10. Offshore oil drilling won't impact gas prices today, and it won't have a significant impact on gas prices in the future.

9. This is nothing more than a money grab by the oil companies - who are already making record-breaking profits.

8. We burn 25% of the world's oil here in the U.S., but we have only 3% of the world's oil reserves. So even if all offshore oil magically came to market today, the vast majority of our oil would continue to be imported, and we wouldn't see price relief at the pump.

7. The current moratorium was put in place decades ago to protect us from the danger of oil spills along our coastlines and beaches.

6. Burning fossil fuels like oil causes global warming, which causes stronger hurricanes, which will threaten the very offshore drilling rigs being proposed, which will contribute to even more global warming.

5. To avoid the worst impacts of global warming, we need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy within the next 10 years. The billions of dollars that would be spent on offshore oil drilling just postpones the inevitable transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

4. Oil exploration requires massive seismic testing - which threatens whales and dolphins.

3. Oil prices are set on the global oil market, so American oil is no cheaper than Saudi oil. We won't get a discount for oil drilled in the U.S.

2. We can't solve the world's energy problems with the same drilling that created them.

1. Renewable energy is available now, so it's time to walk away from fossil fuels and toward a clean energy future.

Source: Greenpeace

Sarah

There ought to be a slogan, such as "Remember the Exxon Valdez!" I remember that catastrophe, and the millions of dollars it cost to clean up.
Lorna

I remember the last huge price spike after hurricane Katrina. Our own oil companies came into windfall profits. Wanna guess where it went? Not into alternative energy exploration. LOL.

I have a hard time even getting sympathetic with our populace when almost every median wage earning family has a car for each person over eighteen. The house next door has FOUR cars. Our school busses run half empty.

"The Republican from Minnesota's 6th Congressional District repeated her assertion that if the U.S. more thoroughly taps its own energy sources, gas prices could be cut in half back to around $2 a gallon. She said it would send a signal to the world market that the U.S. is serious about addressing oil prices."

Another quote from her about drilling in ANWR:

"Some suggestions are that perhaps we would see an enhancement of wildlife expansion because of the warmth of the pipeline," she said. […] The pipeline has now become a meeting ground and "coffee klatch" for the caribou, she said.

The general feeling around here is that this woman will most likely be reelected to office.

Sarah

A little more oil would dramatically reduce the price, especially US oil where we do not have to ship it in.

If we run the low resolution global models we find that more heat means bigger hurricanes, if we run the high resolution hurricane models we see that more heat in the ocean means bigger hurricanes, if we feed the data back and fourth between the high resolution hurricane models and the low resolution global models we find that we get no more hurricanes, and the recent data collected in the last 5 years back that up. Hurricanes are run not on heat but on heat gradients, if the air heats up too then we get no more hurricanes than we have now, and global warming is heating the air (maybe, it would seem from satellite data that the global temperature is dropping, probably because of global dimming from chinas coal burning).

Saudi oil is shipped in from saudi arabia which is far away, oil prices vary wildly from one location to another, crossing a border in some places can tripple the price of a tank of gas.

http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/pr2006-02-23.asp

Sarah

Sorry but you're wrong. Any oil whether it's drilled off shore or around the world has to be refined. We don't have enough refineries in this country and the US oil companies want it that way so they can have a scapegoat to blame when there's not enough supply to meet demand.
Futhermore oil prices are being manipulated by brokers who are buying and selling oil futures. So no matter what you drill or where the price is going to climb according to that market.
And lastly when a company such as EXXON is making BILLIONS of dollars in profits when there's suppose to be shortages and are giving there CEO's million dollar bonuses while the guy buying the product can't afford groceries something major is wrong and it has nothing to do with supply and demand. More like greed and corruption.

Lorna

If you want to know want see a map of the leased areas in the US, check out this link: http://www.sierraclub.org/bigoil/map.asp

Sarah

The U.S. Department of Energy 2007 report says that it would be 20 years for offshore drilling to have noticeable effect on domestic production and even then "because oil prices are determined in the international market" that the impact on fuel costs would be insignificant.

The Dept of Energy is not generally considered to be a left wing, tree hugging organization.

And T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil billionaire who has begun to invest in wind energy, says re the oil crisis: "This is one emergency we can't drill our way out of."

I suspect that if we were really serious about drilling and refining more oil starting today that the price would drop quite a bit by morning ...due to taming speculators who react to every hiccup in our supply of oil. When supplies are even a little tight in any commody, the price shoots up.

Whether our oil companies are in collusion comcerning supplies and prices, a more ample supply would tell whether that tale is true or not. We had a real bargain in gasoline prices for decades most of the time. Only when Opec started their tricks from time to time did we have a crisis.

"While there are all kinds of possibilities of manipulation, the fact remains that we are paying a high price for our oil and refinery capacity shortages."

Perhaps you should look at the link I posted above and now below. We do not have a shortage, rather oil companies just don't utilize land that is already leased. Offshore drilling is just a way big oil companies fool Americans into thinking there is a reason to justify high oil costs. Offshore drilling is not going to help reduce costs and very likely just have a devasting impact on our environment. Yesterday, there was an oil spill off the coast of Brazil. As far as I know, the cause is still unknown. Despite the cause, many penguins have died and many more are trying to be rescued. It would sad and pathetic if Americans drilled offshore and such ramifications happened because of our ignorance to look past oil and into new technologies.

Sarah

Shocking Choice by John McCain

WASHINGTON-- Senator John McCain just announced his choice for running mate: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. To follow is a statement by Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.

"Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate is beyond belief. By choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has clearly made a decision to continue the Bush legacy of destructive environmental policies.

"Sarah Palin, whose husband works for BP (formerly British Petroleum), has repeatedly put special interests first when it comes to the environment. In her scant two years as governor, she has lobbied aggressively to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, pushed for more drilling off of Alaska’s coasts, and put special interests above science. Ms. Palin has made it clear through her actions that she is unwilling to do even as much as the Bush administration to address the impacts of global warming. Her most recent effort has been to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, putting Big Oil before sound science. As unbelievable as this may sound, this actually puts her to the right of the Bush administration.

"This is Senator McCain’s first significant choice in building his executive team and it’s a bad one. It has to raise serious doubts in the minds of voters about John McCain’s commitment to conservation, to addressing the impacts of global warming and to ensuring our country ends its dependency on oil."

Sarah

All I know is that when all of this started, the Prince of Saudi Arabia said there was no reason for the gas prices in America to be this high, and HE was selling us the oil!

Remember, the Saudi Arabian Prince and his family are buddy-buddy with the Bushes and Cheneys. Look at the sweetheart deal the U.S. Oil Companies got in Iraq. And they said it wasn't about oil.

Again, though, we deserve what we got for re-electing Bush. I didn't vote for him either time, so my conscience is clear. Things are so messed up now, it will take 20 years to get it fixed.