Monday, August 4, 2008

THE TRUTH ABOUT OFF-SHORE DRILLING

The truth is simple - the oil companies are lying and trying to scam the public, like they've always done. We can go all the way back to the beginning of Bush's presidency when they wanted to drill ANWR in Alaska. Did you know that there is already drilling going on by American oil companies (which are really international companies these days, no longer American) in Alaska? Where does that oil go? Directly to China and Japan because they pay better, none of it is coming down here to America. Nothing drilled in ANWR will come to us either.

Let's be very clear, there is no such thing as "domestic" oil, all oil now goes on the global market and is not kept in our country even if drilled here. So off-shore drilling or ANWR drilling will do little to ease US gas prices, it will only bring down oil prices the equivalent of pennies per gallon. But the oil companies will make some big bucks, which is why they want to do it. They care nothing for the country, only lining their own pockets. And apparently the same goes for John McCain, who is pushing off-shore drilling because the oil companies are donating big bucks to his campaign. After all, look what Bush has done for them, each quarter is a new record in company profits - for any company in the history of the world. Keep in mind those numbers are not what they brought in but PROFIT, what is left over after all expenses.

The story of Katrina causing no oil spills is just a flat out lie, there were millions of gallons spilled into the Gulf during the hurricane, so the idea that off-shore drilling is environmentally safe is a total fantasy.

And if they got the approval to drill tomorrow not a single drop of oil will reach any market for 10 years. Takes a lot of time to build those things, and isn't it odd the that oil companies have leases that allow drilling in thousands of sites in America right now, and have had them for years, yet leaves them untouched.

Get it straight, there is no cure for gas prices and never will be. Prices will keep going up forever. Sure, we will get some dips, it just dropped below $120 per barrel today, but those will be only temporary and short lived. The fact is that demand for oil is continuing to rise around the world, China alone has rising demands that would drive up prices in the long term even if no one else was demanding more oil.

The only way we can be independent from foreign oil is to come up with new energy sources, that is our ONLY course. And if we were doing it right we should have enough of that going on in ten years we wouldn’t need the oil from any of those off-shore sites the oil companies want so badly. Whatever money is spent on building the platforms would be much better spent funding new energy. And let’s not forget conservation. Right now the single most powerful and cost effective way of dealing with energy is for us to use it more efficiently. Simply lowering the speed limit to 55 mph on all highways would do a hell of a lot more than off-shore drilling ever will.

And let’s finish this off with a final number, 1%. What is that for? That is the percentage of their budget the oil companies are spending on research for alternative energy sources. They spend more money on TV ads to tell you how much they are doing than on actual research.

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