Originally Posted by junglejim

There is just one small issue. The oil companies already have over 60,000,000 acres of land under lease that they ARE NOT drilling. Some of it is right next door to the Alaskan Wildlife reserve, in fact. Some of it is in specially zoned waters in the Gulf of Mexico! To be sure, current Department of Interior regulations are suppose to strip oil companies of their leases if they have not begun exploration or drilling for oil by a certain point. However current regulations are lax, thanks to a pro-Big Oil administration, and the requirements that the oil companies have to meet are minimal. And as another point of note, the whole moratorium on off-shore drilling does not prevent ALL offshore drilling. In fact, the oil companies already have the rights to drill on more than 300 million acres offshore! Some of it is currently being drilled, but much of it is waiting for exploration. It's pretty simple, if you control the property but don't use, you can keep the prices high and keep anyone else from drilling.