In this post, I argued that many of our politicians, definitely including the junior senator from Washington, want higher energy prices in order to force us to use less energy, especially the energy that comes from fossil fuels. They can't admit that openly, but on Monday night, Cantwell came close to saying that we should pay more at the gas pump, and to heat our homes.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV's "Money and Politics" last night, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., explained Democrats don't want to increase supplies of oil and gasoline because they want to wean Americans off of petroleum products.
Asked point-blank if Democrats in the Senate would consider how increasing the supply of oil would lower the prices that are pinching U.S. consumers, Cantwell replied: "Oh, we definitely want to move beyond petroleum. And so there will be a supply side offered by the Democrats and it will include everything from battery technology to making sure that we have good home domestic supply, and looking, as I said about moving faster on those kind of things like wind and solar that can help us with our high cost of natural gas."
In other words, no.
(Note that she did not include nuclear power. Nor did she did mention biofuels, which she has backed strongly for years.)
If wind and solar were already cheaper than fossil fuels, then we would be rushing to use them without any help from the government. They wouldn't need subsidies. So Cantwell, as she tacitly admits, does not want prices for gasoline and fuel oil to come down.
On the whole, I am pleased by her reply, not because I agree with her, but because she is edging toward honesty. I don't expect to see her admit that she has been working for years to raise the prices of petroleum products — as she has — but even this small step toward honesty is welcome.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(Note to local reporters: Why not ask Cantwell directly whether she wants gas prices to stay high? Assuming you want to be reporters, rather than Democratic operatives, that is.)
Posted by Jim Miller at July 23, 2008 09:50 AM | Email ThisThe current push by Boone Pickens provides a good case in point. He is pushing a huge expansion of wind power to replace fossil fuel electrical generation. However, he was back in DC last week lobbying for larger and longer term subsidies from the Feds. In other words, all these windmills make no sense financially unless the government chips in a lot of money. And this is at today's fossil fuel costs.
Posted by: RJK on July 23, 2008 10:52 AM
You only need to look back a month or so for two headlines from the same day.
Republicans blocked a bill to tax excess profits from oil companies. Followed by: Democrats block tax cuts for alternative fuels. The reason: No funding for the tax cuts.
Smells like they worked together on that little bit of song and dance.
Posted by: Vince on July 23, 2008 11:06 AMI mean, this is what she's really saying, isn't it? But they can't come out and say that. This is always how it is with these people.
"What is less obvious to many people is that even if we develop and deploy all the energy we can together - including unconventional oil and natural gas, including alternative energy, including nuclear and including more coal - we will still struggle to match demand. Unless we can curb the consumption of energy through radically more efficient technology."
- Shell executive Jeroen van der Veer, knuckle dragging liberal environmentalist.
Posted by: Acid Brain on July 23, 2008 11:14 AMhttp://www.house.gov/mcdermott/pr080722.shtm
Republicans should be asking Democrats just what their timetable is for bringing "wind and solar" to market as a replacement for oil.
While we are waiting 20 to 30 years for Democrats to dither around with countless studies and task forces studying "alternative energy", Republicans ought to ask how American families will survive the intervening economic collapse.
Republicans can win the fall elections in a landslide if they will engage in a bit of public education. Americans already overwhelmingly favor domestic drilling. Not drilling will lead to $8.00 gas at the pump. It will also drive up the cost of food and everything else we buy. We will have massive inflation. Money will flee the stock market as Americans desperately cut back their spending in order to survive. Democrats will be forced to further raise taxes in order to supplement millions who can't afford to heat their homes as a direct result of their opposition to drilling. The average citizen will watch the value of their retirement 401(k)accounts plummet. And if the economy isn't crippled enough, Obama will raise the tax on capital gains.
This isn't some far-fetched scenario like global warming, this is what will happen if we have a massive Democrat victory in November. Cantwell and the rest of the Democrats smugly think higher gas prices will get people out of their cars. More likely people will be spending a lot more time in their cars. They'll be living in them.
All Republicans have to do to turn around their political fortunes and avoid this economic horror is become agressive and take it to the Democrats.
