Posted on 07/13/2008 11:23:08 AM PDT by newbie2008
Congressional Democrats now have their unified response to increasing calls for oil exploration in Alaska and in the waters off our shores: The energy companies, they say, are already sitting on plenty of oil, refusing to recover it.
But is that true?
“Energy companies are not producing oil or gas on 68 million acres of federal land under their control,” claims Congressman Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat. “The fact of the matter is Congress has already allowed oil companies to drill, but those companies are refusing to drill because they want to lock up as much federal land as possible and wait for oil to rise to $200 or $300 a barrel so that they can make even greater profits than they are making now.”
Therefore, the Democrats say, there’s no need to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf, despite the crippling rise of gasoline prices.
(Excerpt) Read more at tylerpaper.com ...
Congressman Maurice Hinchey is insane.
I wonder how many of those acres are for pipelines, storage/staging areas, alternative energy, etc that they never expected to find oil on.
The had to lease it to explore it. There is not enough gas or oil (if any at all) in those locations to make drilling economically feasible.
The left knows this, but also knows that the big lie, repeated endlessly, becomes the morons’ truth. Then the morons vote RAT.
Bookmark for later...
Talk about Conspiracy Theories. What an ignorant accusation. People who work for "Big Oil" will drill any time and anywhere there is a profit to be made. They are in the energy production business, as are all the contractors who support the capture of oil.
Oil Companies are like fishermen, there may be a big ocean out there, but they only want to go where the fish are.
He's not nuts. He's a sleazeball. I attended one of town meetings quite a few years back. I wanted a shower afterwards.
Correction: An ignorant sleazeball.
"Oil leases are like scratch and win lottery tickets."
Every ticket is not a winner and every lease will not produce any recoverable oil or gas.
Every ticket is not a winner and every lease will not produce any recoverable oil or gas.
That is beautiful.
Spread the word.
They get away with saying stuff like this, because most of their public knows nothing at all about oil or anything else.
The problem is that there are millions of people out there who do work in oil either directly or indirectly who know that these people are fools.
The Dems’ only hope in attracting votes from these people is the chance that they’ll say, “he’s full of it when he talks about things I know about, but maybe he’s right when he talks about things I don’t know about”. Whereas I take the opposite approach. If he’s clearly full of it when he talks about things I know about, he’s full of it.
oil leases are rather like found money for the governments coffers, the oil companies are leasings these lands, they are paying money for them! where is the loss to the government if the oil companies wish to spent their money on more leases?
This article is a keeper.
The DemocRATS are so ignorant of how things work. They really need to take a day off, get out of their office and take a look around at the real world. They seem to think that you can go anywhere, drill a hole in the ground and out shoots the oil. I’m no oil guy but I really don’t think it works that way.
Back in the day I remember when discovered wells were being capped because the cost of recovery was higher than a benchmark price of $35-40.
I don’t know if all those wells are now pumping, but lease owners were hopeful at the time that their leases would someday pay out.
Of course the way they all sat there being chastised and heckled by the morons in Congress like a bunch or Republican WIMPS, without defending themselves or their companies, its not surprising they are hiding under their desks.
WHAT ARE THEY AFRAID OF???
Sheesh.
1,922 drilling rigs are currently drilling holes in the US. That’s up 131 from this time last year. The reason there are not more is because that’s how many we have.
New rigs are being built. They are already under contract to drill when they are completed.
The talk about the pipe shortage is real. It was going for $7/foot last year. It’s currently at $30/ft, if you can find it at all.
I don’t need any crap from the Democrats about the oil industry sitting on their hands. I cannot imagine a more dishonest statement. It’s utterly false and intentionally so.
Problem with CEO’s are they have an aristrocratic attitude. We are rich and powerful thus I don’t need to take any threat from politicians seriously. Look what happen to the tobacco execs. If they had stop selling cigarettes in states that started to join in the lawsuits against a legal product consumed voluntarily, the chaos they would produce in those states versus the temporary loss of business would have stopped the lawsuit dead in its tracks in the infancy state. Instead they arrogantly thought their money would protect them from poor liberal crusaders. By the time they realize what was happening too many states (market share) would be impacted and operation chaos could not be used. In the end the execs had to settle.
You seriously think that the major networks are going to give them time to tell their side?
There fixed it...
What a GERRYMANDERED district!!! Jeez, that district looked like a trained monkey did it.
Oil and gas independents may be actively drilling, but the oil majors, who control the vast bulk of industry capital spending, are reinvesting their upstream cash flow at historically low levels. Their exploration capital spending and expense is particularly low. XOM went from about 30% exploration plowback of its upstream cash flow in the early 1980s to about 10% in the 1990s and in recent years has let it slide to about 3%. Meanwhile, its cost of finding a new barrel of reserves remains under $1 per equivalent barrel, down from almost $4 in the early 1980s in then-current dollars. You can look it up.
