No Way To Drill US Out Of Oil Trap - Scripps Howard [View All]

[hatrack]

Good news from Washington: The Senate just passed a narrowly focused bill that would open 8.3 million acres for new energy development in the Gulf of Mexico. A hundred miles off Florida, it is called Sale 181 Area, and may contain as much as 1.2 billion barrels of oil. The House has its own, even more ambitious version: It would expand the drilling to most of the continental shelf off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist rammed the Senate's bill through during the remaining time for legislation this year, with no amendments. Hyped to "enhance the energy independence and security of the United States," the bill will be sold to the public as an answer to our problems. And some people will believe it.

It seems the Bush administration's attitude is to convince the people that we can deal with our oil gluttony if we just focus on drilling the last reservoirs of oil under our control. This blind charge doomed any Senate discussion of sensible provisions to address our addiction to oil, leaving only a misguided attempt to feed it. As dictated by Frist, there were no amendments offered for stringent fuel-efficiency standards for cars, which could drastically reduce imports. Try for a 40-miles-per-gallon average, rather than the current 21 miles per gallon. That would save the import of some 4 million barrels a day, much of it from you know who.

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And far beyond the imagination _ much less discussion _ of most senators is the development of renewable energy for long-term sustainability. The senators could at least have extended the modest production tax credit for wind energy, which ends next year. But no. Not in this bill. Better to drill for the dwindling reserves, feed the profits, and get elected again. A billion barrels sounds like a lot of oil. But consider it in relation to our import of 11 million barrels a day. Just suppose this new Gulf area could be magically producing at a rate equal to these foreign imports: The production would last about 110 days! Or, more plausibly, if pumped at a rate of just one million barrels a day, the oil would last for about 3 1/2 years.

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http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/11292