from vacation, during which I spent considerable time driving through the Middle Atlantic region, checking out gas prices (which ranged from $3.95 to $4.21 based on location, retailer and, at times, no logic I could determine) and thinking about the gas mess. The public debate on the issue seems to be boiling down to whether or not we should drill domestically.
Conservative pundits like Charles Krauthammer and George Will have weighed in of late, predictably, in favor of removing governmental shackals so our good friends the oil companies can drill away, in which case truth, justice and happy fun for all.
From Krauthammer:
“A majority of Americans now favor drilling in the Arctic and offshore. Democrats stand in the way of increased production, just as they did 13 years ago when President Bill Clinton vetoed drilling in ANWR. Domestic oil production would be about 20 percent higher today if the Republican Congress had been allowed to prevail.”
Actually I don’t want to be too hard to Krauthammer, since he is a loud, passionate and longtime advocate of a gas tax recycled back to consumers as rebates or reductions in the payroll tax, which might be the single best domestic policy change possible right now. But the truth is it’s oil companies, not Democrats, who stand in the way of production, and if a majority of Americans knew that their opinion of Arctic drilling would obviously be different.
Consider this report to the House Committee on Natural Resources. You really should read it yourself, but to summarize:
-On the Outer Continental Shelf, 82% of federal natural gas and 79% of federal oil is located in areas that are currently open for leasing.
_ Onshore, 72% of oil and 84% of natural gas resources are either fully accessible under standard lease stipulations designed to protect lands and wildlife, or will be accessible pending the completion of land-use planning or environmental reviews.
_ Between 1999 and 2007, drilling permits for oil and gas development on public lands increased more than 361%.
_ Since 2004, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land; in that same time, only 18,954 wells were actually drilled.
_ Oil and gas companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 extra permits to drill that they are not using to increase domestic production.
_ Onshore, of the 47.5 million acres of federal lands leased by oil and gas companies, only about 13 million acres are actually producing oil and gas.
_ Offshore, only 10.5 million of the 44 million leased acres are currently producing oil or gas.
_ Combined, oil and gas companies hold leases to nearly 68 million acres of federal land that are not producing oil and gas.
_ The 68 million acres of leased, inactive federal land could produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day.
_ That would nearly double total U.S. oil production, and increase natural gas production by 75%.
_ 4.8 million barrels of oil equals more than six times the estimated peak production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
_ Development of and production from the 68 million acres currently under lease but not in production would cut US imports of oil by one third.
In a nutshell: The oil companies - and their minions in the goverment and media - want you to believe gas prices are so high because Democrats and tree-huggers are shackeling them, even though enough land or offshore property is available to double domestic production, and oil companies either can’t or won’t actually drill on that land.
Why? Other than the obvious maximize-profits-by-holding-down-supply theory which has to be simplistic (although it no doubt has some truth) I have no idea.