Republicans need to get their heads out of the sand and show Americans exactly what the Democrats are. The "can't" party. Maybe a few pictures of Jimmy Carter in his sweater turning down thermostats in the White House, and 55mph speed limit signs would be in order just for starters. And please, show that revealing video of Gore's limo idling with the air conditioner on.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on July 23, 2008 11:33 AMWhat the hell is happening to this friggin' country? Where is the damned rage?
Posted by: G Jiggy on July 23, 2008 11:40 AMThe left constantly tells us we "need" to depend on some mythical alternative solution. It's time to ask for some specifics instead of feel-good environmentalist platitudes.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on July 23, 2008 12:00 PMIn the meantime, we need trucks and trains and ships to get raw materials and products to market. There is plenty of domestic oil available to bridge the gap, and we can get it, not in 10-years as leftists are fond of saying, but in 2-3 years. We also have clean nuclear power available with current technology. The left opposes it as well.
What do you propose to do until these new technologies are feasible? You provide no specifics.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on July 23, 2008 12:23 PMNote, for instance, that van der Veer implicity criticizes biofuels made from food plants. And which Washington senator has been backing food-based biofuels, for years?
And there's more there, but I will leave the rest to other commenters.
Posted by: Jim Miller on July 23, 2008 12:27 PMLook up "quantum jump" in any good physics book if that surprises you.
Posted by: Jim Miller on July 23, 2008 12:32 PMThere is relief. It's called drilling for our own oil, which we have in abundance.
It is only leftists that constantly say "we can't", which as Cantwell nearly admitted is part of their agenda to get people out of their cars.
Again, Acid Brain, the "relief" you speak of is not grounded in specifics or any kind of timetable. Sensible people who do not want to see our economic ruin realize that we need to both drill for our own oil and let the free market develop new technologies.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on July 23, 2008 01:12 PMThey want us to go back to the earth--as compost.
Posted by: Camille on July 23, 2008 01:27 PMYes we should (and ARE) "buy into efficiency". BUT more of ANYTHING in the marketplace will indeed reduce the prices. We saw that immediately when Bush released some oil from the reserve.
Any policy that causes the expected future oil price to fall can cause the current price to fall, or to rise less than it would otherwise do. In other words, it is possible to bring down today's price of oil with policies that will have their physical impact on oil demand or supply only in the future.
MYTH: Drilling will not provide any short-term relief in the price of oil because it will take many years before new drilling will lead to new supplies.
FACT: This same argument has been used for the past several decades to prevent us from using more of our American oil, leading to our current dependence on foreign oil and the supply crunch we are currently experiencing. Does this mean critics of greater American energy exploration were wrong 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago but are suddenly right today now?
Drilling more now will increase supplies in the future. And higher supplies lead to lower prices. Currently, the world is operating at or near full capacity, so there is very little slack in the system, and any disruption causes spike in price. This is partly why commodities and other investors have invested so heavily in oil, driving up prices. They recognize demand will continue to increase and that current supply has artificial limits, especially in the United States.
Opening up new oil fields in the U.S., even if new supplies won't actually reach our gas tank for several years, would immediately impact the amount of upward speculation on long-term commodity investment in oil. Oil speculators will see a greater supply ahead and will see that the future of oil is less constrained on the supply side. Moreover, fears of Middle Eastern turmoil or South American unrest that could disrupt supply shipments will be much less of a reason to drive up the price of crude if a stable U.S. can supply millions of barrels of additional oil. Which represents a more stable source of oil, Colorado or Caracas?
Finally, nobody is suggesting that our nation's energy strategy should be solely dependent on domestic production of oil. We all recognize that alternative energy sources - such as wind and solar - need to be developed. But more American oil must be a part of an American energy solution.
What I find maddening is the failure of Republicans and the McCain Campaign to push the oil drilling issue.
Send this to your Senators and Congressional reps (useless as ours are): http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13573
You can reach your Congressional rep by looking here: http://www.house.gov/
You can reach your Senator by looking here: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Political Hay
Shut Up and Produce Some Oil
By Peter Ferrara
Published 7/23/2008 12:08:44 AM
Liberals are flailing about looking for some political cover on energy and gas prices. For decades now, they have supported the policies of extremists who have systematically sought to shut down every major energy source for our economy. We can't drill for oil offshore, we can't drill in the frozen tundra of north Alaska, we can't even develop oil shale on the mainland. Liberals are even opposing the development of new oil discoveries in the Plains states. Meanwhile, China is now producing oil from wells in Cuban waters off the coast of Florida, selling and reaping enormous profits from oil that America should be producing.
