Tag: Offshore Drilling

Oil Spill Conundrum

From the VOMITORIUM

The oil spill in the Gulf is getting expensive and BP has set about making their PR campaign pay off…..they have bought all the domain names that they could so that when the word “ol spill” was Googled the first thing the person sees is the PR tape from BP…everytrhing looks good…all rainbows and puppies….

I have heard the BP CEO and many many political types saw that “we must make sure that this NEVER happens again”…….and how would that be accomplished?  Do you let the industry police itself?  Well that did not work out so good with this spill we are fighting now, huh?  Then that means the government would have to step in a send investigators to EVERY rig to make sure that safety equipment is in proper working condition…..right?  In a time when everyone is screaming about how large the government has become and now you want to grow the bureaucracy that oversees the drilling for oil by some 200+% to be sure that this type of thing NEVER happens again.  In essence this would grow the size of government considerably…are you people smoking crack?

So the answers are either trust a oil giant like BP to police themselves or grow the government even more than now…..is that about it?

I have heard many politicians in Washington say the the government is not doing enough on the spill……these a/holes are the ones that have been cutting the budget of the EPA for decades and now they want a bare bones organization to have the quick fix….do you NOW see just how moronic this whole damn system has become?

As usual I have an idea…..I know I always have a better idea…..well better in my mind anyway….But first the new news out of the Obama Admin……

The Obama administration is asking federal agencies to identify how to trim 5 percent of their budgets, a top official will say Tuesday.

Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said the administration has directed non-security agencies to name ways in which they could reduce spending, primarily by axing poorly performing discretionary programs.

See it is just not the GOP that is moronic!  If this was before the spill I would bet that the EPA response program would be part of this cut because it has NOT been needed in years…..

Like I said…there is a solution to this ever happening again….at least to my way of thinking, that is….

My answer is really simple, but it will piss off those who work bringing in the oil for our massive addiction……if you want to make sure that another spill does not spoil our environment and you want smaller government then the ONLY answer is…….OUTLAW OFFSHORE DRILLING!

There would be NO chance of a blowout like we are dealing with now and you would NOT need the governmental branch that would oversee such operations…..This would make CERTAIN of NO more underwater oil spills and would shrink the size of the Federal government…..it would be win-win for both sides of the aisle….

SEE!  you can have your cake and eat it too!

Pickens’ New Energy Proposal

“On the surface, Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens appears to be the man with all the energy answers,” said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research.  “Pickens says his ‘Pickens Plan’ can cut America’s dependency on foreign oil by one-third over the next ten years.  It sounds attractive at a time when Capitol Hill is getting nowhere in the pursuit of energy independence.  But would the Pickens Plan really work?  What would it cost taxpayers?  Do parts of it raise Constitutional questions?  And would private parties – including Mr. Pickens himself – benefit financially?”

“A man on a mission, Pickens has set aside $58 million to ensure his energy plan is heard loud and clear,” added Ridenour, “and he’s got people listening, but America should not choose an energy policy based on the appeal of a billionaire’s folksy commercials.  The fine print must be examined.  In this case, the fine print reveals the Pickens Plan requires billions in government subsidies and the widespread use of government eminent domain powers.

“If the Pickens Plan is really all about doing what is best for the country and not for himself, Pickens could demonstrate his sincerity by renouncing the government subsidies he is lobbying for.  That should be easy for a man who says he doesn’t need any more money.”

Drilling Ban Will Expire

The Dems in Congress have fallen to the weight of public opinion.

The offshore drilling ban that became a flash point in the U.S. presidential election looks set to expire next week after Democrats decided to drop the prohibition from a temporary spending bill that would keep the government running.

The end of the ban will not lead to a rush of new drilling any time soon, but it would be a big win for Republican Presidential nominee John McCain who has made opening most U.S. offshore areas to drilling a key part of his campaign. His Democratic rival, Barack Obama, supports limited offshore drilling as part of a bigger overhaul of U.S. energy policy.

This is a politically advantageous move…has nothing to do with whether it is the right thing to do.

Off Shore Drilling A Reality

Election-year jitters over high gasoline prices prompted House Democrats on Tuesday to push through a broad energy plan that for the first time in more than a quarter of a century would allow oil and gas drilling off the East and West coasts.

