• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

You Can't Fuel All of the People All of the Time

Cal

Well-known member
http://www.townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=aee9317e-bb9e-48bc-8153-5386d30f7cec&t=c

You Can't Fuel All of the People All of the Time
Ann Coulter
Thursday, June 26, 2008

Liberals dismiss studies that show a link between abortion and breast cancer, claiming they are biased because the people promoting the studies are "anti-choice."

For the same reason, no one should believe the Democrats' "energy" policies.

Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles.

Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore endorsed the Malthusian proposal of Paul and Anne Ehrlich in "The Population Explosion" that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan.

The result is consumers now pay about 46 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. That's not including taxes paid directly to the government by the oil companies and passed onto consumers. As the inestimable economist John Lott has pointed out, in the past 25 years oil companies have paid more than three times in taxes what they have made in profits.

B. Hussein Obama's response to soaring gas prices is to have the oil companies collect even more money from us at the pump, proposing a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies. "Corporate taxes" sound like taxes on rich people, but all they do is force corporations to collect taxes on behalf of the government.

Democrats have worked hard to ensure that Americans pay as much for gas as Europeans do. After a quarter-century of gas tax hikes, a ban on drilling for oil and a complete destruction of the nuclear power industry in America, I guess liberals can declare: Mission accomplished!

In response to skyrocketing gas prices, liberals say, practically in unison, "We can't drill our way out of this crisis."

What does that mean? This is like telling a starving man, "You can't eat your way out of being hungry!" "You can't water your way out of drought!" "You can't sleep your way out of tiredness!" "You can't drink yourself out of dehydration!"

Seriously, what does it mean? Finding more oil isn't going to increase the supply of oil?

It is the typical Democratic strategy to babble meaningless slogans, as if they have a plan. Their plan is: the permanent twilight of the human race. It's the only solution they can think of to deal with the beastly traffic on the LIE (Long Island Expressway).

How do liberals propose we acquire the energy required for the economic activity and production that results in light appearing when they flick a switch? The larger enterprise involved in producing that little miracle eludes them.

Liberals complain that -- as B. Hussein Obama put it -- there's "no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now. At best you are looking at five years or more down the road."

This is as opposed to airplanes that run on woodchips, which should be up and running any moment now.

Moreover, what was going on five years ago? Why didn't anyone propose drilling back then?

Say, you know what we need? We need a class of people paid to anticipate national crises and plan solutions in advance. It would be such an important job, the taxpayers would pay them salaries so they wouldn't have to worry about making a living and could just sit around anticipating crises.

If only we had had such a group -- let's call them "elected representatives" -- they could have proposed drilling five years ago!

But of course we do pay people to anticipate national problems and propose solutions. Some of them -- we'll call them Republicans -- did anticipate high gas prices and propose solutions.

Six long years ago President Bush had the foresight to demand that Congress allow drilling in a minuscule portion of the Alaska's barren, uninhabitable Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In 2002, Bush, Tom DeLay and the entire Republican Party were screaming from the rooftops: Drill! Drill! Drill!

We'd be gushing oil now -- except the Democrats stopped us from drilling.

Drilling on only 0.01 percent of ANWR's 19 million acres was projected to produce about 10 billion barrels of oil. From all domestic sources combined, we currently produce about 1.8 billion barrels of oil per year. To a layperson like myself, 10 billion barrels seems like a lot of oil.

The other party -- plus John McCain -- ferociously opposed drilling in ANWR, drilling offshore or drilling anyplace else. Instead of Drill! Drill! Drill!, their motto could be: Kill! Kill! Kill!

They refuse to believe our abortion studies? I refuse to believe they care about Americans having to pay high gas prices.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Good post, Cal.

We MUST decrease our dependency on foreign oil, however we do it.

GWB has been preaching this since day one in office.

