Do you think the federal government should open up the strategic oil reserves?
11 Comments
Don Greyfox said:
We have the 500 billion barrels of light sweet crude in the Bakken oil field in eastern Montana, and western North Dakota. We also have the new deep water oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico another 70 billion barrels of Light sweet crude. What we need are more high-tech state-of -the-art refineries.
Ron said:
I remember back in the 70's we faced the same issues as today with waiting in gas lines and running out of gas. We always wait until it hits our pockets. We have oil in the Dakota's (Bakken) and are waiting for what? Lets go get it. The enviromentalists should be ordered to set aside and lets go get it and make it a priority and not wait for another 20 years. Tell the mid east to eat there oil. We also have barrels of oil you can by on the market. Big investors are inflating the price also. Its like any stock, the more stock purchased the higher it goes. I agree, we need more refineries for gasoline. Lets put the money we are wasting and have wasted in new refineries and get on with it.
Webdog said:
Don and Ron, The US consumes 30000000000 barrels of oil per year, which is 30 billion. That means we have a decade and a half of oil in Bakken and 2 and a half years of oil in the Gulf if we don't change our consumption policy. This isn't considering the percentage increase of dependency on oil per year. Drilling in Alaska as well as other parts of the US is inevitable. But we need to try to adopt different measures for alternative energy and plastics now before we are back to the middle ages. It won't take long. Also consider what Peak Oil is. After opening up the oil fields we may have 3 years Max of cheaper oil, which will still be about 4 dollars per gallon before we shift to a log price increase of available oil. This means that the cars you currently own will likely last longer than all the oil we have in the US reserves. Pretty scary to imagine that in our children's lifetime and perhaps your own, there will be no Petroleum, Anywhere. No plastic drink cups or bottles, No Plastic to encase your TV, No styrofoam peanuts to protect your goods that would normally be shipped by a vehicle that runs on Petroleum.
MaryEllen Winski said:
No!!!
What the Feds need to do is bring the OIL COMPANY'S back in line...they are not being reasonable if they were not making record profits I would think different here but the OIL COMPANY'S are NOT our friends. They are PRICE GOUGING and must be prosecuted as the President claimed all would be if anyone was found to be making outlandish profits. Well I think that here we have a huge case against all the OIL COMPANY'S
MEWinski
Susan said:
Absolutely not!!! This 'oil crisis' has been a long time coming - we have always known fossil fuels are a finite resource and we've not done enough to prepare for the eventual short fall.
What this planet needs is a human population and human consumption diet - global one child per family and for each one of us to consciously reduce our carbon footprints would go a long way to stretch our fossil fuels, reduce global warming, reduce poverty, reduce the 'food crisis', etc. That will buy some time to focus on developing alternative energy sources, while we conserve what is remaining of current and non-renewable energy sources.
terry said:
What needs to happen is the stock holders of the oil companies need to sell the stocks. This would drop the stock price and bottom out the rich oil companies. I find it hard to believe that these money hungry stock holders are so greety that their profits are more important than the welfare of our country. The stock market is over priced and the oil companies are using this to fill there pockets. I remember the 70's also. This time, it is greed and greed only that is keeping the price high. Yes our government needs to regulate the oil companies again and get them back in line.
Stephen said:
Susan, tell the parents of the kids who died in the recent Chinese earthquake what a good idea their one child per family policy is. Family bloodlines died in that quake.
"Carbon Footprints" are a leftist farce. 10 seconds of naturally occuring forest fires emit more carbon dioxide than the average American does in a year. There is always a naturally occurring forest fire burning somewhere on Earth. Narcissistic fools think that they can affect the 'health' of the planet. You could burn everthing you own. In fact everyone in the state of Washington could burn everything they own, and once the cloud dissipated, the planet would not even notice.
The 'Food Crisis' has been caused by global warming madness. Subsidies for ethanol and biofuels cause producers of wheat to switch to more-profitable corn, which creates an imbalance in global food supplies. Supply affects price, and voila, food crisis. Stupid, short-sighted lefty fascists are to blame for many of the current problems facing our country.
Drill in Alaska, before it's too late!
God Bless America.
webdog said:
Stephen,
You are an idiot. Short-sighted lefty fascists? How does looking at cause and effect make a "group" short-sighted? Perhaps you should read unbiased news instead of taking everything Bill O'Reilly says as fact. Carbon footprints aren't a farce. Ever heard of a little something called Styrofoam? It is carbon based and will outlast the human race as well as those worthless offspring you bring into the world. That is called a "Carbon Footprint" and is one of many examples that were brought into existence by Mankind. Sure the earth may eventually deal with it but in the meantime it takes away from the beauty of nature because humans haven't learned to properly dispose of garbage. Also, many factors affect food crisis. Ethanol as a fuel is stupid, in fact, i don't know anybody that likes the idea or even can find a good scientific reason to use it. Until we can use a less desirable fodder as the source they shouldn't waste our food. I agree with that much. Biofuels do have a future in our energy-dependent world, but money needs to be focused on research and development as well as to look at the cost to adjust our infrastructure.
Jean said:
Touching our reserves should be a last resort. However, there should be some sort of regulation or price cap on the American oil companies. It is utterly rediculous that the oil companies are making record profits while the consumers are being crushed at the pump. I'm not asking them to go into losses...just decrease profits and only increase prices when their bottom lines are in jeopardy. Want my respect and loyalty? Take a hit for me now and then.
Austin said:
NO The U.S. has done enough to polute the air and the enviroment we need to start looking at more cleaner energy, and fast.
