Oil Discussion/Speculation

[hulagirl]

Speculation may account only for a few $$$, mostly supply and demand, mostly CHINA and the U.S.
The less we use, the less OPEC will produce in response, hence, keeping prices inflated and maybe much higher until there is a world wide disruption. No one knows how much oil they have, and they surely either are not telling or just don't know....but its not infinite.

U.S. is in trouble, and we need to start our own drilling yesterday!!! Interest rates need to go up, which will hurt borrown again, but it will curb inflation and may bring down fuel prices, and save the U.S. from further decline.

Congress really needs to step up in a MAJOR way. CUT the bull crap, ingore Bush who is on his way out...thank Jesus.
And Damn it, end the war which is taking up all our tax revenue and we are getting NOTHING in return accept some BS of giving a country Decmocracy which they don't give a crap about!. We are bankrolling the IRAQ government, their military, and WE ARE NOT GETTING THEIR OIL AT A MIDDLE EAST PRICE...plus, they have the capacity to produce double they produce currently. They have $60 billion in revenue from their oil in just IRAQ alone, WHERE IS THE MONEY?????? And why aren't they supporting their own military and govenment??

WHO IS CONTROLING THAT MONEY AND WHOSE POCKETS IS IT GOING IN??? It's not the IRAQI people.

June 12, 2008 - 13:08 ET

You know, you might be asking yourself every time you go into a gas station, Gee, why are gas prices so high? There is enough oil. There's currently not enough oil for the demand but there's enough oil out there and if you want to know why there's not enough oil out on the market, let's look back for a second.

Do you remember when Bill Clinton pulled the plug on leasing the outer continental shelf? It was back in 1998.

In 1998 President Clinton said you can't lease anything here for oil until 2012, and there are just a few places here: Washington, the entire state; Oregon, the entire state; Northern California, Central California and Southern California. The eastern Gulf of Mexico except for a portion of land. The South Atlantic, the Mid Atlantic, the North Atlantic, all national marine sanctuaries. All of these are indefinite. The Olympic Coast, Cordell Bank, California, Monterey Bay, California, the Gulf of the Farallones, California, the Channel Islands of California; the Flower Bank Gardens Gulf of Mexico, Straits of Florida and the Florida Keys, Gray's Reef South and Atlantic, Monitor Mid Atlantic, Stellwagen Bank, North Atlantic.

This isn't to excuse congress from their responsibility because they started their moratoriums back in 1982, stopping the leasing in 1982 of Central and Northern California. Then in 1984 it was Southern California. In 1990 the North Aleutian Basin in Alaska. Then in 1991 Washington, Oregon and the Florida Panhandle.

It also isn't to excuse the Republicans. The administration says they're for all of these things, with the exception of the Alaskan Aleutian Basin which hasn't been included in the ban since 2004.

The Democrats said yesterday "it's not like the outer continental shelf is important to our energy needs" in a subcommittee when they killed going to the outer continental shelf. "It's not that important, it's really not that much, we've got other things we can do".

And actually with all of the bans, it still provides 30% of outline domestic oil production, which is more than we import from any other nation on the planet. Do you have that? The part that we have opened provides 30% of all domestic oil production, more than we import from any other nation.

By the way, the Government estimates that the outer continental shelf, the one the Democrats said no to yesterday, has 76 billion barrels of oil in it that are recoverable and that's with today's technology. Let's put that into perspective: 76 billion barrels is enough to replace every single barrel of oil that we import from everywhere outside of North America for the next 34 years at our current pace. That's in the one place that congress said we couldn't go into yesterday.

But what about the environment?This is from the Government again! There have been no spills over 1,000 barrels in 15 years of the outer continental shelf drilling.

The National Academy of Sciences found that the offshore industry is among the safest industrial activities in the United States. Outer continental shelf operations are more than five times less likely to cause a spill than oil tankers who are importing oil. Imports present an environmental risk of spills 13 times greater than domestic production.

Imports present an environmental risk of spills 13 times greater than domestic production. And, natural seeps account for 150 to 175 times more oil in the ocean than outer continental shelf oil and gas operations. Natural seeps? Now we know who the real polluter is, that evil wench mother nature. Yet it's the environmentalists who continue to dictate our energy policy.


Obama yesterday said the price of gasoline isn't the problem. $4 a gallon for gasoline isn't the problem? The high price of oil is not the problem? He says that the problem is the price has just risen too quickly.

How fast has oil risen? On 9/11 oil was $27 a barrel. Do you remember how everybody was freaking out after Katrina? "Oh, Katrina, that spike is going to kill us." Oil was $70 a barrel in that spike.

We're now almost double that. And from the same government that tells us we don't need more oil, that we don't need to go in and drill in the outer continental shelf, we don't need to go in and get the shale, we don't need to go in to ANWR. We don't need any of this oil? We don't need to build nuclear power plants? We don't need to take our coal and turn it into oil? We don't need any more refineries? From that government, the same government, the Energy Information Administration in its annual energy outlook in 2005 projected that oil prices would reach as high as $52 a barrel in the year 2025. Hmmm.