The fate of the legislation, which Republican members contended would produce little new domestic oil, remains uncertain. The politically sensitive issue of offshore drilling may only be resolved as part of a budget bill that Congress must approve before it adjourns at month’s end.

The measure, which was approved 236-189, would allow states to authorize drilling 50 to 100 miles from their coasts. The federal government would be allowed to approve drilling 100 to 200 miles from shore.

But rising voter concern over high prices at the pump, relentless Republican criticism and pressure from vulnerable oil patch Democrats forced Pelosi to reconsider her position. She fashioned a package that included more drilling as well as $19 billion in tax incentives for alternative energy.

The measure now goes to the Senate, where a bipartisan group of 20 lawmakers has been working on a compromise that would lift a drilling ban in the eastern Gulf near Florida, and allow Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia to approve offshore drilling.

It is not clear that House Republicans will go along with such a Senate compromise or whether President Bush would sign such legislation.

Dems Wanna Drill?

House Democrats, some chanting “drill, drill,” embraced a plan to open the door for more oil and natural-gas exploration along the entire U.S. coastline, in a shift showing the power of the energy issue in this election.

The Democrats’ turnabout marks a victory for the oil industry and Republicans, who have seized on the drilling issue in recent months. With gasoline prices still high at the pump, polls show Americans in favor of expanded oil production at home, and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has made the issue central to his campaign, as have congressional Republicans.

Even Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s presidential standard-bearer, has endorsed expanded drilling as part of a comprehensive bill boosting conservation and renewable energy, such as wind and solar power.

The decision to push the more aggressive plan in part reflects the leverage the White House has to shape the agenda. Bush aides have signaled that the president might not support a spending bill needed to finance basic government operations beyond Sept. 30 unless Democrats allow a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling to expire. It isn’t clear if the new House bill will ever become law. But given the sensitivity of the issue — and the White House’s leverage — the measure unveiled Wednesday can be seen as an opening bid in negotiations over details of the end-of-year spending bill.

The Democratic bill is designed to boost production and conservation, while putting the oil industry and its Republican allies in an uncomfortable position: choosing between much-coveted drilling rights in unexplored areas along the coast or the guaranteed benefit of tax breaks, which the bill would scale back under a provision that extends new tax preferences in support of renewable energy.

Will There Be A Vote On Drilling?

The energy issue is at or near the top of the agenda in competitive contests across the country. Many Republican candidates have taken to focusing on energy at the expense of nearly every other issue. And polls continue to show solid majorities of the public favoring more offshore drilling.

Moderate and conservative Democratic incumbents have been pushing their leaders for weeks to allow a vote on drilling. Pelosi, who represents one of the most liberal districts in the country, is a strong ally of environmentalists but has felt pressure to help her party’s most vulnerable members.

Democrats will use the comprehensive plan Pelosi discussed Saturday as a defense against charges that they won’t allow a vote on drilling. But the measure may contain enough unpalatable items for the GOP — particularly on taxes — that most members of the minority will vote against it, and Senate Republicans could decide to block it altogether.

So it still appears unlikely that the House and Senate will be able to agree on an energy package that would pass with bipartisan support and be signed by President Bush. Democratic leaders may prefer to wait until next year, when they expect to have bigger majorities on the Hill and, they hope, Obama in the White House.

House To Rethink Drilling

Dropping her opposition to a vote on coastal oil exploration, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday that the House would consider expanded offshore drilling as part of broad energy legislation when Congress returns next month.

In the weekly Democratic radio address, Ms. Pelosi criticized Republicans as focusing too narrowly on offshore drilling as a solution to high gasoline prices, but said she would bow to demands that the House revisit a drilling ban that has been imposed annually since the 1980s.

She said legislation being assembled by Democrats “will consider opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling, with appropriate safeguards, and without taxpayer subsidies to big oil.”

The decision came after growing anxiety among Democrats that Republicans were scoring politically with their call for a vote on offshore drilling. Though Congress is on its August break, a rotating group of House Republicans has rallied daily on the House floor, demanding that Ms. Pelosi call lawmakers back for a vote to allow oil companies to pursue offshore resources.

While Ms. Pelosi is relenting despite her longtime opposition to drilling off the coast of California, her home state, Republicans may not get the vote they wanted. Expanded coastal drilling would be just one element of a broader bill that would also contain provisions opposed by Republicans, including a requirement that utilities produce a certain amount of electricity through renewable fuels. Democrats could also impose rules denying Republicans a chance to offer changes to the measure.

