Like a record stuck in a bad groove, President Bush has reiterated his call for Congress to open more areas for drilling, including ANWR.
“If Congress is truly interested in solving the problem, they can send the right signal by saying we’re going to explore for oil and gas in the U.S. territories,” starting with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Bush said.
The Energy Department, Bush said, estimates the wildlife preserve could yield a million barrels of oil a day — enough to make 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel.
“That would be about a 20 percent increase of … crude oil production over U.S. levels, and it would likely mean lower gas prices,” Bush said. “And yet such efforts to explore in ANWR have been consistently blocked.”
The Democrat Rahm Emanuel, from Illionois, and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, dismissed Bush’s comments, “President Bush remains addicted to the big oil companies,” he said.
Some might argue its an addiction that makes you go “thick in the head”, as they say in Ireland.
Its about time. When are people going to wake up?
Yes, we need alternative energy sources, but at the rate oil and gas are rising now, nobody will have enough pennies remaining to purchase anything utilizing alternative energy sources by the time they are available. What we have now as ‘alternative choices’ dont amount to a hill of oil sand since most folks cant use them or wouldnt benefit from them.
Lets get going and use what God has given us – ANWR and the Gulf are available. And we need to build additional refineries to handle the increased production. These things will strengthen the economy in a multitude of ways.
Frankly, I dont care if the ‘oil’ is Big or small; let the folks who can make something out of these resources get to work so that the rest of us can get out from underneath gas that is more expensive than milk!
Even if we were to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Preserve it would take YEARS for that oil to reach us and it is only a short term sollution. As for the immedicate problem it needs to be addressed now, and a speech by our fearless leader would be nice. It would let the public know he actually cares about them. Lets stop making this a political thing and get together and fix the problem. How about all the record profits. I understand they are in business but when the average person is hurting and the economy is slowing how can the oil companies justify “record profits”? Makes not sense to me.
Opening ANWR and the OCS will not provide oil today it will take time, but if they would have opened it up several years ago like they should have we wouldnt be having this discusion and gas prices would be normal and afordable. If you dont think gas prices are high right now just think what they will be liike 10 years from now if you dont open up the drilling. YES it will take time but I still plan to be here 10 years from now. If they dont start drilling soon prices will continue going upward many speculators say 10-15 dollars a gallon 10 years from now if we dont start producing more. People that are too short sighted to look to the future are the cause of the current prices being to high. Lets not continue down the path of destruction. DRILL NOW is the only solution that will help, all the other technologies are at there infincy stage not even close to being acceptable products as alternatives. they need several more years of development. 20-30 years out some of the alternatives might be able to replace oil but today that is what we have. You cant simply wave a wand and make an alternative fuel replace oil.