Professor Smartass whose motto is "Blind obedience and leader worship is patriotic....(if you live in North Korea)."
Congress finds Big Oil holding back fields that could DOUBLE US output
Rush Limbaugh and other right wing commentators have blamed high oil prices on limits on off-shore drilling near the US and in ANWR, but what makes people think big oil will pump more if we give them more oil fields?
Right now, they hold leases to federal land that they AREN'T DRILLING ON that could DOUBLE US oil output according to the House Committee on Natural Resources. They have introduced a bill to make them use those fields or lose them:
Oil and gas companies, however, are not required to demonstrate diligent development. Because of this, oil and gas companies have been allowed to stockpile leases in a non-producing status, while leaving millions of acres of leased land untouched. The Rahall legislation directs the Secretary of the Interior to define what constitutes diligent development for oil and gas leases.
They are holding those fields back to control the price and keep it high, just as they aren't shedding too many tears over the violence in Iraq or war talk about Iran since that drives up the price of oil too.
In fact, before the Iraq War, OIL & GAS JOURNAL fretted that when the sanctions came off, Saddam would pump too much oil and drive down prices--unless there was a war. We gave them the war, and they rewarded our sacrifice of tax dollars and soldiers lives by gouging us at the pump.
If they didn't charge us less for giving them Iraq, why would they for ANWR?
Tell your congressman and senators to support the Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act of 2008 (H.R. 6251).
When you've got something that people need, the key to big profit is just let them have barely enough of it. The difference in this respect between the oil companies and high-priced hookers is that I like hookers. At least when they put you over a barrel, you asked for it.
Here's a little personal note on how much profit there is in oil right now. In the far dim mists of time before I was born, my mother was an executive secretary for the Barnsdall Oil Co., a Bush family-related outfit that had interests in Middle Eastern oil as well as in the U.S. Later known as Sun Oil and then Sunray Oil, they were later conglomerated into Standard Oil of California and so on and so on until now. One thing you learn from studying the history of oil companies is that they all sprang from just a few people and they're all in cahoots.
Just as an aside, I have in my possession an actual shell fragment from this.
My Mom passed away in 1948. She left me an oil royalty that pays me to this day. I think it's 2% of 6% or 6% of 2% or something like that on a tract in Southern California somewhere. This thing has paid me like clockwork, usually quarterly or semi-annually for sixty years. I'm not exactly sure what the money's for, oil production, gas storage, or what. I just cash the checks.
I'm not exactly in the same league with the Oil Sheikhs, which includes the Bushes. For all these years, my checks have been worth at most a coupla hunnert bucks a year. They've gone up and they've gone down. A big one would buy me'n Mrs. G a dinner out.
Until this year. So far in '08 I've been getting a check every month and they've averaged about $375. The company that administers my payout offered me $5100 a month or so ago to buy me out. Fat chance! Even at $4+ per gallon, my piddling 'oil holdings' are paying for every drop of gas we use and then some. Thanks, Mom.
We need a President who's not in the awl bidness (thank you, Molly. You tried to warn us.) who will actively promote and adequately fund research into the dozens of alternative energy possibilities, from hydrogen to hemp oil. We're not going to drill ourselves out of this mess, and we need to change our lifestyles and ways of thinking about all kinds of energy use, but a little relief at the pump could make a big difference in people's lives right now. With all the profit in oil at present, I'll repeat myself: Fat Chance.
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