jeez - could it be because significant reserves have not been found in those lands but geological studies have confirmed reserves in the ANWR wasteland and far offshore?

These industry "czars" you refer to are trying to provide a product the American people want - why are our leaders preventing them?

bizgirl - it is apparent the "biz" in your name does not refer to biz savey

Whoever is pushing these Democrat talking points doesn't understand the way oil leasing works. I've done some studies on this.

When oil companies bid on leases, they don't know how much oil is in the ground or how expensive it will be to extract. They can get a very rough estimate from geological serveys, from test wells drilled near the lease, and the like.

But they can't know until they actually explore, and they can't do that until after they have bought the lease.

Hence many of the inactive leases are inactive because they've found nothing after they explored. In other cases, they explored and found oil, but there's not enough to provide a sufficient return on investing in a rig. Or it is too expensive to profitably extract at current prices, etc., etc.

One thing's for sure: oil companies are not in the business of leaving money on the table. If an oil lease can provide a sufficient return on their investment, they will develop it.

Assuming all the reserves in the usa were tapped/producing it would provide enough oil for what...15 years max? What happens in 15 years when the well runs dry? You have run out of places to poke holes.

Why have so many Repug politicians opposed offshore oil drilling? Jeb Bush even got his brother, W, to have the federal government buy oil leases in 2002 to prevent drilling. John McCain was also against offshore oil drilling before he was for it.

One thing's for sure: oil companies are not in the business of leaving money on the table. If an oil lease can provide a sufficient return on their investment, they will develop it.

Not necessarily. Instead of investing billions to do things that might lower the price of oil a little, why don't they save their money and just make higher profits off the rising cost of oil? The only downside is that demand will fall. A little bit. Just a little bit. But there's no investment and thus no risk to capital:

...Other oil companies may be willing to invest billions in risky and potentially marginal fields. But not ExxonMobil. In management's estimation, investing more in exploration and development would not be a sound business decision at this time. Such investments would not generate the high level of return the company targets in its investment decisions...

Thoughts I have posted elsewhere:

1) We haven't been drilling offshore / ANWR for a long time because - well - it would be 10 years before it could come on line. How long have we heard this? I do know that 10 years from now I would like to be able to put some gas in my Donzi and in the current day cars I drive (no classic cars but in 10 years maybe I could have 1).

2) The cry is "let’s tax the oil company profits." Well they are already taxed. They get some tax breaks for investing in crap the Congress switches around on them every year. How can they be expected to make a commitment to alternative fuels research when Congress changes the rules constantly?

3) Corporate tax – let’s raise corporate taxes – windfall taxes on oil corporations. Just what does this mean? Do we want some non-entity to avoid earning something? Why would this non-entity want to earn / possess money? A corporation doesn’t get any benefit from profits. Profits go to the management, employees, and stock holders (and things such as: what the board of directors thinks will better the company – research, capital investment, philanthropy, LOBBISTS TO CONGRESS)

4) Wind-Fall-Taxes (again) – so many in Congress think a tax surcharge/increase/raise/whatever should be applied to the oil industry. Taxes are a cost of business – how could anyone think that increased costs would not be passed on to the consumer. Cost to the consumer equal the cost of the product (which includes taxes) plus a profit margin.

5) What is a wind-fall-profit? Are oil companies making a wind fall profit? Oil companies make about 8.3 cents in gross profit per dollar of sales. Electronics make 14.5 cents per dollar and computer equipment makers take in 13.7 cents per. Microsoft's margin is 27.5 cents per dollar of sales. OR Oil and gas companies made $86.5 billion in profits last year. Financial services industry took in $498.5 billion in profits, the retail industry walked away with $137.5 billion, and information technology companies made off with $103.4 billion.

6) And speaking of new taxes on wind-fall-profits as espoused by the Democratic Party. I assume those would apply to US corporations. Ahhh – we buy much/most of our crude from non-US companies such as BP and CITCO. So, then this proposed taxes would be applied to US companies only. Oh you say taxes could be applied to the imports from foreign companies? Well yeah, but once again those taxes are transferred straight to us the consumer as a cost of them doing business in the US.

