Originally Posted by junglejim

Gas is $4 a gallon. Heating oil is through the roof. Diesel is almost $5 a gallon. People are aggravated at best, angry at worst. The president and the Republican party claim part of the solution is to open up protected wildlife reserves and offshore areas to drilling. They claim the Democrats are "out of touch" with the desires of the American people by not allowing Big Oil to drill off the coast of places like Florida or California. On the surface, it seems to make sense. After all, aren't we importing most of our oil from countries that hate us? Let's produce our own and reduce our dependency on OPEC. Open up the offshore areas and protected wildlife reserves. To hell with the polar bears. We need oil.

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.

Originally Posted by junglejim

Gas is $4 a gallon. Heating oil is through the roof. Diesel is almost $5 a gallon. People are aggravated at best, angry at worst. The president and the Republican party claim part of the solution is to open up protected wildlife reserves and offshore areas to drilling. They claim the Democrats are "out of touch" with the desires of the American people by not allowing Big Oil to drill off the coast of places like Florida or California. On the surface, it seems to make sense. After all, aren't we importing most of our oil from countries that hate us? Let's produce our own and reduce our dependency on OPEC. Open up the offshore areas and protected wildlife reserves. To hell with the polar bears. We need oil.

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.