Even a stopped clock...: Barry O okays offshore drilling

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR2010033100024.html?hpid=topnews

Good......

However he cut off some fields in Alaska.

Of course we need to see how things shake out in the details.

Yeah.....so what's the punch line?

All well and good but excuse me if I get a bit more in the way of details before I toss my Stetson in the air.

At the present moment I see it as a shiney being used to distract us.

It's because he heard France is trying to tap into our deep sea reserves and steal our oil with their new long-range slant drilling rigs.

Drill, baby, drill?

Shit.

This sucks.

Did you notice how California is nowhere on this list?

However, IIRC he did nothing to clear away legal obstacles that could hold up new drilling for years if not decades.

As someone said, this is just a ploy to get votes for Cap and Trade.

Good idea, especially since there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of progress on the "new sources of renewable, homegrown energy" front...

So, Dayton / Paladin, since we've got so little progress on the alternates, we really need to get it in gear on opening up the present-day sources, don't we?

Why?

Personal financial interest, I think.

I'm sure it will have an undesired effect on wind generators and his pocketbook.

It may not be too bad though unless the bottom falls out of oil again, then he's in a bind.

Pffft, yeah right. This is two things:

1. Trying to break the news cycle of his craptastic health care bill. He even cut his victory tour short as it was hurting his numbers even more.

2. His move towards the center for the upcoming election in November. He'll appear to give concessions while the EPA does the dirty work of blocking any progress on the matter.

Pretty much. Although it might not have that much to do with the windmills.

But if the US does off-shore drilling the price of oil will probably go down. And there'll be less demand here in Alberta. Which SUCKS!!!



Then again, it'll probably take a long time to get anything going, so I'll milk the system for all its worth and get out when the going's still going good.

Don't worry, I don't see him actually going through with this. He's too beholden to the environmental wackos.

Azure, the intelligent thing is to drill while continuing to build on alternatives. I'm sure there are plenty of practical people who will still be looking into wind energy.

In fact, I believe Zel's employer is looking into expanding their operations from just Navy ships to offshore wind production...rigs? platforms? whatever they are called.

Yeah, like I said chances are windmills are still gonna keep on going up. No matter what happens to the price of oil.

My problem, or my greedy attitude has more to do with oil stocks falling because the US is starting to drill for more of their own oil.

You talking about oil or presidents?

Well, my updated look into this finds that he wants to open drilling off of Virginia, close off some in Alaska and the Gulf appears to be some kind of barganing chip at the moment.
The Sierra Club is up in arms about fishing industries off shore of them being impacted, I haven't delved into the Alaska issues and the new restrictions or cancellation of leases, and needless to say the time it takes to go from a designated site and a producing field is over a decade.

While on the surface this appears to be a fig leaf it really isn't afaIct.

From what I've gathered so far and the given track record of redistribution going on I'm damned leary of this twig.

I don't care what his motives are for drilling. I'm just glad we're doing it. Every extra drop helps.

Hey that's my line. Get your own.

I've never really gotten the obsession with wind farming, personally. To me a system that works with wave and/or tide action to generate electricity would be better, and I'm also a big fan of nuclear energy. That and the thought of huge windmills everywhere isn't all that appealing to me.

I like nuclear too. For the environmentalists, hydrogen is the the cleanest. Ultimately, it will probably win out too, just because of that. When a nuclear reactor has run it's course, you can't dismantle it and put a new reactor in, you have to "bury" it for a few hundred years to let radiation levels return to safe levels. Wind power? Pfft, please. Hydroelectricty via water is far more feasible.

Again IMO.

Wind is not consistent enough. Great idea if the wind always blows, but it doesn't always blow.

Around here where it blows we're putting them up as fast as we can. Just waiting for the power company to finish putting up the new transmission line.

I should mention, with new technology coming out for the windmills, we could be seeing amazing gains being made by the amount of electricity created by one single windmill.

Do that and suddenly its a lot more feasible.

Except when the wind doesn't blow.

Thats the thing. Wind generally blows off-shore.

So it does make sense to put them up. Just in the right places.

Its a good investment too. If I had a couple hundred million lying around, I'd probably invest it in a windfarm. The bigger windmills turn around about $70,000/month when there is a decent amount of wind. They do cost around $2.7 million, but hey....after 10 years or so when my investment has paid itself off, I'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

That all depends upon your definition of "progress." If you mean shit showing up at the pump and/or new car showrooms, its been a trickle, if you mean shit that will hit the pump and/or new car showrooms on or before when this oil will begin to be pumped out of the ground, then there's actually a lot. What's lacking is a willingness for anyone to go "all in" on any given technology. They're all pushing different things, sort of like the computer industry until IBM said, "The hell with it!" and opened everything up so that their chips became the standard.