McCain and the oil companies

Politics and religion
21

In other words, you’re not going to listen to the actual numbers because you have a nice anecdote that supports your conclusion? You can do better than that.

Sure, lots of people are buying into the narrative. But once the numbers are on the table you realize that, well, no $.05 a gallon is not going to be enough to let someone make their mortgage payment this month and that in the larger scope of things, even if it IS as successful as some optimistic people claim, offshore drilling will only be a few drops in a very large bucket.

Why does this have to be a Republican issue?
It should be a non-issue. Or rather an extremely low-priority issue. Why is it an Republican issue? Well it’s not entirely, but it is largely so. One has to presume that oil money plays into it (and assume that some democrats would support the issue for that reason).

However the larger issue is that Republicans have had a consistent strategy of obfuscating complex and large problems and playing bait-and-switch with simple, short-term solutions (that usually dont’ work). In this case, it allows them to say that Obama is big, bad, mean liberal if he dares to try and “scare” people by talking about reality. I.e. that oil is tight and the real, long-term solution is going to require change (scary!) and maybe even sacrifices (even scarier!). If they leave the narrative alone, Obama gets to talk about how Republicans have consistently blocked attempts to invest in developing alternative energies in the past. They’re going with “the best defense is a good offense”.

It’s the exact same tactic they’re taking with the surge. Talking about the positive effects of the surge doesn’t have to be a Republican thing. But in this case it’s coming from that side of the aisle because it’s a convenient way to rephrase the conversation in a way that focuses on a detail, not the bigger picture, and ignores larger failings in the Republican strategy.

22

Because people are very sensitive to price changes, we’re greedy bastards. Anyone who’s worked retail for any extended period of time should know this. The amount of bitching over an inconsequential amount of money is enormous.

23

You know, just to keep Sarkus from an ongoing double-team, I think he’s entirely correct. I think it’s incredibly ignorant and short-sighted to think that ignoring the energy crisis we’re facing will somehow make it go away.

Our economy is a machine which you insert oil into and money comes out. And there is no viable substitute for 90% of that oil on the horizon of 15 years, let alone 10 or 5.

Conservation can help a teeny bit, but anyone who thinks it is the only thing necessary simply doesn’t understand the problem. I do as much as the next guy. If I can’t compost it, I recycle it, and if I can’t recycle it, only then do I throw it away. My two-person household throws away maybe 2 to 2.5 13-gallon garbage bags per week, so I think I’m doing pretty good. I’d love it if conservation was all we needed to prevent skyrocketing fuel prices and the resulting ripple effect that’s hitting the poor and middle class the hardest (Us Democrats are supposed to care about them, right?).

Biofuels can help a teeny bit, but in order to do any more than that they’d need to cut deeper into arable land and stifle food production, and as is, ethanol is directly responsible for the great inflation in food prices for many staples. The technology isn’t there to produce either ethanol or biodiesel in any quantity that would make a significant impact.

Then people start screaming about plug-in hybrids, as if they’re a mass-market panacea. Tell me, when even 10% of households have a plug-in hybrid, where is the extra electricity generation going to come from to power them?

We can either keep our head in the sand, or we can start taking steps to ensure that as long as we need oil to keep the gears of our economy turning, it’ll be there to put money in our pockets.

And if some oil companies get rich in the process, so fucking what? Why is that inherently bad? Why do you have a problem with oil company profits and not a problem with Microsoft, the movie industry, or trial lawyers?

24

To be fair, why is “offshore” drilling such a huge problem, when Louisiana and Texas have been drilling offshore for decades?

It’s a bit like the somewhat Kennedy’s rejection of the offshore wind projects in Mass.; NIMBY on a larger scale. Texas is now one the leading state for the production of windpower, and will soon be in the top 5 single leading producers among all nations. And it’s an accurate rib, in that we want to enjoy the benefits of cheap gas without being terribly concerned where it’s coming from as long as we can’t see it. But when you call this position out, the retort is that we should be moving “away” from petroleum or some other economic revolution.

25

Remember even in Alpha Centauri, energy is money. You build a solar plant and you grow money.

26

I heard a very interesting conversation about this issue on Talk of the nation. I then went and listened to the entire seminar that Robert Kaufmann did over at Facsnet.org. I think it’s really fascinating how people think that opening up new reserves in the US (even in the tiny amounts that we still have) would somehow mean that the oil drilled wouldn’t go to the world market rather than stay in the US. The higher prices are a result of (among other things) increased world demand and the oil companies will sell any oil drilled to the highest bidder. They’re under no obligation to sell it to america…

Kaufmann also has a pretty compelling reason why they want to open up the ANWR reserves (using the existing pipeline would drastically increase profits). Pretty interesting stuff.

brian

27

Where is this myth that American has ‘tiny reserves’ coming from? We’ve got almost as much untapped oil as some middle-eastern countries.

Some of it is expensive to get, but hey, we keep that for a rainy day, a few decades from now when the rest of what we got easily accessible is gone.

But some of it could be easily obtained with today’s technology, and the areas being ‘off-limits’ are all that are stopping us from tapping it.

It’s a global economy. News at 11!

“We shouldn’t drill the oil we have because it just means reduced GLOBAL prices, not domestic prices.” What?

28

I think more like “the 1 million barrels a day that we would get from drilling in ANWR don’t make much of a dent in the 85 million barrels the world uses, so why invest in getting it out now and spend the money to develop other alternatives”. Maybe that’s simplistic, that we can do more than one thing at a time… But the argument that we need to drill in alaska and offshore to “get more domestic supply” is rather bullshit and reminds me of oil companies walking by a candy store and throwing a tantrum because the candy on the shelf looks more enticing than the sucker they already have in their mouth, regardless of the cost.