Nuclear power? Can't have that. Jane Fonda showed us in a movie in the 1970s how dangerous that is. France and Japan have produced most of their electricity for decades through the nuclear power technology that America developed, and they are now competing to sell nuclear plant development to China and India.
One of the last U.S. nuclear projects was the Shoreham plant begun by Long Island Lighting Company in 1973. After years of ridiculous regulatory delays, the plant was shut down in 1989 by protests by liberal flower children, before producing any electricity. Long Island Lighting went bankrupt as a result. New Hampshire's Seabrook plant was held up for 14 years by similar regulatory delays, before finally opening in 1990 (and operating without harm ever since).
This is why there has been no new nuclear plant construction in the U.S. since then. Those regulatory delays are due to laws and policies adopted by liberals, who are willing to let extremists use them to shut down any such construction.
LIBERALS ARE NOW even opposing the development and even the maintenance of coal fired electric plants. The energy policy statement on Barack Obama's website says, "Obama believes that the imperative to confront climate change requires that we prevent a new wave of traditional coal facilities in the U.S." In Georgia, a state judge denied a permit for a new coal electricity plant on the grounds of global warming (which is a figment of the liberal imagination to justify a big government power grab). Meanwhile, China opens a new coal plant every week on its way to eventually pass the U.S. as the number one economy in the world.
The last new oil and gas refinery was built in the U.S. in 1976. A good example of the reason why is going on right now in Indiana. BP is constructing a $3.8 billion expansion of its already existing Whiting refinery in that state. But the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has now brought suit against BP seeking an injunction against the expansion, and fines of $32,500 for each day construction has been under way. The NRDC is urging the court to adopt a new interpretation of state law that would require BP to get a new state permit first because with the expansion the refinery would supposedly discharge more "pollution" than the current state permit allows. If the NRDC has found a liberal enough judge, it may get its way, to the great detriment of the rest of us.
Some liberals are even now calling for the elimination of already built and operating hydroelectric power plants, on the grounds that the dams in such projects distort the environment too much. This would require dams to be destroyed and occupied valleys to be flooded.
The problem for liberals is that we are now running into the iron logic of the law of supply and demand, which, unfortunately for them, most voters can understand. Shut down the supply of oil and you get gas prices starting to run towards $5 a gallon. This winter, the price of home heating oil will brutalize the budgets of many families. We are getting to the point where an effective bumper sticker will be, "Keep the Lights On, Vote Republican."
THAT IS WHY the bold Republican initiative to expand oil production and other energy supplies, originally developed by Newt Gingrich, is so effective, and so threatening to liberals. Polls show increasingly overwhelming public support.
As a result, liberals are flailing about offering increasingly absurd distractions. One argument is that even if we started drilling for oil now, we wouldn't get any increased supply, and any reduction in gas prices, for 10 years or more. One popinjay from the misnamed Center for American Progress was recently spouting on TV that there would be no effect until 2030.
Well, let's see. On Friday, July 14, the price of a barrel of oil hit $147. On Monday, July 17, President Bush withdrew the Executive Order banning offshore drilling. That doesn't even start any new drilling because there is still a Congressional ban in place. Nevertheless, by Friday, July 21, after 4 straight days of decline, the price of oil had plummeted to $128, a decline of 13% on a symbolic action alone. The Center for American "Progress" was only off by 21 years, 51 weeks.
There are oil wells off the Pacific coast that were capped years ago when the offshore drilling ban was first adopted. They could be brought back into production in less than a year. Expert oil engineers recently interviewed have said other sites could be producing in 18 months. The standard estimate for production from new drilling in Alaska is 10 years. But if the government gets the lawsuits and regulatory delays out of the way, here's betting the new wells would be producing in less than 5 years.