(link...)

(link...)

The oil shale here in western Colorado and eastern Utah has a minimum of 800 billion barrels of oil. probably 1.7 trillion and a few estimates of as much as 4 trillion barrels. It is an unpopulated area and not especially beautiful. So why did Mark Udall, a Front Range liberal attach a rider to a bill making development of that area more difficult? The shale isn't in his urban district. The U.S. uses 20 million barrels per day. Do the math. That's potentially hundreds of years of oil. Oil shale reserves are at least 3 times the total Saudi reserves.

Shell is developing new technology to extract that oil without the environmental degredation of open pit mining.

Why do liberals embrace the state as if it was a god? It is the greatest threat of all to your liberty. You really think that the other party is the beneficiary of big special interest money? Not true. Check out opensecrets.com. It will open your eyes.

Mark

Democrats are just as deep in the circle jerk of special interests.

The founding fathers attempted to make socialism unconstitutional. The Federalist Papers made much mention of how socialism and dictatorship move hand in hand.

Since 1968 the Democratic Party has been shifing leftward. Today Dems are the most socialist leaning political entity on the planet.

Socialsim feeds off ignorance, hence the deliberate attempts to "dumb down" US schools, marginalize religious institutions, control the media etc.

Tyranny is what Obama's generation of democrats are all about. Even John Kerry talks about the benefits of re-eductaion camps.

Today Dems are the most socialist leaning political entity on the planet.

I take it you've not seen much of the planet. If socialism feeds off of ignorance, I'm betting you're pretty high up on the menu.
~m.

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If I'm reading this right, total U.S. oil reserves are estimated at about 21B bbl and we're currently pumping 5M bbl/day. If you charitably add the maximum possible reserves recoverable from the ANWR area, it adds about 10.4B bbls for a total of 31.4B bbls. (Oil shale doesn't cut it.)

Then, like magic, if we could immediately double our domestic production now--which seems necessary to put a dent into prices (lowering our imported oil to a mere 50%--heh!), ALL of the recoverable oil in the U.S. will be gone in 8.6 years.

What do you Republican geniuses plan for us to do then?

I guess by then, W's amazing not-really-free market will have introduced and perfected an SUV that runs on conservative gas bags like Rush and Friends at Fox. Or maybe Liberian-flagged tankers from the U.S. colony of Iraq will be in full sail so that we can just party on without a care in the world except the fear of socialist-loving liberals.

Did I see that correct....Karl Rove posts here? I will direct this to him... You disgusting lowlife, the most disgusting and corrupt in the political history of the U.S... You have no consicous! You were the one who got GW elected in Texas and the White House by pulling the lowest dirtiest tricks. Remember White, Richards? How about that little office bugging trick you pulled on White. As the author of 'whisper campaigns', spreading lies and dirt to destroy a candidate at any cost is your MO. Anything goes for you to win. Working now as an advisor to McCain most certainly says a lot about McCain. He is just as bad as you.

maybe a better idea would be to take the oil, mine all the coal we have, and in the mean time build a ton of nuclear power plants so we can at least stop using oil to make electricity. then everyones happy.

what a better idea!! its brilyant and foolpruf!!!! wish us dain-bread libruls could think liek thet.

build a ton of nuclear power plants

Why do people use the ton to express immense quantities?

Pundits were telling us a few months ago that their candidate was bringing in "tons of voters." That could mean, what, a dozen portly voters?

A local newscaster was recently describing a pot bust and didn't have the weight figure close to hand so she told us that there were "tons of pounds" of the weed.

Tons of pounds?

How much power do you think you can get out of 2000 pounds of nuclear plant? NASA sometimes does it but they use some pretty wicked shit to get there.

Bill Frist's new GE HomeNuke 9000 may run somewhere near that figure and this one certainly appears to weigh less than a ton.

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When using the power generator with direct current, people near the device may on rare occasions experience dizziness or a tingling sensation in the hands or feet. If you experience such conditions, temporarily discontinue use and consult a physician.

