Lots of movement on off-shore drilling!!
UPDATE: (6/18): Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has dropped his long-standing support for the federal government’s moratorium on offshore oil drilling and endorsed Sen. John McCain’s proposal to let states decide. “I mean, let’s face it, the price of gas has gone through the roof, and Florida families are suffering,” Crist said Tuesday. “And my heart bleeds for them.”
UPDATE (6/17): A House subcommittee on Wednesday rejected a Republican-led effort to open up more U.S. coastal waters to oil exploration.
Also, Bush to urge Congress to allow offshore drilling.
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There have been some interesting developments of late. President Bush recently went to Saudi Arabia and literally begged for more oil. They turned him down, then just this week decided to increase production.
Consider the following:
In 1995, the new Republican controlled Congress voted to drill in ANWAR and President Clinton vetoed that bill. If that bill had gone into law, by 2001, we would have had millions of barrels a day of additional domestic oil production in our economy every day since the attacks on 9/11.
It is estimated that ANWAR has 10.4 billion barrels of oil which is 200 billion gallons of refined gasoline. The outer continental shelf is estimated to have 86 billion barrels of oil which would be over a trillion gallons of refined gasoline. On top of that there is an estimated availability of 2 trillion barrels of shale oil in the Western United States. We are the number 3 oil producing country in the world and if we tapped our own resources, we would beat Russia and Saudi Arabia — numbers one and two. [read more]
Presidential hopeful McCain is calling for more drilling. This from the same guy who voted against ANWAR. At least now he is flip-flopping in the right direction.
No, there will also be no discussion about the environment or Gore, enough said already.
The only way to see movement on this front is through our elected leaders. A recent poll finds that 8 in 10 Americans now consider the cost of fuel to be a significant burden.
Yet Congress has literally done nothing but put us in this position.
Finally, here’s an interesting development, Scientists have found Microbes that eat garbage, and excrete crude oil. I’m all for it.
We are so up the river without a paddle.
