Offshore Drilling: A Start Toward A Solution

US refiners say climate laws are biggest challenge

Reuters

Thu Oct 29, 2009 1:41pm EDT

Excerpts:

HOUSTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - U.S. refiners face a bigger problem beyond the economic downturn in the form of federal legislative proposals to prevent climate change that will boost costs and possibly shutter refineries, industry executives said on Thursday.

"Economic recovery is not going to make us whole again," said Tom Botts, executive vice president of global manufacturing, downstream for Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L).

An estimated 750,000 barrels in U.S. refining capacity has been turned off by the current economic downturn, executives said during speeches at a Houston refining conference.

Full article Reuters

API: US drilling up slightly, but still below year-ago counts

Oil & Gas Journal

Oct 13, 2009

Nick Snow

OGJ Washington Editor

WASHINGTON, DC, Oct. 13 -- US oil and gas drilling activity rebounded somewhat from the previous 3-month period during 2009’s third quarter but remained substantially lower than the comparable 2008 period, the American Petroleum Institute reported.

API said the estimated 8,856 wells completed during the quarter ended Sept. 30 were 10.2% more than the second quarter’s total but 46% less than the number for 2008’s third quarter. Activity remains at levels not seen since 2003-04, it added in its latest quarterly well completion report.

“The trend of declining well completions is a clear indication that oil and gas companies, which are facing declining earnings and threats of increased taxes, continued to carefully monitor their expenditures,” said Hazem Arafa, director of API’s statistics department.

The report said the estimated number of US exploration wells dropped 59% year-to-year to 327, while the number of development wells fell 46% to 7,430.

Full article Nick Snow API Smart Brief

THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

February 19, 2009

The Obama Administration Should Not Delay Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing

by Ben Lieberman

WebMemo #2302

Full article Ben Lieberman THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

Excerpts:

Last July, President Bush responded to public anger over $4.00 a gallon gasoline and rescinded the longstanding executive moratorium on offshore leasing for oil and natural gas.

Congress followed suit by allowing its own restrictions to lapse on October 1. But now, the Obama Administration has taken steps to slow down the process of leasing these areas to energy companies, and some fear that expanded offshore drilling will be put off indefinitely.

Delay would be a mistake and should be kept to a minimum, as additional domestic oil is still badly needed.

Background

For many years, 85 percent of America's territorial waters--including most of the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf of Mexico--were off limits to oil and natural gas exploration and drilling.[1] The U.S. is the only nation that has restricted its own energy supply to this extent.

An estimated 19 billion barrels of oil--nearly 30 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia--as well as substantial natural gas reserves are estimated to lie beneath these restricted areas.[2] And it should be noted that these initial estimates in under-explored areas tend to be on the low side.

Most of these restrictions were put in place at the behest of environmentalists and other drilling opponents in the late 1980s and 1990s, a time when gasoline was cheap and the need for additional supplies was not seen as great.

But they have remained in place in recent years, even as gasoline hit $2.00 and then $3.00 a gallon and state-of-the-art drilling technology has amassed a proven record of reducing the environmental impacts and risk of spills.[3]

WALL STREET JOURNAL

Democrats Still Aren't Serious About Drilling

By JOHN SHADEGG

Full article John Shadegg

Excerpts:

After a five-week paid vacation, Democrats are back in Washington and claiming that they want to do something about oil prices.

But the problem is that their plan, which passed the House yesterday and will likely come up for a vote in the Senate later this week, will not produce a single drop of oil.

Why? Because it does nothing about environmental groups that are suing to stop drilling.

The Democratic proposal is not a death-bed conversion, it's designed to solve their political problem. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her members in August that they can say they are in favor of drilling, but that she wouldn't allow a vote on a drilling bill. Now that she has been forced to, she knows her environmental allies will block new drilling from going forward.

The Sierra Club has told its members that it is "working to ensure that the final bill's focus is on real clean energy solutions rather than expanded offshore drilling." Democratic Rep. John Murtha, a Pelosi confidante, went further last week in noting that his party's not above cynical politics: "This is a political month. There's all kinds of things we try to do that will just go away after we leave." And Legislative Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council Karen Wayland has said "This is about politics, not necessarily about policy."

