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Politics : Politics of Energy
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To: Road Walker who wrote (323)6/15/2008 10:10:20 AM
From: Brumar89  Read Replies (1) of 86355
 
I see that someone on the green side is using 2006 leases that haven't been drilled by June 2008 as a talking point that we shouldn't be leasing offshore acreage anyway as the oil companies don't really want it, they're just pretending to.

This is so mindlessly stupid, I don't know where to begin.

Its as if people think oil companies have fleets of drilling rigs sitting idle waiting on a lease to be granted and then they immediately float it out there and begin drilling blindly at some randomly chosen spot. Thats not how exploration is done ... not for many many decades anyway.

First off, if oil companies were really disinterested in drilling their leases as the bogus talking point tries to show, they wouldn't be spending billions to lease the acreage to begin with:

With oil prices staying above $100 a barrel, energy companies on Wednesday put down a record $3.67 billion in winning bids for the right to drill on federal leases off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
houmatoday.com
interior.gov

Now if they don't intend to use these leases, why are they slapping down billions in cash money to acquire them?

Second, exploratory drilling doesn't consist of floating a rig out and blindly drilling in hopes of finding something somewhere down there. Drilling is expensive. So first, the geologists will acquire all the seismic info they can and study it and determine where the best prospects are. Before drilling begins they'll have a target they are aiming for - something about the size of your office thousands of feet underground. It takes time to do all the above.

Then you can go lease a rig and start drilling.

There is just no way an offshore lease issued in 2006 could have an exploratory rig working in June 2008.

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'90%' of the solution is oil efficiency. And that's achievable in the near term (~10 years with progress every year). The crisis is now, the solution has to start now. Harping about ANWR is just political posturing.

I think imagining we can forego production of oil and simply rely on conservation is political posturing.

People who believe this way should sell their cars and rely on bikes if they mean it.
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