We are sending nearly a TRILLION dollars out of this country each year for oil.
 

fff

Well-known member
Yeah, maybe Ann can tell us who was in control of Congress and the White House five years ago? Then there's the minor, tiny fact that it's not the Democrats that have kept us from drilling. Republicans have held control of Congress and the White House for years. Why no offshore drilling around FL? Because the Republican governor as well as Republican and Democratic representatives/senators from FL all opposed it. Why no drilling in ANWR while they held control? Now it's suddenly the Democrat's fault? Too funny.
 

hopalong

Well-known member
The moratorium was imposed in 1981, when lawmakers from coastal states sought to block leasing off the Massachusetts and California coasts. Congress has approved the moratorium every year since. President George H.W. Bush issued a separate executive order banning offshore oil drilling in 1991. That prohibition was initially slated to expire in 2002, but in 1998 President Bill Clinton extended it to 2012.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
hopalong said:
The moratorium was imposed in 1981, when lawmakers from coastal states sought to block leasing off the Massachusetts and California coasts. Congress has approved the moratorium every year since. President George H.W. Bush issued a separate executive order banning offshore oil drilling in 1991. That prohibition was initially slated to expire in 2002, but in 1998 President Bill Clinton extended it to 2012.

And according to those in Congress the other day- since it is an Executive Order and not a Congressionally passed law- GW Bush could at any time sign an Executive Order lifting the moratorium...
 

Mike

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
hopalong said:
The moratorium was imposed in 1981, when lawmakers from coastal states sought to block leasing off the Massachusetts and California coasts. Congress has approved the moratorium every year since. President George H.W. Bush issued a separate executive order banning offshore oil drilling in 1991. That prohibition was initially slated to expire in 2002, but in 1998 President Bill Clinton extended it to 2012.

And according to those in Congress the other day- since it is an Executive Order and not a Congressionally passed law- GW Bush could at any time sign an Executive Order lifting the moratorium...

You're wrong OT, as usual. :roll:

Bush Urges Congress to Lift Offshore Drilling Ban
Wednesday, June 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Wednesday put his weight behind a move underfoot in Congress to lift a 27-year-old ban on oil exploration off U.S. shores as gasoline prices reach ever higher, and he cast blame on Democrats for Americans' pain at the pump in an election year that is focusing more heavily on economic issues.

Democrats contend that oil interest-tied Republicans are only seeking to expand oil companies' territory, and are ignoring land already available for oil exploration.

"For many Americans, there is no more pressing concern than the price of gasoline. Truckers and farmers, small-business owners have been hit especially hard. Every American who drives to work, purchases food or ships a product has felt the effect, and families across the country are looking to Washington for a response," Bush said, speaking from the White House Rose Garden. He took no questions.

Mentioning $4-per gallon gasoline more than once, Bush said, "My administration has repeatedly called on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal, and now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction.

"Congress must face a hard reality: Unless members are willing to accept gas prices at today's painful levels or even higher, our nation must produce more oil and we must start now."

Bush said gasoline prices could eventually be eased with a four-point plan, the main plank of which is to open up the Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration.

When Republicans held the majority, the House twice voted to lift the ban, only to have the legislation die in the Senate. The Senate last month by a 56-42 vote rejected a GOP energy plan that would have allowed states to avoid the federal ban if they wanted energy development off their coast.

Congress imposed the drilling moratorium in 1981 and has extended it each year since, by prohibiting the Interior Department from spending money on offshore oil or gas leases in virtually all coastal waters outside the western Gulf of Mexico and in some areas off Alaska.

President George H.W. Bush issued a parallel executive drilling ban in 1990, which was extended by President Clinton and then by the current president until 2012.

On Wednesday, pointing to GOP legislation to allow offshore drilling, called for "good legislation as soon as possible. This legislation should give the states the option of opening up OCS resources off their shores, provide a way for the federal government and states to share new leasing revenues, and ensure that our environment is protected."

But Democrats are pointing to 68 million acres of federal land, to which they say oil companies hold leases allowing them to explore but are going unused.