Ron said:
Depleting the oil reserves would leave us with nothing in reserve. (Duh) It also wouldn't significantly impact the price of fuel, so why do it? It would only make us vulnerable and more dependent on oil from elsewhere.
We have the 500 billion barrels of light sweet crude in the Bakken oil field in eastern Montana, and western North Dakota. We also have the new deep water oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico another 70 billion barrels of Light sweet crude. What we need are more high-tech state-of -the-art refineries.
I remember back in the 70's we faced the same issues as today with waiting in gas lines and running out of gas. We always wait until it hits our pockets. We have oil in the Dakota's (Bakken) and are waiting for what? Lets go get it. The enviromentalists should be ordered to set aside and lets go get it and make it a priority and not wait for another 20 years. Tell the mid east to eat there oil. We also have barrels of oil you can by on the market. Big investors are inflating the price also. Its like any stock, the more stock purchased the higher it goes. I agree, we need more refineries for gasoline. Lets put the money we are wasting and have wasted in new refineries and get on with it.
Don and Ron, The US consumes 30000000000 barrels of oil per year, which is 30 billion. That means we have a decade and a half of oil in Bakken and 2 and a half years of oil in the Gulf if we don't change our consumption policy. This isn't considering the percentage increase of dependency on oil per year. Drilling in Alaska as well as other parts of the US is inevitable. But we need to try to adopt different measures for alternative energy and plastics now before we are back to the middle ages. It won't take long. Also consider what Peak Oil is. After opening up the oil fields we may have 3 years Max of cheaper oil, which will still be about 4 dollars per gallon before we shift to a log price increase of available oil. This means that the cars you currently own will likely last longer than all the oil we have in the US reserves. Pretty scary to imagine that in our children's lifetime and perhaps your own, there will be no Petroleum, Anywhere. No plastic drink cups or bottles, No Plastic to encase your TV, No styrofoam peanuts to protect your goods that would normally be shipped by a vehicle that runs on Petroleum.
No!!!
What the Feds need to do is bring the OIL COMPANY'S back in line...they are not being reasonable if they were not making record profits I would think different here but the OIL COMPANY'S are NOT our friends. They are PRICE GOUGING and must be prosecuted as the President claimed all would be if anyone was found to be making outlandish profits. Well I think that here we have a huge case against all the OIL COMPANY'S
MEWinski
Absolutely not!!! This 'oil crisis' has been a long time coming - we have always known fossil fuels are a finite resource and we've not done enough to prepare for the eventual short fall.
What this planet needs is a human population and human consumption diet - global one child per family and for each one of us to consciously reduce our carbon footprints would go a long way to stretch our fossil fuels, reduce global warming, reduce poverty, reduce the 'food crisis', etc. That will buy some time to focus on developing alternative energy sources, while we conserve what is remaining of current and non-renewable energy sources.
What needs to happen is the stock holders of the oil companies need to sell the stocks. This would drop the stock price and bottom out the rich oil companies. I find it hard to believe that these money hungry stock holders are so greety that their profits are more important than the welfare of our country. The stock market is over priced and the oil companies are using this to fill there pockets. I remember the 70's also. This time, it is greed and greed only that is keeping the price high. Yes our government needs to regulate the oil companies again and get them back in line.
Susan, tell the parents of the kids who died in the recent Chinese earthquake what a good idea their one child per family policy is. Family bloodlines died in that quake.
"Carbon Footprints" are a leftist farce. 10 seconds of naturally occuring forest fires emit more carbon dioxide than the average American does in a year. There is always a naturally occurring forest fire burning somewhere on Earth. Narcissistic fools think that they can affect the 'health' of the planet. You could burn everthing you own. In fact everyone in the state of Washington could burn everything they own, and once the cloud dissipated, the planet would not even notice.
The 'Food Crisis' has been caused by global warming madness. Subsidies for ethanol and biofuels cause producers of wheat to switch to more-profitable corn, which creates an imbalance in global food supplies. Supply affects price, and voila, food crisis. Stupid, short-sighted lefty fascists are to blame for many of the current problems facing our country.
Drill in Alaska, before it's too late!
God Bless America.
Stephen,
You are an idiot. Short-sighted lefty fascists? How does looking at cause and effect make a "group" short-sighted? Perhaps you should read unbiased news instead of taking everything Bill O'Reilly says as fact. Carbon footprints aren't a farce. Ever heard of a little something called Styrofoam? It is carbon based and will outlast the human race as well as those worthless offspring you bring into the world. That is called a "Carbon Footprint" and is one of many examples that were brought into existence by Mankind. Sure the earth may eventually deal with it but in the meantime it takes away from the beauty of nature because humans haven't learned to properly dispose of garbage. Also, many factors affect food crisis. Ethanol as a fuel is stupid, in fact, i don't know anybody that likes the idea or even can find a good scientific reason to use it. Until we can use a less desirable fodder as the source they shouldn't waste our food. I agree with that much. Biofuels do have a future in our energy-dependent world, but money needs to be focused on research and development as well as to look at the cost to adjust our infrastructure.
Touching our reserves should be a last resort. However, there should be some sort of regulation or price cap on the American oil companies. It is utterly rediculous that the oil companies are making record profits while the consumers are being crushed at the pump. I'm not asking them to go into losses...just decrease profits and only increase prices when their bottom lines are in jeopardy. Want my respect and loyalty? Take a hit for me now and then.
NO The U.S. has done enough to polute the air and the enviroment we need to start looking at more cleaner energy, and fast.
Depleting the oil reserves would leave us with nothing in reserve. (Duh) It also wouldn't significantly impact the price of fuel, so why do it? It would only make us vulnerable and more dependent on oil from elsewhere.