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Exxon (ahem) Mobil cleared $40 billion in profit, AFTER taxes. To me $40 billion is a lot of money maybe not you. How much did YOU clear? I bet not as much. I only cleared $100 million.

Maybe if I made a lot more money, you'd tirelessly defend me too?

Except they aren't investing enough to do any good, even if it could make a difference. Especially the most profitable, Exxon Mobil (see link I posted here or in the other thread).

Many of the pricing pressures up until the last few months were due to the lack of refining capacity. I don't need to remind you it's been decades since new refining capacity was added in this country, but EM could easily afford to invest in a new refinery if they wanted to. But when prices are higher, they make more money. So why should they invest money to lower their profit structure? Are they crazy not to invest? Crazy like a fox, yes.

In recent years, too, oil companies have followed the trend toward JIT inventories by scrapping massive storage facilities. So they've lowered inventory costs at the expensive of making the system vulnerable to minor supply interruptions. Thus prices more easily spike. But, again, why should they care? Their decisions haven't hurt demand, they've saved costs, and the price spikes produce more profit for them.

Yadda yadda. I don't know what obsesses you about this. If it makes you feel better, I think blaming the oil companies is misplaced. But I'm not going to waste time with ranting defenses of poor ol' struggling, patriotic "job creators" like Mobil Exxon. That's even more misplaced. I hope they send you a check for your lobbying efforts. It would be far from the dirtiest money they've thus spent.

No new refineries, OK. Correction noted. Anyway, thanks for reinforcing my point as to why there's a lack of investment.

The advice I'd pass on is to write literately and not act like a dick lest one be taken for an idtiot. Party on.

I didn't actually call you a dick, but there is (or has been) a lot of condescension coming from your way, TD. You sound very intelligent on the nuts and bolts of oil leases, but I don't think you're convincing in debunking the main points which I see as:

- A big GOP/McBush pander is to say that governments should open up more public lands to the oil companies for drilling. Yet oil companies already have plenty available to them and are obviously not that thirsty for new areas. (At least the areas they have.)

- Another major GOP/McBush energy "solution" is to break the rules of a free market to give oil companies more incentives to explore and magically solve our energy problems. Thing is, besides their precious "free market" hypocrisy, the oil companies already have many billions in cash from record profits. Isn't this enough incentive? And secondarily, the same political side never wants to provide similar incentives for real, long term (sustainable) solutions that are required to solve our energy problems. It violates their idea of the free market, or something.

Drummer giving you problems, eh? Back in my day it was the bass player.

Oh yes, the name Factchecker's meant to be in fun, as was the previous sentence.

Fraud was committed by the House Committee on Natural resources stating that 4.8 million additional barrels of oil a day could be produced from the 68 million acres of non-producing leases.

The below method was confirmed by Kathreine Romans, Policy section of the House Committee on Natural Resources, in a 26 September 2008 email to me. I derived the method on my own for CNR would not divulge the method, even after 10 weeks of persistance. It also took a long time for I was still of the mind set that reserves were still involved with the method. Reserves were not used in the estimation

Mr Steve Feldgus, staffer on the subcommittee Energy and Minerals did was
- create a percentage of the difference between total producing and total non-producing acreage for the two types of leases, onshore and offshore
- Multiply each percentage by the present total production from the applicable lease type (onshore or offshore) to come up with estimated production for each nonproducing lease type
- added the two estimated nonproducing lease types to come up with 4.8 million barrels of oil from nonproducing leases

The method is bogus for no one in the oil and gas industry would ever use such a method and neither would the government agencies that provide such estimates to Congress (US Geological Survey, Energy Information Administration, Minerals Management Service). When oil and gas industry or government agencies make production estimations, it is based on reservoir estimations which was not done by Mr Feldgus. Experts also give production estimates over a range of low, mean and high which reflects uncertainty for reservoir estimates are uncertain which are also made with a low, mean and high estimate,. Yet Mr Feldgus gives a single number, which denotes certainty

and your argument is...???