trudellforcongress.com

TRUDELLFORCONGRESS.COM

To drill or not to drill that is the supposed question in the so called "energy debate" we hear on poor excuses for news services.

Media morons who call themselves "experts", as well as politicians who actually know next to nothing about offshore drilling are now proclaiming that we must "lift the ban on offshore drilling", as if the ban off the outer continental shelf on drilling ( Imposed by President George Bush Sr. ) is the only thing standing in the way of increased supplies of oil and lower prices at the pump.
It would be nice if things were that simple, but don't be surprised if the price of oil does not drop much in the near future, or ever again,even if the ban is lifted, for the following reasons:
First, there is an acute shortage of drilling rigs, according to the oil industry itself, as recently reported in an article in the New York Times on Thursday ,June19, 2008, entitled" Dearth of deep sea drilling rigs delays search for offshore oil." "The worlds existing drill ships are booked solid for the next 5 years" according to oil industry analysts. Alberto Guimara, a senior executive at Petrobas, (the Brazilian oil company that has recently discovered what has been called "possibly the largest discovery of offshore oil in 30 years.)" said " Almost 100 percent of the oil companies are constrained in their investment program because there is no rig available."
Second: the real reason for current high prices is because of rapidly increased demand from "developing" countries, such as China and India .China, according to the Wall Street Journal, has doubled their consumption in just the last few years, and is now the number 2 consumer of oil, next to the U.S. ( which consumes approx. 25% of the worlds oil supply.)Because ) of this scenario, we have, for practical purposes , reached a point where demand is outstripping supply, and demand is continuing to rise at much faster rate than oil supplies can possibly keep up with. Right now, according to oil industry analysts (not greenpeace) we have reached a point where there is only about 2% reserve capacity. In other words, as far as the "supply demand " equation goes, for practical purposes, we have reached what some environmentalists have called "peak oil".
If we are not lucky this summer a single hurricane approaching the gulf coast might drive up the price of a barrel of oil to the 200 dollar level, possibly driving prices at the pump up to astronomical levels, in the 6 dollar per gallon range, BEFORE IT EVEN REACHES ThE GULF as the supply is already tighter than its ever been, on a global level. Cross your fingers, and hope we luck out again this summer, as we haven't had a Katrina for a few years, and the water temp. (a key factor creating hurricanes ) is already in"Hurricane "range, around 80 degrees fahrenheit.