29

Ah, the classic, “It won’t halve prices, so we shouldn’t do it! Let’s instead hope that other technologies are online by the time we need them instead of ensuring that in case they aren’t, our economy won’t come crashing to a halt.” argument.

You’re absolutely right, we can do more than one thing at a time. Including drill. Drilling does not automatically preclude us from everything else, y’know.

30

I’d be interested in your take on the facsnet seminar. Of course I’m not an expert in the oil industry and don’t know all the specifics but the seminar sure opened my eyes to how little 1 million barrels a day for a year will do when we’re facing peak oil (even in best-case scenarios) and how much the resources spent to get the oil out of the ground could be used to ramp up the technologies to replace oil before we really are fucked. (look at page 45 of the pdf). So yeah, we can do more than one thing at once, but the discussion as it’s been framed by the McCain Campaign is spurious at best. There is no short-term solution in drilling as the oil won’t come in for years. There is no long-term solution in drilling as once peak happens (between 2017 and 2036) we’re going to have to change our ways anyway.

31

Bear in mind that expense is not the only issue with reserves of oil that are difficult to extract (though it is one factor, obviously). There is a non-trivial amount of oil in the US (and worldwide) that is not worth extracting simply because the amount of energy needed to extract and refine it is greater than the amount of energy that can be derived from the finished product.

32

According to this article, the U.S.'s offshore oil fields could hold up to 85.9 billion barrels of crude (against current a consumption rate of 7.56 billion barrels/year). That’s an estimate, of course. Much of that oil is already subject to drilling for various reasons - I’m not entirely clear on how much is the subject of the current political discussion.

33

Most of the stuff I read and have seen is in regard to Anwar. The current arguments are that somehow this oil will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and thus significantly decrease our national security issues as well as alleviate prices significantly. And neither of those is true. Drilling for oil in Anwar as if it will let us keep our lifestyle just a little bit longer is truly putting our heads in the sand.

And if some oil companies get rich in the process, so fucking what? Why is that inherently bad? Why do you have a problem with oil company profits and not a problem with Microsoft, the movie industry, or trial lawyers?

Because right now, that oil is a public resource. Historically speaking, when the government auctions or sells off natural resources for development, it’s done so at fraction of the real market value to the current office’s political buddies so they can make even more profits.

We won’t see real value. We won’t see a significant decrease in real oil or gas prices and we aren’t in danger of running out of oil in the 5-6 years. So you say opening up will mean money in all out pockets and that’s just not true. It means money in a few people’s pockets and since we’re not in a drastic situation right now, very little impact on regular people’s lives.

34

What are the issues here again (in the modern day), aside from a mostly irrational fear?

Converting petroleum into mechanical energy is stupid. We should save the petroleum to make fertilizer for growing food and use the stuff that’s only good for making electricity for that purpose.

35

None of you new-comers to thread have addressed my argument with the issue:

It’s overblown. By all estimates I’ve seen, off-shore drilling in the US will equate to a very small increase in global oil production equating to at most penny’s off the gas price. Meanwhile oil demand is increasing at a larger clip (just under 2% per year). What we really need is technologies such as new fuel sources for cars or cars with better fuel efficiency, better public transportation, wind power, etc., which can double, triple, etc., our oil efficiency (and therefore halve or more our oil demand and be much more effective at dropping the price than new drilling which may raise total supply by less than 1%).

Off-shore oil drilling is worth talking about but it’s a small issue, not the large one it’s been drummed up to be. The only reason why it’s so dominating the national conversation is because it’s a nice distraction topic for conservative lawmakers to talk about. It should be treated the same as gay marriage, the surge, and WMD’s in Iraq. Topics that are somewhat valid and worth discussing but about which we should be very skeptical when the Republicans start to drum up nationwide, around-the-clock coverage because they’re really not as important as they’d have us believe. There are far more interesting and important topics which will have a far greater impact on our future.

36

I.e. by letting offshore drilling and ANWR dominate energy conversations (and they seem to at least 50% of conversations about energy on here) we are really just playing the game the way Karl Rove would want us to.

37

The “conversation” is pretty irrelevant. Actual investments are being made in alternative energy sources because the price of oil has risen enough to make them profitable. T. Boone Pickens isn’t building massive wind power generation capacity in Texas because he’s a philanthropist or he cares about the environment.

38

I agree, partially. There is already some positive movement towards both investment in alternative energy and willingness to change habits. That’s a good sign, and this is where the real change will come about.

That said, just with all “leave it to the market” solutions, I’ll respectfully disagree that it’s really that simple. Wind power is a well-understood and potentially profitable solution with today’s technology. Countries such as Denmark, Spain Germany have already done a lot of investment in wind power and it’s working pretty well for them. There are a lot of other solutions that we can look at which will also go a long way but will take larger investments in R&D and infrastructure that are far less likely to come from “the market”. At least not without some more poking and prodding.

39

Psst. Hey… buddy. The conversation? It does affect where we drill, which has probable environmental outcomes. So it’s not irrelevant to either the environment nor to the economy, although the effect to the economy is probably only a short term effect.

40

I have to point out something with this. People will do this, but it doesn’t translate to the larger issue in any significant way. IE, people aren’t tracking their total pennies spent in gas anymore than they’re checking the odds at each Video Poker machine they’re gambling on, or considering the sum total effect of smoking.

Humans are notoriously bad at equating short term vs. long term effects.