Comments about ‘Time to ramp up domestic drilling’

In other news: The air in the Uintah basin and in Salt Lake valley is slowly killing Utah residents. But golly, those jobs sure make life here great, don't they? Short, but great, especially if you'd like to see the air before you breathe it.

The writer conveniently leaves out the fact drilling companies have access to 68 million acres of land, over 40 million offshore, they are NOT drilling on. That's right - the leases are NOT being utilized.

Can anyone tell me if they have gone to a gas station and was told the gas station didn't have any gas? It has never happened to me. So if supply and demand are really the driving force behind rising oil prices then who is going with out gas? No one.

Time to ramp up development of alternate energy sources that do not contribute so significantly to the destruction of the environment. Have we no innovation and good ideas left in us as Americans?

The article didn't address the influence of growing demand in emerging economies, nor the fact that the US simply doesn't have the reserves to seriously modify world prices. And how about that XL pipeline? 174 billion proveable barrells at the other end of that one, with another trillion sitting there with new technology and increased prices; somebody's going to get it.

Some posters here seem to mix up electricity with motor fuel. If you know of a cleaner way to run cars and trucks and trains than gasoline, diesel, and natural gas, please let us know about it. And no, you can't run a semi on batteries.

We need oil and gas YESTERDAY. All the hem-hawing and postponing and political posturing have only dug us deeper into a hole.

The domestic oil & gas industry creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, orders of magnitude greater than alternative sources (of electricity). And they reduce our dependence on oil from Venezuela, Nigeria, and the Middle East.

Alternative energies are developed as they become economically attractive. So far, solar energy isn't economically competitive, wind works but clutters the landscape and requires hundreds of windmills to put out the equivalent of one coal or nuclear plant, and geothermal is simply limited by geology and up-front costs. Nuclear power has large costs up front, but they are quickly offset by the massive amounts of electricity generated, and it is clean and large-scale like we need.

Oil prices are set by the world demand, not national.

Unless we're planning on nationalizing our oil, there's no guarantee that oil drilled here will stay here. So articles like these are nothing more than just special interest (oil drillers) writing to promote their own agendas and fill their pockets rather than actually looking out for US interests.

What will we do when oil runs out? It will. There isn't an infinite supply of anything.

I think the purpose of the propaganda of this article is to further the cause of the American oil corporations to increase the effectiveness of their monopoly on world oil prices. Iraq was a good start, but now thereâs Iran and the control of the U.S. supply.

We donât need to drill for more oil in America. Doing so will do more harm than good. Lets use up the other guys oil and save ours for later. Regardless of where the oil is drilled, Americans will pay the price set by the international monopoly.

However, it would be good for the oil corporations to be able to tie up the ownership of American oil for later.

@ sensible scientist

"Oil prices are set by the world demand, not national."

Not really. Check out the Economist from about two weeks ago regarding State Capitalism -- the emerging form of government-owned corporations that dominate world industries (e.g., China, Russia, India, Mideast countries, etc.).

There's a great article on Mideast-owned oil corporations that make Exxon-Mobil look like an ant. In a nutshell, OPEC (whose members are all massive government-owned oil corporations) control world oil supplies and prices.

America's problem is that we've allowed transportation to be dominated by ONE fuel source, which makes us vulnerable in terms of economic and national security (e.g., terrorism funded by oil prices).

The only sensible solution is to diversify our transporation system via natural gas, electric plug-ins, and hybrids. If people have choices for fuel, prices will come down. Diversification is sensible economics.

I'm glad this article supports Pres. Obama's call for more domestic oil drilling.

The sooner we become independant from Middle Eastern oil, the sooner we can stop being the World's thugs by starting wars for it.

Now, if we can just keep the greedy Oil Corporations from selling it on a Global market, and keep domestic oil domestic...

Have you read that the U.S. is now EXPORTING more refined gasoline than any time in our history?

Who profits from that? Certainly not ordinary Americans.

Another Obama Hit Piece based on utterly flawed logic. The writer says "Obstructing energy production domestically means the price Americans pay at the pump increasingly depends on events affecting foreign oil producers.". So if "events' drive the price of a barrel of oil in the Middle East to $200, then the author believes that Exxon, Conoco and other domestic suppliers would continue to sell their oil for $80 a barrel? Not a chance. There is one global price for a barrel of oil (OK, not quite, but pretty close). The only way for the US to pay less would be for Obama to nationalize the oil companies and fix the price below market. Domestic production does not insulate the US from price fluctuations. It might provide a more reliable supply, but the price of oil will rise and fall across the globe.

The thing I find ironic about the situation we are in today is... people on the political left continually belly-ached and endlessly blamed President BUSH for conspiring with this "Big Oil Buddies" so they could charge more and make more money. And yet... these same "Big Oil people" are charging MORE during the OBAMA Administration than they EVER DID during the Bush Administration. Yet now the same people on the policial-left have no problem with the situation (where Oil companies are charging more than ever and making more profits than ever). How does THAT happen??? Obama isn't suppposed to be in bed with these "Big Oil people", and yet... his policies lead to scarcity and allow them to charge higher prices. But the traditional complainers don't care anymore???

Guess all that matters to these people is the letter (R or D) next to the name of the man in the White House. Or they would be complaining even LOUDER during the Obama Administration than they were during the Bush Administration (but they aren't).

My son, who lives in LA, keeps repeating the party-rhetoric that his leftist friends keep telling him (that America NEEDS higher gas prices so Americans will be FORCED to move to electric cars, etc).

So I pointed out that HE doesn't have an electric car or solar cells. Why doesn't he follow his own rhetoric? How high do prices have to get before HE puts solar cells on his appartment and buys an electric car? He didn't know.

I asked if any of his friends who tell him that we NEED higher gas prices to force America to it's knees and to electric cars... had solar cells on their roofs, or windmills, or electic cars. He had to admit that they didn't. So I have to question how sincere they are about this bogus rhetoric.

If we NEED higher gas prices to force the stupid masses to agree with them and turn to windmills, solar cells and electric cars, etc... why are Americans still buying solar cells, windmills, and electric cars in such small numbers?

Even in EUROPE (the example to America) electric cars are VERY rare. And their gas prices are twice as high as they are in America. So why is that? And exactly HOW HIGH do prices need to get in America before this magical conversion happens and everybody throws their gas cars out and start buying cars that run on granola?

I had to "like" Baron Scarpia's post. He was making a sensible arguement for DIVERSIFICATION, which I think makes more sense than the people just pushing for total purity and adherance to a narrow-minded agenda (be it environmentalist or other).

I think in the end he pointed out how much we need ALL the solutions (not just wind, not just solar, not just fosil fuels, and pointed out that Nuclear needs to be in there). Ironically.. the Purists, the environmentalists among us constantly move to shut down any new Nuclear Energy plans in the United States (even though the countries they love in Europe get much of THEIR energy from Nuclear Power Plants).

I just find it so ironic that Nuclear Power is one of the CLEANEST ways to generate electricity, and not impact the environment... and yet the most self-reightous Environmentalists among us consistantly block any attempts to use it! (leaving us reliant on fossil fuels)

This just makes NO SENSE!