Domestic oil: Save for later?

[Mahkato]

There's a lot of pressure from a lot of (mostly) Republican groups to allow more drilling on U.S. land and seafloors ("drill here, drill now"), but could this government intervention actually be a good thing in the long run? By forcing us to be "dependent" on foreign oil by not allowing us to use our own, we're effectively using up their stocks of this strategically important resource and preserving our own. At some unknown point in the future, we would then command a majority of the world's oil reserves, when its value is ever that much higher.

[Kludge]

Government intervention to stop government intervention is hardly government intervention.

[dannno]

That is the theory of Lindsey Williams who claims that the amount of oil in Prudho Bay, Alaska, is MUCH MUCH more than we have been told... like that it is one of the biggest oil fields in existence..

I'm sure somebody here will argue that "this has already been discussed and Lindsay Williams is wrong", but if he is right, then they are basing their information off of the 'enemy' and have no idea, personally, how much oil is actually there.


The Non-energy Crisis:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147




The problem with your theory is that it requires is to kill people to drive or oil prices higher in the future, and that is wrong (unless you're a neocon)

[aloysious]

We'll end up drilling for it now or later. What difference does it make in the long run?

[Bruno]

There's a lot of pressure from a lot of (mostly) Republican groups to allow more drilling on U.S. land and seafloors ("drill here, drill now"), but could this government intervention actually be a good thing in the long run? By forcing us to be "dependent" on foreign oil by not allowing us to use our own, we're effectively using up their stocks of this strategically important resource and preserving our own. At some unknown point in the future, we would then command a majority of the world's oil reserves, when its value is ever that much higher.

I could see one of two scenarios playing out:

1) We wait so long that there are other, cheaper sources of energy and then we would have reserves of oil no one wants.
2) The demand is still great, but the oil companies which drill for the oil have no obligation to sell it domestically. They would then sell to the highest bidder, which would likely be China or India by that point.

[Kludge]

We'll end up drilling for it now or later. What difference does it make in the long run?

Value. The poor are going to be fucked if they aren't able to afford the transition into a world not reliant on oil.

[Zippyjuan]

Either way it won't free us from imports. Proven reserves in the US are equal to about three years worth of our current rate of consumption- and our domestic production has been falling since the 1970's. And even if we do not drill, we will never become a major supplier unless we can find a better and much more efficient way to extract oil from oil shales (we have tons of that but it currently takes about one barrel's worth of energy to extract two barrels of oil from it- not to mention needing lots of space and water too- which is another limited resource). We IMPORTed 14 million barrels a day in 2007. Consumption is about seven billion a year.