It's too cold??? Too crowded??? The NPS estimates about 1000 people (that's thousand!!!) people visit ANWR each year with about half (that's five HUNDRED) visiting the coastal plain where the oil is. That is a lot of people to move around to make room for the rigs. And with the expected caribou population explosion that will follow, this South Carolina sized park will just be too damned crowded to be fun any more. Next question. DS
the left's mindset regarding drilling anywhere such as offshore ,ANWR, etc seems to be that it will divert resources away from those that could be applied to alternatives. Now, they will claim it's due to environmental issues, padding the big oil coffers or whatever.. but alternatives, that's their deal. the rising prices for oil? fits right in their wheelhouse, in more ways than 1.
Agree. But McCain seems to have understood this better wrt our politics: commit to drilling ASAP, and also talk about alternative forms of energy (including nuclear that the Dems don't like). The mood of the electorate is so bad on this that they believe that only by doing EVERYTHING, AT THE SAME TIME will get us somewhere. One can argue about prioritizing, resources, etc, but something tells me that, after this run up in oil invetment value over the past few years, no one will have any trouble raising capital for energy ventures.
drilling in anwr will offset gas prices by 1-2 cents a gallon according to the DOE. So what is the point of drilling if it doesnt lower gas prices? Please explain. As for nuclear,nobody will insure nuke plants.Thats why nobody will ever build one here.The only way industry will build is if the whole project is fully secured/paid for by the taxpayers.In other words industry and wall st have so little confidence in their ability to build nukes safely that they wont bet on it themselves.
First, these price projections are widely disputed: they only take under consideration raw supply of oil worldwide, and since ANWR is projected to deliver about 1% of that, they argue that price will drop by a little less, therefore the few cents that people are talking about. What it doesn't consider is that the price of oil is largely set by speculators who bid the oil fututes up and down; if the US demonstrates that we are seriously going after increasing our own supplies of oil, by a lot, price may swing down much more than those few paltry cents, a lot more. Primarily, though, the reason that we want to increase domestic production of oil is for energy independence and national security. More oil from local sources means we have more say about both price and availability (remember the oil embargo of the 70s?) we depend a lot less on (the largely hostile) OPEC, and we don't send mega-billions of $$ every year to dictators across the globe, funding islamist madrassas and lowering the value of the greenback.
That's why we need a fundamental policy statement from the Government and corresponding insurance legislation, similar to what the French and other Europeans have - forcing insurance companies to insure reactors and placing the Government as a backup for them in case it's needed. Despite some very well publicized accidents, nuclear remains, worldwide, the safest way to produce energy.
That's why we need a fundamental policy statement from the Government and corresponding insurance legislation, similar to what the French and other Europeans have - forcing insurance companies to insure reactors and placing the Government as a backup for them in case it's needed. " most so-called freemarket(oxymoron) advocates would call that socialism and therefore be against it even though that is the only way it can be done as the europeans have proven. "Despite some very well publicized accidents, nuclear remains, worldwide, the safest way to produce energy." wind and solar are much safer and wind is definetely cheaper.In fact at 8-10 billion dollars to construct just 1 nuke plant plus operating costs and with a short life span of less than 50 yrs maybe,nuclear probably is not even viable and is a band aid at best. With gas at 5$/gal maybe people will rediscover the meaning of conservative.
"First, these price projections are widely disputed: they only take under consideration raw supply of oil worldwide, and since ANWR is projected to deliver about 1% of that, they argue that price will drop by a little less, therefore the few cents that people are talking about. What it doesn't consider is that the price of oil is largely set by speculators who bid the oil fututes up and down; if the US demonstrates that we are seriously going after increasing our own supplies of oil, by a lot, price may swing down much more than those few paltry cents, a lot more." Brazil announced a huge discovery and it didnt drop the price at all. "Primarily, though, the reason that we want to increase domestic production of oil is for energy independence and national security. More oil from local sources means we have more say about both price and availability (remember the oil embargo of the 70s?) we depend a lot less on (the largely hostile) OPEC, and we don't send mega-billions of $$ every year to dictators across the globe, funding islamist madrassas and lowering the value of the greenback." We are sending 300million a day to saudi arabia alone...and they are the ones who caused 911. The price is set by opec and cannot be undercut.Also exxon would never be so generous as to cut their countrymen a break on the price.However if they did,opec would cut supply to jack up prices. We need to get off oil for climate change and political reasons and national security reasons like expensive wars and terrorism.We need to kick the oil habit.
McCain makes a major domestic commitment to build 30 nuke plants and he does it at an Houston Oil convention. If he had any political brains he would have done this from a union hall or a labor convention. This means billions of dollars for mostly union bluecollar workers. Perfect for the white male blue collar Reagon democrat worker. Domestic drilling is a major boom to local jobs and local manufacturing. What a huge story......Hello Mccain?...Mccain?