Bush looks offshore for remedy to high oil prices

[flashl]

Source: Yahoo (AP)

WASHINGTON - For a quarter-century, drilling for oil and gas off nearly all the American coastline has been banned in part to protect tourism and to lessen the chances of beach-blackening spills.

Then gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon this summer. Drivers and others began clamoring for federal lawmakers to do something about the record price of oil, much of it produced in foreign countries.

In response, President Bush is renewing his call to open U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas development, arguing that it's high time to battle high prices with increased domestic production. He is planning to ask Congress on Wednesday to lift the drilling moratoria that have been in effect since 1981 in more than 80 percent of the country's Outer Continental Shelf and to let states help to decide where to allow drilling.

"The president believes Congress shouldn't waste any more time," White House press secretary Dana Perino told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "He will explicitly call on Congress to ... pass legislation lifting the congressional ban on safe, environmentally friendly offshore oil drilling."

Yahoo (AP)

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080618/ap_on_go_pr_wh/offshore_oil;_ylt=ApFQPfMQD6sP_u5BbIXmtkes0NUE

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Seems * didn't get the memo about oil speculators or watch any of the recent Congressional hearings and now AK, CA, and FL will pay for that omission.

[Historic NY]

1. You can drill all you want but if you can refine it, its meaningless

The country has not built a new refinery since Jimmy Carter was President. It would take years to get wells drilled, platforms built and the product out of the ground to shore. For what, to sit in tanks because it couldn't be processed. Stupid thinking, by people with shallow IQ's. People must think, gasoline comes out of the ground rather than a sloppy mess of water and other junk thats called "crude".

[dipsydoodle]

9. Polite edit

I think you meant to say "can't"

[Historic NY]

16. your right wiped out the "t" thanks

[happyslug]

14. And we have 1/3 less gas stations then we had in under Carter,

If we use the same logic as the claim that we "lost" refineries since Carter, the fact we lost Gas Stations means it is harder to get gasoline. We all know that is WRONG, for the simple fact that while we lost 1/3 of the Gas Stations since 1970, we are pumping more gas at the remaining stations today then we did in 1970. The reason is simple, the remaining gas stations are 3-4 times as large as the typical gas station of the 1970s.

The same with US refineries, we lost refineries since the 1970s, but the remaining refineries have expanded to almost TWICE the capacity most of them had in the 1970. Furthermore the Persian Gulf Nations, trying to keep their citizens employed, have expanded their refineries, for example a huge amount of jet Fuel is refined in Kuwait, because Kuwait wanted not only the money from pumping oil but also the money from REFINING oil. Thus we have seen a MASSIVE expansion of refinery capacity since Carter, even while we closed some of the smaller plants (Just like the Gas stations with 10-20 pumps replaced maybe 10-15 separate gas stations).

Now there is some problems in that few of the older refineries can handle the more "sour" and thicker oil that is become more and more the source of fuel. The present refineries are being re-geared to handled these thicker oil, but that will take some time, but no new refineries need to be built to handle these oils, US refineries have process these thicker oils for decades. Equipment has to be changed more often and more energy has to be put into the process to refine the oil, but nothing that is NOT being done has to be done, the refineries just have to be geared to refining these harder to refine oils. The old plants can refine these oil, all they need is more maintenance to do so, thus we have the Capacity to refine.

[SHRED]

2. This is another reason the Repukes...

...are going down in flames.

The amount of people that think we can "drill our way out" of this mess, that want to see oil derricks off their coast, and those that truly think petroleum is our future are rapidly dwindling.
Still the Republican Party has taken the position of defending their corporate oil interests ahead of the well being of our children and their children.

What a sick political party that is.

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[summer borealis]

3. bush = idiot

So, you drill there. Exxon, etc. still sell you the oil at billion-dollar profits.
Who wins here? The same petroleumocracy winning now.

[madrchsod]

4. there`s not enough oil on the outer banks

to make a bit of difference in the price of oil now and the distant future.

[trusty elf]

5. shit head

[sofa king]

6. I'm surprised he's not going after ANWR again.

Perhaps the people who advocated that little bullshit angle are already in prison now.

[flashl]

7. Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy

Companies get OK to annoy polar bears

WASHINGTON - Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.

Yahoo (AP)

[LawyersGunsandMoney]

8. It's not a remedy, it's an excuse

to use offshore drilling. It's crap.

[bdamomma]

10. being blunt drilling won't do

anything.

[Doctor_J]

11. Hartmann said the oil companies have leases on millions of acres

already, but are not drilling for a variety of reasons. So this won't help at all.

[Imagevision]

12. If Bush & Cheney wern't oilmen we would have battery powered cars by now...

[acmavm]

13. Oh for Pete's sake. This is why most of the oil is going to the

strategic reserves. To keep the price up. To put the squeeze to the 'little guy'. So that we will allow them to destroy more of the environment with their drilling.

It's not too damn hard to figure.

And as for refining, the oil companies bought up all the refineries long ago and closed down most of them. Intentionally making it hard to refine oil into gas. Making it more expensive.

Oil families and oil company CEOs have no one's best interest at heart but their own.

[Lasher]

15. Poppy issued a 1980 executive order banning offshore drilling.

Junior has kept that executive order in place, and yet he is calling for Congress to act without "wasting any more time" so as to make it seem to some that high gas prices are the fault of the Democratic Congressional majority. He says he will reverse the executive order after the 1981 Congressional ban is lifted. Why doesn't he reverse the executive order right now if he's in such a hurry all of a sudden?

FWIW, the executive order has no real meaning either way since laws trump executive orders. The Unitary Executive doesn't seem to know that.

Why doesn't he just jawbone the prices down? He made that sound so simple back in 2000. Funny thing, 'high' gas prices were the fault of President Clinton and not that of the Republican Congressional majority back then. Now he's trying to make it look like today's gas prices are not his fault, but that of the Democratic Congressional majority.

[DS1]

17. Fuck you, George

You can't even find it in Texas