68 Million Acres

[jgaffney]

I know we've all heard the latest progressive line about the 68 million acres of oil leases that are sitting idle. It sounds like Howard Dean cooked up the talking points and faxed them out to everyone on his rolodex.

It didn't take long for the GOP to respond:

Democrat claims that leases are “sitting idle” are FALSE and MISLEADING.Here are the facts:

FACT: Once a lease is secured, a long, comprehensive exploration process begins that“can require years of mapping, testing, drilling and construction” and can cost “millions or even billions of dollars.” Bidding on, paying for and securing a lease is not a license to drill, nor can production occur immediately. Even after “time delays” associated with initial leasing and drilling of exploratory wells, it has taken nearly a decade to produce energy on leases in the past. Democrats mislead when they say a classification of “not in production” is the same as “sitting idle.”

FACT: It can cost billions to secure leases and producers must pay annual rent on the leased acres, regardless of whether the lease is producing oil or gas. If they fail to pay the annual rent to the government, the leases are forfeited.(30 USC 188 (b))

FACT: By law, energy producers must produce oil or natural gas from the lease within 5-10 years. If they don’t, they “lose the lease.”

There are many sources cited on the webpage to back up the facts. Please read them first before dismissing the GOP's claims.

[jgaffney]

Today's Wall Street Journal has more on this:

Democrats are in a vise this summer, pinned on one side by voter anger over $4 gas and on the other by their ideological opposition to carbon-based energy – so, as always, the political first resort is to blame Big Oil. The allegation is that oil companies are "stockpiling" leases on federal lands to drive up gas prices. At least liberals are finally acknowledging the significance of supply and demand.

To deflect the GOP effort to relax the offshore-drilling ban – and thus boost supply while demand will remain strong – Democrats also say that most of the current leases are "nonproducing." The idea comes from a "special report" prepared by the Democratic staff of the House Resources Committee, chaired by Mr. Rahall. "If we extrapolate from today's production rates on federal lands and waters," the authors write, the oil companies could "nearly double total U.S. oil production" (their emphasis).

In other words, these whiz kids assume that every acre of every lease holds the same amount of oil and gas. Yet the existence of a lease does not guarantee that the geology holds recoverable resources. Brian Kennedy of the Institute for Energy Research quips that, using the same extrapolation, the 9.4 billion acres of the currently nonproducing moon should yield 654 million barrels of oil per day.

The report from the House committee makes for good reading:

In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land; yet, in that same time, 18,954 wells were actually drilled. That means that companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 extra permits to drill that they are not using to increase domestic production.

Isn't it nice that the staffers for the majority on the Committee know more about the oil business than the oil companies? Could it be that there are no wells on those 10,000 leases because the oil companies learned, without drilling that there's no oil there? Would a progressive, who is dead set against the expansion of petroleum resources in this country, and who doesn't give a damn how much you have to pay for gas, doesn't really care what the reason is as long as (s)he can make political hay out of it?

[bolverk]

Sounds like the same group of Democrats that think they know more then hydrolics engineers. They were positive that 1.6 gallons of water would make the best toilets, but now they have a flush once for liquids and twice for solids program.

We are stuck with 1.6 gallon flush toilets that back up easier then their 3 gallon flush counterparts. Yet, in Europe and Asia, they have a system that allows you to flush either 3 or 1.6, in one toilet. Cradle to grave is what this is, they did not trust the people to demand better products or the manufacturers to meet that demand, so they implemented it by law. Leaving us with a fiasco.

Democrats think they are smarter then anyone, but this one law proves them wrong. Now if only Californians were smart enough to connect the dots and flush the lot of them.

[jgaffney]

Yesterday, I attended the Sonoma County Alliance breakfast meeting, where the speaker was Rep. Mike Thompson. Now, I admire Mike and his Blue Dog Democrat stance on fiscal responsibility. However, as the representative from Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties, Mike toes the party line on offshore drilling. He repeated the fallacy that the oil companies have "all those millions of acres already that their not drilling on." Because of my status at the meeting, I kept my mouth shut and refrained from asking him, "Could it be that the oil companies have methods that don't involve drilling to discover whether or not oil is present under their lease? Could it be that all of those millions of acres remain undrilled because the oil companies already know that there's no oil there?"

The Democrats continue to claim that it's not worth opening up offshore drilling or ANWR because it will be more than 10 years before the product comes online. However, they continue to advocate for alternative energy sources that have even longer timelines before they become widely available. At the same time, they offer no alternative during their market lag period, condemning all of us to higher gas prices and, as a result, higher prices on everything that relies on energy.

Think about it: what product do you buy that doesn't rely on petroleum energy, either for production or delivery? Betcha can't think of too many, right, Saunterelle?

[saunterelle]

"The Democrats continue to claim that it's not worth opening up offshore drilling or ANWR because it will be more than 10 years before the product comes online. However, they continue to advocate for alternative energy sources that have even longer timelines before they become widely available. At the same time, they offer no alternative during their market lag period, condemning all of us to higher gas prices and, as a result, higher prices on everything that relies on energy."