T. Boone Pickens “We Are For All Forms of Energy
Except For Foreign Oil”

REAL CLEAR POLITICS

August 08, 2008

It's Simple: Drill and Conserve

Full article Charles Krauthammer RCP

Excerpts:

WASHINGTON -- Let's see: housing meltdown, credit crunch, oil shock not seen since the 1970s. The economy is slowing, unemployment growing and inflation increasing. It's the sixth year of a highly unpopular war and the president's approval rating is at 30 percent.

The Italian Communist Party could win this election. The American Democratic Party is trying its best to lose it.

Democrats have the advantage on just about every domestic issue from health care to education. However, Americans' greatest concern is the economy, and their greatest economic concern is energy (by a significant margin: 37 percent to 21 percent for inflation). Yet Democrats have gratuitously forfeited the issue of increased drilling for domestic oil and gas. By an overwhelming margin of 2-1, Americans want to lift the moratorium preventing drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, thus unlocking vast energy resources shut down for the last 27 years.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Some 168 platforms and 55 rigs were destroyed or damaged by Katrina and Rita. According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS), "due to the prompt evacuation and shut-in preparations made by operating and service personnel, there was no loss of life and no major spills attributed to either storm." What about accidental spills?

According to MMS figures, since 1980, 101,997 barrels spilled during offshore oil drilling operations that extracted 11,855,000 barrels of oil. That's a rate of 0.001%.

Mother Nature oozes 620,500 barrels of oil naturally from the seabed every year, and there are suggestions that drilling would relieve the pressure that forces these natural leaks.

Ironically, those who have blocked drilling off the California coasts for 40 years say it would take five to 10 years to develop these offshore resources.

But as we saw in the price drop that followed President Bush's lifting of the federal ban, just the expectation of increased supply throws cold water on the speculators betting on higher prices as domestic production dwindles.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

McCain Rows The Boat Offshore, Hallelujah!

Domestic Energy Access

TOWNHALL.COM

Bud Weinstein

July 29, 2008

Full article Bud Weinstein Townhall.com

Excerpts:

...To make matters worse, we hear more and more babble about “peak oil,” the notion that the planet has reached some technological limit on the amount of petroleum and natural gas that can be extracted from the Earth. This is sheer nonsense. The world has an ample inventory of fossil fuels, including more than 40 years of proven oil and 60 years of proven natural gas. And a sizeable portion of those reserves is located right off the coast of Florida. According to recent news reports, the Energy Information Administration estimates that 16 billion barrels lie off Florida's coast alone, with other estimates going as high as 21 billion barrels.[1]

But right now, most of this available domestic energy—new supplies that could reduce imports, strengthen national security, and help restrain price increases—is off limits. Since an oil spill nearly 40 years ago, California severely restricts new drilling even though an estimated 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil lie just off its coast. Similarly, the Federal government prohibits drilling for an estimated 5.6 to 16 billion barrels of oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Drilling is also banned on 85 percent of the U.S. outer continental shelf which is estimated to hold 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Recently on the campaign trail Republican Presidential Candidate, Sen. John McCain promoted lifting the federal ban on offshore drilling. Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist endorsed McCain’s plan as a way to reduce high energy prices. We need to listen to McCain and Crist. It’s time to stop beating up on “big oil” and begging OPEC to further open the spigot. We need to craft “market-based” domestic energy policies that stimulate, rather than stifle, new production of oil and gas. Conservation and alternative fuels have their place, but they can’t constitute the core of a comprehensive U.S. energy development strategy. Biofuels, wind generators and solar panels comprise less than two percent of global energy production and only about one percent in the U.S...

Call Congress Back To Vote On Drilling

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Friday, July 25, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Full article Investor's Business Daily

Excerpts:

Leadership: When it comes to giving relief at the pump by drilling for more oil, this is truly a "do-nothing" Democratic Congress. President Bush should give 'em hell like Harry Truman did.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution states that the president "may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both houses" of Congress. On more than two dozen occasions in our history, presidents have done just that, forcing the Senate and House of Representatives to meet on extraordinary matters of defense or economic peril.

Sixty years ago this month, President Truman called such a special session to shame into action what he labeled a "do nothing" Republican Congress. He dubbed it the Turnip Day Session, because of the day on which it began. According to folklore in Truman's native Missouri, "On the 25th of July, sow your turnips, wet or dry."