"This should not be an attempt to get the goods through customs ... scaring people into offering more leases, more drilling opportunities, when they own 68 million acres, 14 years worth of supply, and are not drilling today," Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said Wednesday. It is a sentiment Democrats have voiced repeatedly in recent days.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., said he believed the United States should buy oil refineries.

"Our Republican friends also talk about the need to set up ways in which the material can be refined, refineries. Well, do we own refineries? No. The oil companies own refineries. Should the people of the United States own refineries? Maybe so," Hinchey said.

"Frankly, I think that's a good idea. Then we could control the amount of refined product much more capably that gets out on the market," Hinchey added.

Bush also laid out three other options: He renewed his call to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration; he also said the the country must be committed to development of oil shale — a type of rock that can yield petroleum if heated, for instance — in the western United States; and he said there must be more refinery capacity.

Bush admitted his proposals "will take years to have their full impact" but he said that rather than it being an excuse for delay, "it's a reason to move swiftly" and called on Congress to change the lift the moratorium by the July 4 recess.

The offshore drilling moratoria have been in effect since 1981 in more than 80 percent of the country's Outer Continental Shelf. It was instituted to protect tourism and lessen the chance of oil spills reaching popular beaches.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino told FOX News on Wednesday that while the country moves to energy alternatives, like battery-operated cars, fuel supply has to be increased somehow.

"The president is saying, 'Let's not rely on regimes outside of our own destinies, let's try to use more of our own oil that we have right here at home.' And if we can get the revenue from it, and if we can have the benefit (we can) put back into or plow that investment back into research and development for alternatives and renewables that we're going to use in the future," she said.

Bush might benefit from increasing public support. As gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon recently, consumers have been urging the federal government to come up with a means to slow the sudden rise, including by reducing dependence on foreign producers.

Congressional Democrats, joined by some GOP lawmakers from coastal states, have opposed lifting the prohibition that has barred energy companies from waters along both the East and West coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Other lawmakers are coming up with their own plan: Legislation that would continue the ban into late 2009 had been scheduled to be considered Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee.

However, the panel postponed all markups of spending bills early Wednesday, saying lawmakers were working on the supplemental Iraq war spending bill.

Pat Creighton, a spokesman for Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., who introduced the amendment to lift the ban that failed in a subcommittee on Monday but was to be re-introduced on Wednesday, suggested the decision to delay was for another reason.

"I think it's because our message is resonating," Creighton told FOX News. Democrats denied the assertion.

On Monday, GOP presidential candidate John McCain made lifting the federal ban on offshore oil and gas development a key part of his energy plan. McCain said states should be allowed to pursue energy exploration in waters near their coasts and get some of the royalty revenue.

He repeated the call Tuesday, with his campaign launching an ad faulting Bush for not getting behind domestic production sooner.

"In effect, our petrodollars are underwriting tyranny, anti-Semitism, the brutal repression of women in the Middle East, and dictators and criminal syndicates in our own hemisphere," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said.

Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, opposes lifting the ban on offshore drilling and says that allowing exploration now wouldn't affect gasoline prices for at least five years.

He said his opponent had switched positions from when he first ran for president in 2000. "I think he continues to find himself being pushed further and further to the right in ways that in my mind don't show a lot of leadership," he said.

Obama also said there is "no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now. At best you are looking at five years or more down the road."

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, energy secretary during the Clinton administration, called it "another bad idea."

"It's going to take 10 years to fully get that oil out of the ocean. It's a fragile ecosystem," he said on CBS's "The Early Show."

"You know this president, all he wants to do is drill, drill, drill. There is very little on conservation, on fuel efficiency for vehicles. Just last week the Congress failed to pass a solar tax credit — give more incentives to renewable energy, solar and wind. A one track mind — drill drill drill — that's not going to work," Richardson said.