The difference is that if we spend the next 10 years establishing the infrastructure to utilize widespread alternative energy sources we will progress to a point where we are ready to break our dependence on oil. If we simply use those 10 years to set up drilling in ANWR like the Republicans want, we are digging ourselves into a deeper hole.

Is it a more expensive solution? In the short term, yes. But it saves us in the long term. Besides, look how much the disasterous war in Iraq is costing us. If that money had been put toward alternative energy (as Gore probably would have done) we'd be well on our way to breaking our dependence on oil.

[bolverk]

Jul 3, 2008 13:24:56 GMT -5 saunterelle said:

"The Democrats continue to claim that it's not worth opening up offshore drilling or ANWR because it will be more than 10 years before the product comes online. However, they continue to advocate for alternative energy sources that have even longer timelines before they become widely available. At the same time, they offer no alternative during their market lag period, condemning all of us to higher gas prices and, as a result, higher prices on everything that relies on energy."


The difference is that if we spend the next 10 years establishing the infrastructure to utilize widespread alternative energy sources we will progress to a point where we are ready to break our dependence on oil. If we simply use those 10 years to set up drilling in ANWR like the Republicans want, we are digging ourselves into a deeper hole.

Is it a more expensive solution? In the short term, yes. But it saves us in the long term. Besides, look how much the disasterous war in Iraq is costing us. If that money had been put toward alternative energy (as Gore probably would have done) we'd be well on our way to breaking our dependence on oil.

It won't save anything in the long term. People will not stand for it, and the polls are already beginning to show it. You are on the wrong side of the issue. The rate right now is 60% or higher that say we need the energy and environmental concerns should be set aside.

Of course this does not even address energy independence or the fact that it could take fifty years or more to come up with a real alternative to the internal combustion engine. Right now we can create automobiles that burn that fuel more efficiently and cleaner, which is what we should do until a viable alternative exists. Otherwise you will be risking violence in the streets.

You are wrong on this issue, and you will continue to be wrong, because yours is a radical approach, which has no guarantees of solving the problem in a realistic time frame. The proof is in the California toilet, a failed government mandate on flush volumes, which has lead to the flush once for liquids and twice for solids campaign.

We, unlike Europe in this case, did not rely on our manufacturers to come up with a solution to the publics demand for a more efficient toilet, which can deliver two different volumes of water, depending on needs. Instead, we let the Democratically controlled government of California mandate a solution which is an abject failure.

We are set to do the same thing in energy, because of wrong headed individuals, like yourself, who would rather rely on government then yourself. If the public desires more energy efficient vehicles, that is what they will get. It is the simple law of supply and demand, and you will not allow it to follow it's natural course, and instead seek to force something no one wants, which is foreign dependence on oil that is over priced due to oil speculations in the market place.

[bolverk]

You are darn lucky I can not smite you again right away for your obvious lack of understanding in market forces. Neo-socialists, such as yourself, have no place among the free. Your goal is to steal freedom and replace it with false security. And I despise that approach.

[jgaffney]

Saunterelle sez...

Is it a more expensive solution? In the short term, yes. But it saves us in the long term. Besides, look how much the disasterous war in Iraq is costing us. If that money had been put toward alternative energy (as Gore probably would have done) we'd be well on our way to breaking our dependence on oil.

Look how much the Farm Bill is costing us! Look how much the War on Poverty is costing us! "If that money had been put toward alternative energy (as Gore probably would have done) we'd be well on our way to breaking our dependence on oil." At least we can see some progress in Iraq.

Anywhoo, I think it's great that you feel that alternative energy is worth investing your money in. The world is full of dreamers. Someone has to be the early implementer, and I nominate you. Perhaps you can tell us what it's like to live on the "bleeding edge" of progress. Please tell us what steps you have taken to implement your alternative energy future for yourself.

[jgaffney]

The Minerals Management Service has an excellent web page that tracks development of natural resources in America. Their section on offshore drilling off the Californai coast is very informative. Especially the section about undeveloped leases.

When Nancy Pelosi starts chanting about the "68 million acres," you can remember this page, where the lawsuits preventing the oil companies from drilling on the 36 of 79 federally-leased offshore tracts are detailed. You can also see the leases, under "Boundaries and Maps." You will note that the existing platforms are not uniformly spread throughout the leases, but clustered in areas together. In fact, there's an area off Long Beach where, in a common corner of three leases, all of the platforms are grouped together. That should tell you that the recoverable oil is not uniformly distributed among all of the leases, but clustered in areas that the oil companies fight over.

So, while Saunterelle continues to exhort everyone else to drive fuel-efficient cars, yet won't himself step up to the CNG Honda Civic, we can continue to push our electeds to use the resorces we already have here in America, between now and the time that an alternative source of fuel becomes widely available.