Dude just doesn't have any quit in him. Got his ass handed to him with wind (no pun). Dude owns more fresh water rights in America...than America so that and his platform for natural gas could be the world beater. According to IEA, there is a projection that by the end of the decade, America can produce enough oil to fill it's own demand...and then some. I likes. We should do what Brazil did and drill/ produce our own. Screw OPEC and screw all the 12 year old Arab kids that fill their new Benz for .03 a gallon. You can also add "no more" to securing foreign oil production/ (interest) with the lives of US service members. The problem with such a plan...It takes balls. The other problem is an administration that likes it's stand on alternative (Nuclear) energies, born from BP taking a big-O- shit in the Gulf. Discuss
The problem is producing enough oil to meet our demands won't make us energy independent. The oil will still be sold on a world market, unless we do something terrible like nationalize oil production. Since we love freedom we would never do that. Our oil will go on the market and a group like OPEC will just cut production to correspond with increased American production.
You are correct. But it will be nice to have those jobs, and no longer be at the mercy of OPEC. Plus, if OPEC really does cut supply, American E&P and Refiners will make a killing by selling at the higher market price. Also, we are well on our way to gas-powered plants displacing dirty coal.
In long-term strategic terms oil is very cheap right now. In 60 years, the oil will be gone and by then the price of oil will have skyrocketed. It will rise exponentially, which means we would be smart to be buying oil from overseas today and be depleting the Middle eastern oil fields instead of our own. Being self-sufficient does not make our oil cheaper and exporting it makes little sense at all other than a quick buck. Oil is a global commodity so it really doesn't matter where it comes from . . . right now. In 40 years it will be a different matter altogether. Prices will be sky-high and wars will be fought for access to oil fields. We would be smart to hold our reserves for now and use them when the prices get so high it can bankrupt a country. We would still have access to oil when overseas sources become unavailable to us. If we deplete our last reserves right now, just because we can, we will be utterly dependent on overseas sources in the future when expensive foreign oil will send all of our money overseas. We may have far less control of the oceans when supplies of fuel runs low and find it impossible to protect fuel supply routes. The country needs to be looking at this with an eye to the future and to the oil depletion rate, not simply letting multinational oil companies work toward their best corporate profits regardless of the strategic consequences to the nation.
Going to agree with Red on this one. We should develop areas in which we refine sources of Oil not located in the US. Also, I commend Obama on this: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/11/21-8?print "The Energy Department awarded a grant on Tuesday to Babcock & Wilcox—best known for its design of Three Mile Island—for a class of small nuclear reactors. The North Carolina-based company will receive an unspecified portion of a $452 million Department of Energy grant that aims to speed commercialization of modular nuclear reactors. The Obama administration continues to believe that low-carbon nuclear energy has an important role to play in America’s energy future,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a statement Tuesday." "Modular reactors, about one-third the size of a conventional nuclear power plant, are designed to be less expensive—and supposedly safer—than existing plants."
"We" should not do anything. We should buy cheap energy for whoever sells it and allow private companies to open nuclear plants if they want. We don't need a national energy policy. The dept of energy should only exist to the extent it is necessary to regulate nuclear safety. Also if global warming was a real threat we should be happy if oil prices rise and oil is scarce.
