America reached its peak of oil production in 1970. While there may be additional oil off the coast of California and Florida and ANWAR, it would take 5-10 years for it to reach the market. Most importantly, it would only take several years for that oil supply to be exhausted as well. Once the oil runs out, you're back to where you started.
It takes years of research to determine where the most strategic areas are for drilling oil and to build one of these. People who support drilling offshore think that relief will be immediate when, in fact, it is unlikely that we'd see a drop of it before 2016. We could possibly get to the oil in Alaska quicker than what offshore drilling has to offer, but even then you're talking about a 5-6 year wait. Once that Alaskan oil hits the market, it won't have a remarkable effect on prices. There just isn't enough oil in America to satisfy the level of demand we have here. It's a complete nonstarter that deludes people into believing that the solution resides in more drilling when it is in the pursuit of renewable energy sources and lifestyle changes.
The oil in Alaska is already there. The pipeline is built and it's maintained. I don't know anything about whether or not the effect that Alaskan oil will have on the market, but I DO know that as a girl from Alaska it's there and waiting to get down to the lower 48. But that's cool, keep voiting no on ANWAR so the PFD checks stay high :wink:
The future is not off shore drilling its a top down approach to living differently in America. It took 15 years but Brazil has NO imports of oil into their country. They produce just enough oil to offset any shortages of Ethanol made from Sugarcane. http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/204_growing_energy_trailer.html We have much more resources than Brazil, more land and plenty of smart people. Ethanol made from Cellulose (Switch Grass, leftovers from processing Sugar, wood chips, grand clippings) is already online in Georgia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol http://www.verenium.com/index.html There is another online in Maryland Once this gets on track, it could provide BILLIONS (with a B) gallons of the stuff. Combined with other bio-fuels from Seaweed (Bio Diesel) and Algae will get us off imported oil in less than 10 years at a cost of around $1 (yes you heard correct), 1 dollar a gallon by 2012. Combined this with a first class Solar Program to say pay for Solar home systems up to 3kw (more than enough to run a modern home) and selling the extra energy back to your Co-Op, Power Company or DWP. California's Solar Program is the most aggressive with systems up to 1kw virtually free with tax credits from the State and Federal Program and that's before the refunds you'll get from LA-DWP, SCE, San Diego Power or PG&E. Plus we (n Cali) average the highest amount of sunshine in the country! We should also be the first to have in-state high speed rail system from The Bay Area to Los Angeles and then additions to San Diego, Inland Empire and even out to Las Vegas. The Federal Government just needs to be more aggressive with its Energy Programs and you'll see that. GM is being by far the most aggressive in the auto market with the first plug-in hybrid (Chevy Volt - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt) The car will more than likely come out for about $35-40K. Test Mules can already go beyond 40 miles without a charge or the generator engine coming online to recharge the Li-po battery system. The car should go on sale between 2009 and 2010, as Chevy is running its Wind Tunnel 24/7 finalizing the shape of the car and while it will look somewhat like the concept car, they were disappointed with CD numbers the concept put down, so they had to redesign a few things. If you go to the PBS e2 site and watch "Paving The Way" you'll learn more about the car and GE's roll in some of the "glass" panels which aren't glass at all... The future is bright, it will be blinding once Washington gets serious about it and we'll get serious about it, we have too. War is unacceptable for Geo-Political Reasons, see Iraq War. Which was soley about controlling Iraq's Oil and a national experiment on how to run a Neo-Conservative Country. Say NO to Off Shore Drilling and Say NO to NUCLEAR POWER (No Yucca Mountain!) We can do with SOLAR, WIND, WATER and Natural Gas (For the time being) and moving to a Zero Waste nation...
I think more time and money should be spent with finding alternative sources to make cars run and other things work with than oil. Oil won't be there forever.
They know that there is oil in the refuge, but they aren't sure how much or where the best points to access it from are. Determining that and building the extraction infrastructure will take years. The EIA put the best case scenario from oil flowing for proven reserves in ANWR to start flowing onto the world market somewhere around 2013. However, whether Congress should authorize drilling in ANWR or off of the coast of Florida is a totally pointless discussion because the oil companies already hold over 10,000 leases which give them access to more than 70% of remaining oil reserves under U.S. soil. They haven't drilled any new wells in the U.S. despite obtaining these leases for the last decade because it's more profitable for them not to. But that point is completely irrelevant when discussing the current energy crunch because THERE IS NO SUPPLY SHORTAGE ON THE WORLD MARKET. The high prices have not been driven by increased demand, but rather unchecked speculation in the commodities markets. How else do you explain $10+ spikes in the price of oil in a single day in the market when the consumption of petroleum products in the industrialized world has actually dropped about 2% in the past few months due to the increased prices. The weak dollar and increased demand for oil in emerging markets like India and China are to blame for part of the price increase, but they do not justify 140$/barrel for oil at this point. As it stands now, purchasers who trade oil on the ICE only take delivery of the product in about 1% of the transactions. Most of the trading is in futures contracts which are creating the ridiculous artificial prices on the global market due the energy bubble that has formed. The drilling canard is just another obfuscatory Republican ploy to confuse the populous and take the focus off of their friends in the corporate world who are making a killing at the expense of the rest of society. This is similar to the rolling blackouts a few years back in California. The Republicans and the energy companies claimed that energy demand had outgrown the infrastructure because the "dirty hippie activists" had successfully lobbied the government to prevent the construction of new oil refineries (which were then and are now operating well BELOW capacity in the U.S.) and nuclear plants, but in reality, the energy traders at Enron were deliberately holding power off of the market in order to drive up the prices while gouging desperate consumers. For the record, that fiasco also took place because of deregulation of the energy industry. People need to wake up to the fact that the market fundamentalist economic theories are at best totally flawed. Markets are NOT self-correcting. They are made up of very greedy individuals and the second anyone takes off the controls, the people at the top seek to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
