Off-Shore Drilling Circus Begins
The economic news and anxieties are certainly dominating the news today, but the off shore drilling circus starts in earnest today. On Friday,though, there was a bipartisan Energy Summit brought up by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asks a key question to put all of this in context:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnJAIeEgjSM[/youtube]
To which he gets no answer. Which isn’t surprising when you note that there is little oil at stake, but a lot of taxpayer funds to be had.
This week the fight over off-shore drilling ramps up. The highlights of the Democratic proposal includes:
1. OCS drilling in the 50 – 200 mile zone away from the coasts.
2. Florida’s eastern gulf is off limits to drilling
3. Oil subsidies are rolled back. ($17B over 10 years)
4. Royalties on production are retained by the Feds.
5. Royalties are spent on subsidies to alternative, green sources.
The other major proposal is one sponsored by the bi-partisan Group of 20, including these highlights:
1. OCS drilling 100 miles away from coasts and states may reset that limit to 50 at their discretion.
2. Florida’s eastern gulf would be included.
3. Oil subsidies are rolled back. ($17B over 10 years)
4. Royalties on production are shared with the states.
5. The Fed share of royalties are spent on subsidies to alternative, green sources.
The obstructionist crew of repubs are against both options — they want to open up drilling to within 3 miles of coastline, they want to keep the oil subsidy scheme intact, and they want to include nuclear and oil shale in the “alternative” energy column. And add more subsidies to these two.
Next up — a look at just how much oil we are talking about.
The Democrat Plan (or pretense at one) echoes the ditty that ends ‘Hang your clothes on a hickory limb but don’t go near the water’.
It is akin to a smorgasbord where the table is laden with toadstools and ill-prepared fugu.
Imagine that…another knee jerk solution coming from our congress. When will we learn?
Oil is a commodity product sold on a global market, so the price for a barrel of oil produced in the US is going to be about the same as the price of oil from any other country. However, our costs to produce that barrel of oil are higher than other countries due to higher labor and regulatory costs. The winners here: ExxonMobil and friends.
My friends, its inevitable. It won’t solve a damn thing, hell, whatever the big oil harvests here goes into the international market so where’s the gain? We need more refinaries. That will decrease cost a little- if every measure is taken to curb pollution. Control aint cheap and it complicates the process. Money honey. I’m telling you their going to drill and in your heart of hearts you already know it. I see two points of condition, two points that are non-negotiable. The first is most important. This “Drill here, Drill Now” porn theme is another land grab. Plain and simple, millions more of public land goes to a corporate overlord that you, we, never benefit from. They already have 44 million acres minimum. Have they exploited it all? Absolutely not. Some maybe. Its not in their interest. They got it sucker and aint giving it back. So non-negotiable point number one is use what you have. If it doesn’t yeild then release it. For every acre they prove to an effort made resulting in failure then they lease one new acre. Stipulating of course that the land is returned undamaged. Congress will allow drilling. This has to be the first considerstion.
Second point: Pollution control. No bullshit, coming soon to a derrick near you, in developement lies. Costs be damned, have it done or don’t bother. They get some pretty healthy tax breaks without serious scrutiny. Pollution control to replace the another loophole. The majority of Americans are short sighted and fall for the propaganda. Most Dems and Reps in congress are lobbied too much to refuse. Drilling is coming. If we get on at least these two points at least we hold our legislators accountable.
So what do you wise folks think? Am I naive? Capitulating? Most of you look deeper into the issues than I and I am better for it. Help me out.
Consider what has passed. Many things thought inconceivable are now law or stuck down. Some advances were results from public action. Cheney has changed laws to favor power and you never heard a peep. We torture. How many Americans took to the streets? Civil rights. How many people Americans took to the streets. In this America John Atkins wins a primary. In this America John Atkins was forced to resign. Drilling is going to happen whether you like it or not. Get with it.
The thing is that the oil companies aren’t going to do much more drilling that they already do offshore. Virgina and Georgia (I think) want to drill for natural gas. The companies would prefer to be in the eastern gulf off of Florida. There isn’t enough exploratory capacity to do any significant mapping for awhile and nor are there enough drill ships or rigs to go around. And these are maritime activities — did you notice that the US has largely given up on shipbuilding?
Frankly, approving drilling is OK with me provided that the state whose coast is likely to be affected gets to approve it. And if that state gets royalties, and if that state assumes all of the environmental liability. What is at stake right now is additional oil subsidies, which is pretty unconscionable for an industry that has plenty of money to invest in its own future.
Cass, don’t you think the land not being exploited should be returned? Otherwise what acres are continued to be amassed won’t be eligable for protection or public use.
I don’t much care about returning the acreage — if they are paying for the leases on it, that is OK. The public isn’t going to make much use of the OCS except for access to fisheries (if still intact, esp after exploration), boating and some research uses which are typically still available.
If money is flowing into the fed as the land sits untouched, hurrah, I’m all for the income. I have to ask if it can be used for a better purpose. I can’t get over seeing this as a land grab. Use it or lose it. Cassandra, you appear more knowledgable about this than I. I am not disagreeing. I want us to push for accountability and responsibility through and through. Congress will allow drilling. Shouldn’t we demand the particulars?
What kind of particulars are you looking for?
The MMS (for all of their extracurricular activity) keeps public data on leases up on line with some data on ownership. I think that lease fees (or at least the lease bids) are up there too.
If your comfortable with an agency like MMS being forthright regardless of the “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity where employees accepted gratuities with prodigious frequency” then I can not persuade you. Your arguement fails to disaude me. I implore everyone to take action in order to gain from the loss.
There really isn’t any loss of land. There is definitely some loss in environmental quality. But no one is doing anything with the anyway. And the companies pay the lease fees (not enough, but there you go). The loss is in the tax dollars to finance the drilling.
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=389&Itemid=1
The land leases are not showing profit for the people. Farmers/ranchers are locked out of potential. There are instances where the leases have been turned over to developers, pennies on the dollar. Cassandra, you’re driving me nuts. You state facts and I counter with same. Where is the greater good?
Oh! I get it now — I’m talking about off-shore drilling here — in the Outer Continental Shelf. That is what Congress is working on this week.
But you are right, the land-based mineral leases are another story and are increasingly a serious problem for ranchers and farmers out west. Not only do they not always get a fair deal on the extractions, but they are left with disruptive and dirty operations that leave them with limited ability to conduct their businesses.
But that is not the legislation up in Congress this week.
The bill that may pass this week will set precident. Give me a minute, I’m sure that big oil HAS leases offshore. Have these areas been utilized? Its the same thing. A land grab by another name is the same. It also brings my second point to the forefront: pollution control. Violation enforcement. The profit margin is cut deeply by pollution control. We should be ready to pay more for that. We should be willing to demand that.
The current leases are mainly in the western Gulf of Mexico (TX, LA) and some off of the CA coast. There has been a ban on further drilling for many years and there has been some new repub bamboozlement to open up more of the OCS to drilling. The current ban expires this month and this expiration is being used as a money grab.
And no, not all of the offshore leases are being used.
One of the reasons to allow states to approve drilling (and to make them responsbile for the environmental liability) is to get them to deal directly with the potential pollution which is not insignificant. Drilling muds don’t get brought up, nicely drummed and disposed of. And many rigs use the ocean as their dumpster — they aren’t supposed to, but they do.