The 574 million acres of federal coastal water that are off-limits are believed to hold nearly 18 billion barrels of undiscovered, recoverable oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the Interior Department. The country each year uses about 7.6 billion barrels of oil and 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
In June 1990, President George H. W. Bush responded to concerns about preserving the ocean and coastal environment with a directive ordering the Department of Interior not to conduct leasing or preleasing activity in places other than the Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and limited parts of Alaska offshore until 2000. The moratorium affected virtually all of the coasts of the North Atlantic, California, Washington, Oregon, New England, Mid-Atlantic and the Northern Aleutian Basin. It also included the Eastern Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Southwest Florida, an area extending 700 miles from Baldwin County, Alabama, southward to the Florida Keys.

Bush's directive expanded a moratorium Congress imposed in 1982 that removed 736,000 acres off the coast of northern and central California from leasing for oil and gas exploration and production. The concern for possible environmental damage and social disruption caused by both routine activities and accidents, such as oil spills, resulted in local pressure to prevent these possibilities by removing areas from the lease schedule. In 1998, President Clinton extended Bush's Executive Order until June 2012.

The testimony in Congress last week- was that the only part closed by Congressional Law was the 736,000 acres off the coast of northern and central California-- all the rest is just under Executive Order....
 

fff

Well-known member
Offshore drilling is banned both under a Congressional mandate and an Executive Order. Recently Bush said he'd rescind the Executive Order after Congress removed their ban.

Taxes are the reason oil companies are pushing to drill offshore. They don't pay taxes on much of the revenue earned there. If they drill anywhere else in the US, they will have to pay taxes. Pretty simple.

According to the Department of the Interior, oil and gas companies will avoid paying royalties on more than $65 billion worth of revenues over the next five years, costing the federal government approximately $9.5 billion over that period2 According to a draft report by the General Accountability Office, losses to the treasury over 25 years could reach a staggering $20 billion. And if the oil industry is successful in a recent legal challenge, these losses could balloon to $80 The billion over the same period.3

Oil and gas companies typically pay a 12 to 16 percent royalty on oil and gas they extract from federally owned waters. The royalties provide needed funding to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Historic Preservation Trust Fund, the oil-producing states and the general treasury.

In order to spur domestic production when oil and gas prices were at an all-time low, Congress in 1995 passed the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act of 1995, which granted royalty relief to oil and gas companies drilling in deep waters for leases sold between 1996 and 2000.4

The law placed several limits on the royalty relief. First, it limited royalty relief to a set volume of production from a lease: 17.5 million barrels from depths of 200 to 400 meters, 52.5 million barrels from depths of 400-800 meters, and 87.5 million barrels from depths greater than 800 meters. More importantly, it authorized the Interior Department to set price thresholds when awarding offshore drilling leases, to ensure that royalty relief would end when oil and gas prices rose above a certain amount. But In 1998 and 1999, the Interior Department awarded leases for offshore drilling that didn't include price thresholds. Production from these leases is just now coming on line.

With oil and natural gas prices at all-time highs, oil and gas companies drilling in the Gulf are expected to earn more than $65 billion over the next five years, royalty-free. According to the Minerals Management Service budget, these leases will produce 298 million barrels of oil and 7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The Interior Department concluded that taxpayers will lose out on $9.5 billion in royalties that oil companies should be paying over the next five years. More recently, the GAO concluded in a draft report that taxpayers could lose out on at least $20 billion over the next 25 years. Roughly half the cost is attributed to the lack of price thresholds in the 1998 and 1999 leases. The other half is attributed to a 2003 legal victory by oil companies which greatly expanded the amount of royalty-free oil and gas they could produce.

More at the link:

http://kicktheoilhabit.org/aboutsubsidies.php#2

Why won't Bush lift the ban?

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200806/POL20080620a.html
 

Mike

Well-known member
In order to spur domestic production when oil and gas prices were at an all-time low, Congress in 1995 passed the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act of 1995, which granted royalty relief to oil and gas companies drilling in deep waters for leases sold between 1996 and 2000

Does anyone remember who was Pres and signed this bill at this time?

Let's see??????????????? 1995. Was it Reagan? :lol: :lol:
 
Top