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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (1767)	8/18/2008 12:00:00 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

You appear confused too. 42 USC 15912, section 357 and calling it "Obama's bill"? That is not Obama's bill. That is existing law, which Obama's bill (yes he has introduced one) will repeal. The person who was confused about Obama's bill was JF Shepard. ------------------------------------------------------------ The US has the highest per capita expenditure on oil of any developed nation. We're a rich country. I suspect we likely have the highest per capita expenditure on lots of things from pet food to toilet paper. No, I haven't checked those - they're just examples. We import over 2/3's of our oil, transferring a massive amount of wealth. Which is a reason to produce more here. Energy is subsidized, for example, gasoline tax doesn't cover the cost of road maintenance, oil companies receive a "manufacturing tax deduction", even though other miners don't. If you want to raise gasoline taxes, okay go ahead and propose that. Re. the domestic manufacturing tax deduction, mining is eligible for it as well. The 2 other major developed economies in the world, Japan and German, have massively reduced their depence on petroleum through taxation and mass transit. Taxation and mass transit alone? How about natural gas, coal, nuclear? High estimates for ANWR (geologic, not seismic)+ OCS will lead to displacing 3-4% of imports, max. Even if true, that is not a valid argument against developing ANWR and OCS. Furthermore the estimates you're referring to may well be too conservative - I know one such estimate done in 2006 assumed the price of oil would fall from 2006 on for a number of years. The impact of OCS/ANWR on prices is expected to be in the low single digits/barrel. I consider such price estimates worthless. No one knows for sure what the price impact will be because no one knows what will be found and what all the numerous other factors which will influence prices in the future will be.

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (1767)	8/18/2008 12:37:43 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

We import over 2/3's of our oil, transferring a massive amount of wealth. Its a purchase not a transfer. Transfers are giving someone something for nothing. Energy is subsidized, for example, gasoline tax doesn't cover the cost of road maintenance, The gasoline tax doesn't cover the cost of all road maintenance, but there is also a tax on diesel. Some of the money from these taxes is diverted to other purposes, so it would seem that at least the interstate maintenance costs are covered by the federal taxes, even if state maintenance costs might not be covered by the state taxes (at least not in every state). To the extent that both of them together might not cover total road maintenance costs 1 - Its the heavy trucks using diesel that cause the most damage. Gasoline powered vehicles probably cause damage that requires less maintenance (in dollar terms) than the amount that their drivers pay in gasoline taxes. 2 - If there is anything that effectively receives a subsidy its the driving (particularly driving big diesel powered vehicles), not gasoline itself. Drivers don't generally pay anything directly for the use of the roads (yes tolls exist, but the majority of roads have no tolls), tax payers pay for the creation, and maintenance of the roads (including paying gasoline tax as being a tax payer) High estimates for ANWR (geologic, not seismic)+ OCS will lead to displacing 3-4% of imports, max. Even replacing 3-4% of oil imports would hardly be insignificant, but the fact is that the high estimates for ANWR alone are almost a million and a half barrels per day. The US imports about 10 million barrels a day. So the high estimates from ANWR alone are over 14% of current demand. Assuming growth in demand that might be 10%. Add in the high end estimates from new offshore oil, if every site is open to drilling and it probably would be over 20% at the peak (it would be even higher if all the sites peak at the same time but they wouldn't). Sure those are high end estimates, and based on optimistic changes in policy (with the national policy becoming "drill everywhere ASAP"), but even low end projects from ANWR combined with opening most of the coastal areas to drilling would exceed the 3-4% you mention. Also you have to consider that oil tends to be relatively inelastic with x% change in supply or demand, tending to change prices by more than x%. ----- "The opening of the ANWR 1002 Area to oil and natural gas development is projected to increase domestic crude oil production starting in 2018. In the mean ANWR oil resource case, additional oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR reaches 780,000 barrels per day (124,000 m³/d) in 2027 and then declines to 710,000 barrels per day (113,000 m³/d) in 2030. In the low and high ANWR oil resource cases, additional oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR peaks in 2028 at 510,000 and 1.45 million barrels per day (231,000 m³/d), respectively. en.wikipedia.org which draws data from eia.doe.gov US imports of crude oil 2004 to 2007 (in thousands of barrels per day) 10,088 10,126 10,118 10,031 tonto.eia.doe.gov === The impact of OCS/ANWR on prices is expected to be in the low single digits/barrel. Unlikely given the above data, but even if it was true, that isn't much of an argument against drilling. Any price reduction is a benefit, and even if the price was not changed at all because of the drilling, its still using an expensive resource productively rather than just ignoring it.