Speaker Pelosi Will Not Let The House Debate the Merits of Offshore Drilling

No Drilling No Vote

Friday, July 25, 2008; Page A20

Full article Washington Post

Excerpts:

Offshore Drilling

WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There's a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won't be hearing it in the House of Representatives -- certainly, you won't find lawmakers voting on it -- anytime soon.

Instead of dealing with the issue on the merits, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a staunch opponent of offshore drilling, has simply decreed that she will not allow a drilling vote to take place on the House floor. Why not? "What the president would like to do is to have validation for his failed policy," she said yesterday when asked that very question. "What we're saying is, 'Exhaust other remedies, Mr. President.' . . . It is the economic life of America's families, and to suggest that drilling offshore is going to make a difference to them paycheck to paycheck now is a frivolous contention. The president has even admitted that. So what we're saying is, 'What can we do that is constructive?' "

If there is an explanation buried in there about why that makes offshore drilling off-limits for a vote, we missed it. Ms. Pelosi is correct that off shore drilling is no panacea for the nation's energy woes. The short-term effect of lifting the moratorium, if there were any, would be minimal. That doesn't mean the country shouldn't consider expanded drilling as one of many alternatives. There are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact of such drilling -- environmental concerns that, we would note, exist in other regions whose oil Americans are perfectly happy to consume. But have technological improvements made such drilling less risky? Why not have that debate?

American Spectator

Peter Ferrara

Shut Up and Produce Some Oil

Link Unit

July 23, 2008

Full article The American Spectator Peter Ferrara

Excerpts:

Offshore Drilling

Well, let's see. On Friday, July 14, the price of a barrel of oil hit $147. On Monday, July 17, President Bush withdrew the Executive Order banning offshore drilling. That doesn't even start any new drilling because there is still a Congressional ban in place. Nevertheless, by Friday, July 21, after 4 straight days of decline, the price of oil had plummeted to $128, a decline of 13% on a symbolic action alone. The Center for American "Progress" was only off by 21 years, 51 weeks.

There are oil wells off the Pacific coast that were capped years ago when the offshore drilling ban was first adopted. They could be brought back into production in less than a year. Expert oil engineers recently interviewed have said other sites could be producing in 18 months. The standard estimate for production from new drilling in Alaska is 10 years. But if the government gets the lawsuits and regulatory delays out of the way, here's betting the new wells would be producing in less than 5 years.

More importantly, if Congress adopted a comprehensive plan to open up domestic oil production in the U.S., everyone would know that in the long run the price of oil would be heading down. That would break the back of the oil panic today that has driven the price up to ridiculous levels. If the Fed reversed its weak dollar policy at the same time, within a year the price of oil would drop by 50% or more, dropping the price of gas down close to $2 a gallon, which is where it should be. In a competitive market, price is supposed to equal the marginal cost of production. For a barrel of oil, that would be $25 to $40 at most, which is where the long term price of oil would be if the U.S. removed production restrictions.

Gas is staying well above $4 a gallon. Most polls are showing that over 2/3 of Americans now favor off shore drilling. Some polls are showing that 4 out of 5 are in favor. The average seems to be closing in on about 75% of the American in favor.

Many Americans have come to learn that we now import about 70 percent of the oil we use.

As the situation grows more dangerous, because a substantial amount of our use comes from middle-east countries, more and more Americans are becoming aware of the insanity of us transferring hundreds of billions of dollars to these countries, when some of them like Iran would like nothing better than to use those very petro-dollars to destroy us.

Off Shore Drilling

At the same time, consumers are getting clobbered and the economy is suffering.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have no intentions of cooperating even within members of their own party to allow off shore drilling.

Obviously the environmental extremist movement has complete control over those two.

Presently, trillions and trillions of dollars are invested in vehicles, machinery, and equipment, worldwide, that require the use of fossil fuel.

If we were to make spectacular technological gains, it is still a near certainty that it will take close to or more than a generation to move significantly away from the use of fossil fuel.

Even President Clinton had not vetoed the measure to open up ANWR for drilling, we would have approximately 1 million more barrels a day from that source.

Those advocating alternative sources are right to do so, but some estimates say that no more than 4% of our requirements can be met by those sources in the near future.

It is time for Democrats to stop politicking and to start doing what's right for America

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