JUst a way to protect themselves in the upcoming election.  It is NOT about what is the best course of action, just who will be re-elected.

A Vote Or Not

Reversing course, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is planning energy legislation that may allow oil and gas drilling in new areas off the U. S. coast, according to a House Democratic leadership aide.

Pelosi, D-Calif., is open to considering energy exploration on the outer continental shelf as part of a broader package of measures to address rising energy costs, the aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Details haven’t been worked out, the aide said.

Pelosi rejected holding a vote on drilling before the House adjourned for its five-week recess on Aug. 1. In a CNN “Larry King Live” interview Monday night, she said “we can have a vote” on offshore drilling, “but it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and not just a hoax on them.”

Among other provisions, Pelosi said she would like a requirement that electricity be produced from renewable sources such as wind and solar energy and the release of some oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve as an immediate brake on prices.

Democrats have been under increasing pressure to allow offshore drilling as gasoline prices have risen over $4 a gallon.

Americans are famous for a lack of concern on some issues.  Now that the price of gas is sliding downward, will the vote be necessary?  Or wanted at all?

Democrats Scramble To Find A Policy On Oil

With 70% of the American people now supporting a policy of drilling offshore, the Dems have got to find a way to include it in their schtick.

With the politics of energy shifting as rapidly as gasoline prices, Democrats, led by Barack Obama, are retreating from long-held positions and scrambling to offer distressed voters more immediate relief from spiraling costs.

The change has been most striking on the campaign trail, where Obama said in a speech yesterday that he would abandon his past position and support tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to quickly cut prices at the gasoline pump.

His presidential campaign later released a statement warning that the “doubling of oil prices in the past year is a crisis for millions of Americans.”

Obama’s reversal on tapping the national stockpile of crude oil comes just days after he said, for the first time, that he would agree to some offshore drilling as part of a broader energy-policy compromise with Republicans, including John McCain, who has supported additional drilling.

Those shifts by Obama are indicative of the pressure politicians of both parties – but especially Democrats – are under to develop specific, short-term energy proposals in the face of rising costs. Against that backdrop, politicians risk looking insensitive if they put forth only solutions that could take years to hit the pump.

That jockeying reflects a shift in public opinion that has upended policy debates as gas prices have soared and the economy has soured. In California, where opposition to offshore drilling is widespread, a poll last month by the Public Policy Institute of California showed 51 percent of respondents favoring more drilling – up 10 percentage points since July 2007, and the first time since the question was first posed in 2003 that more Californians favor offshore drilling than oppose it.

But the reality, there is no way that the US would become oil independent with either of these plans.

There He Goes Again (Obama & Drilling)

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Friday he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that’s what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources.

Shifting from his previous opposition to expanded offshore drilling, the Illinois senator told a Florida newspaper he could get behind a compromise with Republicans and oil companies to prevent gridlock over energy.

Asked about Obama’s comment, McCain said, “We need oil drilling and we need it now offshore. He has consistently opposed it. He has opposed nuclear power. He has opposed reprocessing. He has opposed storage.” The GOP candidate said Obama doesn’t have a plan equal to the nation’s energy challenges.

In Congress, both parties have fought bitterly over energy policy for weeks, with Republicans pressing for more domestic oil drilling and Democrats railing about oil company profits. Despite hundreds of hours of House and Senate floor debate, lawmakers will leave Washington for their five-week summer hiatus this week with an empty tank.

Later, Obama issued a written statement warmly welcoming a proposal sent to Senate leaders Friday by 10 senators — five from each party. Their proposal seeks to break the impasse over offshore oil development and is expected to be examined more closely in September after Congress returns from its summer recess.

The so-called Gang of 10 plan would lift drilling bans in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but retain an environmental buffer zone extending 50 miles off Florida’s beaches and in the South Atlantic off Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, but only if a state agrees to the oil and gas development along its coast. The states would share in revenues from oil and gas development.

The plan also includes energy initiatives Obama has endorsed. “It would repeal tax breaks for oil companies so that we can invest billions in fuel-efficient cars, help our automakers re-tool, and make a genuine commitment to renewable sources of energy like wind power, solar power, and the next generation of clean, affordable biofuels,” Obama noted.

Obama is not making many friends within the environmental movement.  He is compromising or is it flip-flopping?