Stop the Bleeding

Look, even a girl from South Central with a community college degree can figure this out: you increase the supply of any commodity, its price goes down. If that increase in supply has its origin at home rather than overseas--in countries which, in their envy, would love to take America down a peg or two--the price goes down. Even if the POTUS simply called a press conference and lambasted Congress for blocking all methods of increasing supply and urged its members to stop standing in the way and to stop proposing that the new middle men--themselves--take the place of the old ones (the oil companies), the price would go down.

So what's the president waiting for?

RELATED: Is Montana sitting on nearly 4 billion barrels of oil?

Comments

[AProudVeteran]

Don't forget, it's also related to the weak dollar.

[baldilocks]

Would make less of a difference if we were drilling already or getting ready to.

BTW, Some also argue that a weak dollar is good in other contexts and conditions.

[AProudVeteran]

I loved their point that it's been ten years since the dems said drilling in ANWR wouldn't make a diff, since it would be ten years before we saw a result.

[DarkStar]

The point about the devaluation of dollar deserves more consideration.

The last I checked, the rise in price of oil and the rise in price of gold, has been hand in hand.

The Fed wanted to save the banks and investment houses and may have done that at the greater cost of hurting the economy.

[baldilocks]

Okay.

Still does not invalidate my point.

[Bill]

It takes an advanced degree to understand 1+1=3, and the U.S. Government using progressive socialist principles can invalidate Supply & Demand principles.

[Tully]

The Dems have blocked ANWR development for well over ten years. More like thirty. Roughly 11 billion barrels of recoverable crude. Under protected land is a total of over 30 billion barrels.

The Bakken formation underlying Montana has been assessed at 4.5 billion barrels using today's technology, and at potentially ten times that or more. A decade ago it was assessed at a mere half-billion.

We have known offshore reserves of close on 100 billion barrels--much of it banned from development by Congress.

We have the barrel-equivalent of 750 trillion barrels of oil shale. And we haven't even gotten to coal yet!

Algal oil development is threatening to break through a technical barrier that could lead to an EXACT replacement for light sweet crude at $40/bbl or less. Algal oil is completely carbon-neutral--all the carbon in it is first extracted from the atmosphere by the algae, so it adds zero net atmospheric carbon. Over a decade ago Congress dumped algal oil research funding to concentrate on grain ethanol. THANKS, scum.

We do not have an energy problem. We have a political problem.

Seeing the solution does not require rocket surgery. DRILL, DAMMIT.

[Tully]

Darn fingers. Oil shale is 750 Billion, not trillion. otal known energy reserves not counting coal are just under a trillion barrel-equivalents.

[baldilocks]

Love ya, Tully.

[DarkStar]

Still does not invalidate my point.

I wasn't trying to invalidate your point. I do think it's an important part of the equation and I wish people would realize the long term harm dropping the interest rates has/will done/do.

[Tully]

Back atcha, Juliette. This is one of my favorite hobby horses. Our nation is awash in huge hydrocarbon energy reserves, and we're not allowed to do anything with them!

The total oil reserves in the Bakken formation in Montana/North Dakota are estimated at over 400 billion barrels, the problem is how much of that is actually recoverable using current technology. Every time our technology gets just a little bit better, the recoverable amount expands again. It's tough stuff to get at, but there's an awful lot of it.

In the meantime, Senator Salazar (D-CO) is doing his very best with his fellow Democrats to keep anyone from accessing western oil shale by blocking the regulatory rules that would allow it.