Speaking of AWAR, I think I figured it out...
Last night I was reading a week old article in the WSJ and the President of Exxon, Lee Raymond was talking about how Algeria, Venezula, Libya, Saudi Arabia and perhaps Nigeria as well have upped their minimum asking prices for oil blocks in their respective countries. Many large American oil companies have been outbid in these auctions by smaller, hungrier oil companies; American and not.
What alerted me was Raymond's statement that the fees were too high to sustain a profit margin at these prices and was not all that concerned about losing out on these bids.
He said, "We are not really interested in increasing volume. This is not the goal of this exercise."
So, stepping back to ANWR, which is an American enterprise, contolled by our Government and heavily influenced by the large American oil companies, the fees our Government will levy to drill there, would ensure the profit margins that Exxon and others want.
ANWR may not yield a lot of "volume", or solve any energy crunch in the U.S., but the volume that is there will yield the "right" profit margins per barrel pumped.
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