Nay on "Use It Or Lose It" Bill

[TastyWheat]

I'm wondering if someone could explain the reason behind Dr. Paul's vote against H.R. 6251: Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act. I guess you could argue that it is restrictive to the free market, but since it's our (federal) land why shouldn't we set rules that keep oil companies from sitting on oil (if they are indeed doing that).

[constituent]

they are doing that. good question.

[RSLudlum]

Probably something buried in the bill that just isn't right...you know how those crooks do things ;)

[TastyWheat]

Probably something buried in the bill that just isn't right...you know how those crooks do things ;)
Yeah, the devil is usually in the details. I suppose the section about benchmarks could make one wary. It would obviously pose an extra cost, although relatively small, for lease-holders to create reports on expected output and things like that.

[Dustancostine]

How are the leases obtained? If they have been purchased then it is up to the company when they want to drill. If the Feds don't think a company is going to drill, then they need choose a different company in the first place or put it into the lease contract.

[Jason T]

I listened to the debate of this bill on C-Span -- the democrats' motivation appears to be political. They used very few facts and logical arguments and basically bitched about oil company profits and Bush/Cheney. The only fact the democrats kept on arguing about was the amount of acres leased, well, I'm not oil expert but I think proven oil reserves on a lease is more important than the number of acres. Republicans were bringing one good argument after the other.

The vast majority of Americans want more drilling, and the democrats -who are seen as the anti-drilling- are merely trying to change the argument around. They're trying to argue that oil companies are speculating on the land to increase profits and the republicans just want to give them more land to speculate with. In reality, the majority of leases being held up are due to regulation red tape and lawsuits.

While there are some good things in the bill, I would have voted no. Democrats want to use this as an alternative to ANWR/OCS drilling, and it would add more red tape into the process.

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Oil prices have only been extremely high for a short amount of time. It takes years to even prep a lease, much as less even see a drop of oil. No matter what happens, domestic production is going to see a spike in a few year since the recent spike in price made a lot of unprofitable leases profitable.

Oil companies aren't going to use leases as speculation when it takes 5-10 years to develop them anyways - they can't predict what prices are going to be like in 10 years etc. Not to count, Exxon only has a 14 year supply of oil on their developed leases atm, and that's the longest in the industry.

Since oil companies can write leases as assets on their books, some argue that the oil companies use leases to help recieve loans. However, that theory would be a contradiction to the fact that oil companies are making high profits and have excess capital already.

[Jason T]

How are the leases obtained? If they have been purchased then it is up to the company when they want to drill. If the Feds don't think a company is going to drill, then they need choose a different company in the first place or put it into the lease contract.

There are time limits on the contracts already.

[tonesforjonesbones]

Tooo much red tape! Tones

[TastyWheat]

Maybe the language (e.g. benchmarks) was too loose but I think the "red tape" would've been a small nuisance if anything for a company actually willing to drill on their lease. Though I'm sure this wasn't Dr. Paul's opinion, some Republicans may have opposed the bill because it would cause certain leases to go completely unused, therefore less revenue for the government.

However, if some lease-holders are being held back from drilling (which I haven't heard of) then this bill would've added insult to injury.

[hope7134]

No more regulations. More regulations=more taxes. The government does not need to regulate oil or where it’s drilled. The government does not need to regulate big business. Regulation of big business makes Congress the customers to big business and big business does not have to compete for the people’s money. Instead of competing fairly in a real market, under the regulated system, big business only have to compete for the favors of 545 members of congress, by lining the pockets of those congress people with money.

So get Congress out of the regulation business, it’s unconstitutional anyway. Make big business have to compete fairly by offering good products and services to the people. That is the only thing that will bring the prices of goods and services down.

More regulation is only going to make matters worse and keep the oil companies from drilling for the oil they already need to drill for and blaming congress for regulations against drilling.

If Congress wasn’t involved, and they really had to compete for the American peoples’ business, they’d drill or their companies would go out of business, as other companies drilled. Regulations don't protect the people from big business, it protects big business from the people and gives big business an unfair advantage over the people, by removing competition.

Regulation is nothing but a racket, which is keeping the dems/reps and oil companies from having to do anything, as they continue pointing fingers and blaming each other.

Thank God, Ron Paul did the right thing. It won’t help us, it’s not Constitutional and we need real change, not more regulation. We need government out of the oil/fuel business.

[krazy kaju]

The reason that oil companies aren't drilling some of the land they have leased is due to the fact that it is uneconomic to drill that oil. In other words, it would cost them more to extract than oil than they could possibly sell.

However, it makes sense to let the oil companies keep that land, because as oil prices rise, they will be able to drill there.