And as for “conspiracy theories,” you should note that during the early 1980s, about the time Reagan signed NSDD-66 declaring economic war on the Soviets and targeted destruction of their income from crude oil exports, Exxon broke all its own rules by literally borrowing money to drill wells and boost liquids production. As oil prices were falling offa cliff, Exxon was reinvesting more than 100% of its upsteam cash and even drawing down cash and borrowing money overall to boost its count of wells drilled about three-fold in 1982. Its 1983 liquids output rose an incredible 12.3% and averaged 5% growth through much of the 1980s. Contrast that to zero liquid volume growth since the Mobil merger in 1999, a period when I would argue we have been in a similar state of economic war with China, which is even more dependent on oil imports than we are, and less able to afford them.
The Western oil majors are sitting on their hands. And there’s a reason.
Similarly, there is a reason the CFTC has opened the floodgates to allow unlimited inflows of pension and other investment funds into the traditionally zero-sum commodity futures markets. We are intentionally running up the price of oil to crimp Chinese growth rates.
Don’t like economic war? Consider the alternative.
How much money do the oil companies make on a barrel of oil they don’t sell?
Folks with billion-dollar ad budgets? Yeah. Someone might return their call.
And if the news producers wouldn't put them on to give their side of the story, they could buy ads. It's more plausible to me that the oil companies are silent by choice than that they are somehow being silenced.
I probably agree with you on the attitude of CEO's but I don't think that's what keeps them tame.
I think it's more like my basic rule of urban living:
"Try not to piss of a guy carrying a gun and a badge".
Actually going up against the government, whether telling a traffic cop off or - more scary - making government's lies and stupidity public knowledge, could lead to consequences you really don't want to experience.
The local police person might just beat the stuffing out of you, then arrest you for it. Hurting political feelings could crimp chances for the next oil lease, encourage even more draconian regulations, or guarantee there'd be something 'wrong' with your next bid.
All we ever hear from the foaming-at-the-mouth, stark raving lunatics on the left are scare stories about BIG OIL.
BIG OIL should run a campaign allowing people who object to them to place their names on a register of people sworn not to purchase any BIG OIL products or products derived from BIG OIL products.
Let them put up or shut up.
I’m fairly sure that the public’s love of oil companies is far higher than the 9% approval of Congress. Hell, I know I trust them more than I trust the democrats.
If production did go up is there enough refining capacity to handle the increase?
Article yesterday by Jonh Cornyn had a link to find your congressman. Tried to post it but was having a problem, anyways.
I would like you all to join on Tuesday July 15th and declare national contact your congress day.
Just filled my tank ($54.00 and it went up .20 since yesterday). Dont know how much more we can take of this nonsense.
Please spread the word to all your family, friends, coworkers and neighbors
Gov. Palin is begging us to drill in anwar
DRILL HERE - DRILL NOW!!
Democr@ps lie?! I’m shocked, just SHOCKED, I tell you!!!
There isn't a shortage right now. You haven't seen any gasoline lines.
The problem is that the refineries have less than a two week's supply of crude oil in stock. If that dwindles down to less than a week's worth, we are all in deep doo doo.
The "execs" were then held harmless by the states. That's why there were several "federal" cases thrown up, and they lost.
A number of very greedy and otherwise worthless lawyers were unduly enriched in the process. That's just one of a myriad of reasons why we should regularly fleece the rich ~ and I mean the "really rich", not those guys with $250,000 annual incomes.
They are not falling for the Pelosi OKEY DOKE!
They are not falling for the Pelosi OKEY DOKE!
If you like $5/gal, Thank Congress. If you want $10, Vote Oblack.
Pray for W and Our Troops
I believe the Democrats have had over 40 enquiries into “big oil” and it’s “windfall profits” in the last 18 months.
My question is- Since the Government gets MORE from a gallon of gas than the oil companies do where are the enquiries into what THEY are doing with THEIR “Windfall Tax Bonanza”?
Not only do their tax revenues jump in tandem with oil company profits but the increased fuel cost elevates taxes at every point in the supply and distribution chain as increased costs get passed on and generate even higher taxes.
So the government is making out FAR BETTER than the oil companies are from this price hike yet not a word is said about it!
I don’t fully understand why “BIG OIL” doesn’t use some of the billions at its dispoasl in a coordinated effort to field attractive primary candidates against Pelosi, Reid Hinchey, McCaskill, et al. and replace these Marxist assholes with Republicans or normal Rats. if the latter still exist.
The DemocRATS are so ignorant of how things work.
______________________________________________________________
Why do you give them that much credit?
All they want to do is, make us all SHEEPLE!
Oil companies and GOP have been their own worst enemies, by failing to convincingly communicate the facts of their story.
They both need to raise their budgets for message.
The vacumn gets filled by the democrats and the press.
I read once that not only is most of the 68m unpromising but the Congress and the EPA and the greens have been extra diligent at putting up hurdles to getting permits to actually drill there.
What they are afraid of is unceasing IRS auditry and every investigation that the crats can think up. Some of those investigations will “temporarily” shut down producing wells.
Little Maurice believes in the Jed Clampett exploration method.
Yesterday on C-Span I heard Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee say that the democrat opposition to lifting the moratorium is because the royalties would go to the "States" and not the "Federal" government!
It's about the money!!!!!!!
The democrat leadership's concern is not about the environment or lowering the price of oil, it is about who gets the royalties.
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