruption from Bush/Cheney is apalling and while I like his idea of doing more drilling in the US while we also seek alternatives, Cheney and Bush's oil friends have got to be pretty happy. I wonder if they send their children off to war for their own benefit? Time to get the costs down for alternative sources of energy. Any national impetus in this area would be appreciated as of twenty years ago.

I agree that speculation is causing the spike in oil prices.

As far as alternative energy. I'm all for it. But people, it will be YEARS before alternative energy will replace oil as the fuel of the modern economy.

I don't think we sit on our hands and wait. Drill.