How they voted:

AGAINST
Chair: Norman D. Dicks (WA)
James P. Moran (VA)
Maurice D. Hinchey (NY)
John W. Olver (MA)
Alan B. Mollohan (WV)
Tom Udall (NM)
Ben Chandler (KY)
Ed Pastor (AZ)
Dave Obey (WI), Ex Officio

FOR
Minority
Ranking Member:
Todd Tiahrt (KS)
John E. Peterson (PA)
Jo Ann Emerson (MO)
Virgil H. Goode, Jr. (VA)
Ken Calvert (CA)
Jerry Lewis (CA), Ex Officio

 

[700UW]

The oil companies current lease acres and acres that they are not drilling on.

America's untapped oil
Lawmakers lay into big oil for leaving million of acres untouched while at the same time asking to drill in Alaska and off the coasts.
Last Updated: June 25, 2008: 3:08 PM EDT

Democrats want to know why the oil industry is asking for more drilling rights when it isn't using the leases it already has.

Who has the most power to lower gas prices?
CongressConsumersThe PresidentSaudi Arabia or View results
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil companies and many lawmakers are pressing to open up more U.S. areas for drilling. But the industry is drilling on just a fraction of areas it already has access to.

Of the 90 million offshore acres the industry has leases to, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, it is estimated that upwards of 70 million are not producing oil, according to both Democrats and oil-industry sources.

One Democrat staffer said if all these existing areas were being drilled, U.S. oil production could be boosted by nearly 5 million barrels a day, although the oil industry said that number is far too high and one government agency said it was impossible to estimate production.

Recent proposals to open up offshore coastal areas near Florida and California, as well as Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, might yield 2 million additional barrels, according to estimates from various government sources that also stressed the difficulty in making forecasts. The United States currently produces 8 million barrels of oil and other petroleum liquids a day and consumes about 21 million.

Oil companies "should finish what's on their plate before they go back in line," said Oppenheimer analyst Fadel Gheit.

Some Democrats also charge that oil companies are deliberately not drilling on the land to limit supply and drive up oil prices.

"Big Oil is more interested in pumping up prices and pumping up their own profits rather than pumping more oil," said Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass), who has co-sponsored a bill to charge oil companies a fee for land they hold that's not producing oil. "We should not even begin discussing handing over more public land to the oil companies until they first use [the land] they already hold."

But the oil industry says it pays millions of dollars for these leases, and that it would not make sense to purposely leave the areas untapped.

Rather, years of exploration is required before drilling can even begin. In some cases, no oil is found on leases they hold. In others, drilling the wells and building the pipelines takes years. It is especially hard now that a worldwide boom in oil exploration has pushed up the prices - and timelines - for skilled workers and specialized equipment.

"No one is sitting on leases these days," said Rayola Dougher, senior economic advisor for the American Petroleum Institute. "Those making those assertions don't understand the bidding and leasing process."

Gheit agrees that it's unlikely that hoarding is going on.

With prices at $135 dollars a barrel, everyone is trying to pump as much as they can, he said. But fearing oil prices will eventually fall, the industry is leery about making too many investments in the fields it has - many of which are in deepwater areas that can be pricey to develop.

Instead, they're holding out, hoping the government will open areas closer to shore that would be cheaper to work on.

The presumptive Republican candidate John McCain has come out in favor of lifting bans on oil-drilling off most of the East and West coasts of the United States. Added supply, the thinking goes, would ultimately bring down the price of oil. The bans were enacted in the 1970s following several coastal oil spills.

Critics say lifting the bans would do little to ease the nation's energy crisis in part because it would take years to produce meaningful amounts of oil, noting how much is currently going untapped.

Gheit hasn't seen the legislation proposed by Markey and others, but he thinks the government should revise the leasing process to encourage more drilling on existing areas before it puts more acres up for bid.

 

[sharktooth]

They have not built a refinery in over 20 years, the oil companies manipulate the capacity, gas and oil products use is way up and yet capacity is down.

Just because the refineries are not operating at 100% doesnt mean there is enough capacity.

How is there enough if refineries havent been built in over 20 years?

In a nutshell:

I understand from reading that every single US refinery has been modernized and otherwise remodeled to update efficiencies at least once in the last twenty years. "No refineries built over the last xxx years" is simply a canard playing, once again, on ignorance.

Once government and the oil monopoly figured out that when oil companies abandoned old refinery sites that they became Superfund clean up sites, they passed laws that gave almost 100% tax breaks for companies modernizing their present sites rather than despoiling "new" sites. (that means, you, the taxpayer, pays for the remodel) Taking one (or more) off line "reduces fuel availability", driving prices at the pump up, a win-win for "big oil".

That and the other giant deductions for "developing new oil fields" - hence the "push" to develop ANWR - they don't have to deliver, just "develop", are needed in order to off-set record quarterly earnings.

Maybe Tempe should consider drilling.

 

[luvthe9]

Oil tops 140, not good http://www.cnbc.com/id/25378221