More importantly, if Congress adopted a comprehensive plan to open up domestic oil production in the U.S., everyone would know that in the long run the price of oil would be heading down. That would break the back of the oil panic today that has driven the price up to ridiculous levels. If the Fed reversed its weak dollar policy at the same time, within a year the price of oil would drop by 50% or more, dropping the price of gas down close to $2 a gallon, which is where it should be. In a competitive market, price is supposed to equal the marginal cost of production. For a barrel of oil, that would be $25 to $40 at most, which is where the long term price of oil would be if the U.S. removed production restrictions.
ANOTHER DISTRACTION is the argument that even if new oil production is allowed, there is no guarantee the oil companies won't sell the oil to Japan or China rather than to American consumers. This argument is 100% bad economics. The truth is, it doesn't matter where the oil is sold. All the new production would increase the world supply of oil regardless of where it is sold. With world supply up, the world price would decline. If new production from Alaska is sold to Japan, the oil that would have otherwise been sold to Japan could then be sold to the U.S.
In fact, if you look at a globe, you would see that Alaska is close to Japan. It would be most efficient, meaning reduced costs and prices, for the production there to be sold to Japan, and for production from South America that would otherwise go to Japan to go to the U.S. instead. That would be the natural result of an efficient market. But to counter the distracting nonsense of desperate liberals grasping for power at all costs, the new production can always be required to be sold in the U.S.
Still another distracting argument is that the oil companies already have millions of acres in oil leases, so why don't they just produce more oil from those areas? The oil companies pay for those leases for exploration. There is no guarantee that any leased areas will actually hold producible oil. Given that the oil companies must pay rent for the term of those leases regardless of whether any oil is produced, and that the price of oil is at record, unprecedented, historic levels, any oil company that was not producing all it could from any of its leases would be subject to shareholder lawsuits for waste of corporate assets. It is just like liberals to demand that oil companies produce more from areas that do not hold any more oil while denying access to areas with massive proven reserves.
Liberals argue that if we would just sell a small portion of the oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that the U.S. government holds in case of emergency, oil and gas prices would fall. So now all of a sudden liberals recognize that increased supply on the market would reduce prices. But any such sales would be a drop in the bucket, and only temporary, likely, indeed, to be reversed later to restore the reserve. So this would have no significant, lasting effect.
Yet another distraction is that we should just increase the required miles per gallon under the CAFÉ standards for the production of new vehicles. This is no answer to the oil and gas price problem because it involves only restricting consumer freedom of choice, and ultimately reducing the American standard of living. It means that consumers should be prohibited from buying the vehicles they want, and instead should be allowed to buy only the vehicles the government wants them to have. The SUV explosion was all about the American consumer wanting bigger, more powerful vehicles rather than vehicles with better fuel economy. There have long been low cost vehicles available for sale in the U.S. operating with close to 50 miles per gallon in fuel efficiency. But consumers have failed to choose those cars, while close to half of sales of new vehicles have been SUVs with low fuel efficiency exempt from the CAFE standards.
IF NOW WITH HIGHER gas prices American consumers want to abandon SUVs and buy more fuel efficient cars, that should be their choice. But the government should not be imposing that choice on them. Yet Barack Obama says on his website that he wants "to double fuel economy standards within 18 years." That involves an assault on the standard of living of the middle class, which would be forced to give up the big, powerful vehicles they now enjoy for the tiny, little sardine cans that most Europeans drive. In fact, there has been talk precisely of allowing car manufacturers to import into the U.S. the little fuel efficient vehicles that they now make for Europe.
Assaulting the standard of living of the middle class is what Barack Obama is all about. For you can search through all of his position papers, speeches and talking points and not find a word about reducing the price of gas or oil. He clearly has no intention of trying to reduce the price of gas at all. He has said, in fact, that the high price of gas and oil is good for the environment, and the only problem is that the prices increased too suddenly. This is the Marie Antoinette school of energy policy.
Remember Obama's famous quote:
"We can't just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert, and keep consuming 25 percent of the world's resources with just 4 percent of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead. We'll be fine. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."
What he means by this is that the current standard of living of the American people is unfair. It represents massive inequality in comparison to the rest of the world. So here we have a leading Presidential candidate who thinks truth and justice requires a reduction in our opulent middle class living standards. Good luck, and good night.
Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation. He served in the Reagan White House Office of Policy Development, after graduating from Harvard Law School and Harvard College.
Are you serious about this being bad? Take a look at, for instance, the 2007 Annual Report for ExxonMobil. You'll find that on $404 billion in sales, the company make $40.6 billion. They made a 10% return.
And they paid $102 billion in taxes - a 26% tax load. Meaning for every dollar in profit, they already paid $2.50 in taxes. Who's making the excess profits there?
Note that the company that is ever-so-green with Al "Earth Savior" Gore on their board, Apple, makes a 15.3% profit margin, and pays 6% in taxes.
So making 10% profit and paying 25% in taxes is bad and greedy and gouging, but making 15.3% profit margin and paying 6% in taxes is all well and good?
Twisted world of the Democrats...
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on July 23, 2008 03:58 PMOil industry execs have already clearly stated that the remaining resources to tap are going to be more expensive and not yield as much more actual product as they will yield wishful thinking.
Yes, the $1/barrel production oil is tapped. But you DO know that the US is sitting on 280 YEARS of its 100% petroleum consumption - 20 million barrels a day - and it can be recovered at $40 a barrel?
And we do not have to drill ANWR or any offshore locations.
We do not have to import a SINGLE drop of oil. We can, in fact, be a net exporter. We could make literally $3 BILLION a week in oil sales, worldwide. And we could do it for centuries.
Gasoline would be $1.30 in the US. Heating oil would be $1.00 per gallon. And not a single drill in any water or tundra.
But no, rather than exploit what we have SITTING RIGHT HERE in the Continental US, the Democrats will shut it all down, wail about "alternative fuels" which receive 100 times the subsidies of the oil companies (per MegaWatt hour of generation) and tell us all to put on a sweater and turn down the thermostat.
Democrats - and the 51% of the population who suck on the public teat - are destroying this country in their attempt to gain "power and control" over the masses. Stalin would be proud!
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on July 23, 2008 04:04 PMStraying a bit off topic here. Excusez-moi.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on July 23, 2008 04:05 PMOh gosh Bill and here I was ready to ask iF it was really an option. Darn.
Note to those who panties are too tight: THAT WAS SARCASTIC SATIRE!
Posted by: Ragnar DanneskJold on July 23, 2008 04:23 PMThey want us to go back to the earth--as compost.
Acid Brain @8.,
Unless we can curb the consumption of energy through radically more efficient technology.
- Shell executive Jeroen van der Veer
Democrats message: "You have reached Lastday Logan 5, report to Sleepshop immediately."
Posted by: NW Denizen on July 23, 2008 04:45 PMIt's only fair that those who want to wean us from oil take the first steps. And then there will be plenty left for those of us that are proud of energy usage and rightly see it as a noble act of mankind. Problem solved.
Posted by: Jeff B. on July 23, 2008 05:02 PM"Arctic May Hold 90 Billion Barrels of Oil, U.S. Says"
By Joe Carroll
"The Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil, more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Mexico combined, and enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years, the U.S. Geological Survey said."
Read this entire article at the Bloomberg.com site, and wonder what the sheer opening of the Artic Drilling would do to your pocketbooks.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aqEDMhrCvp28
And this is just in the Artic!
But the Russians are hot on the trail to take all of this oil over, going to the UN for permission, while the Democrats in this country are sitting on their fat ass salaries, and their fat ass pensions, and Cantwell leading the pact, and doing NOTHING!
I just ask, where will this country go if Russia controls all the oil?
It will be the 2nd Cold/Hot war!
Brought to you by the democrats, and the idiots in this country and state who vote for them.
Their ignorance on this issue will not in any way reduce any so called global warming, we and the rest of the world will be buying Oil (sucked out of our land) from the Russians.
Imagine the price!
Congratulations Obama and other democrats!
As Cantwell has made perfectly clear, the Democrats have deliberately held trillions of barrels of oil out of production and cost this country hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars in higher energy costs. Bin Laden in his wildest dreams could not hope to inflict this sort of economic carnage on this country. This economic sabotage by the Democrats is treasonous and, hopefully, one day it will be treated as such.
Most of the oil fields are owned by no one and should therefor be opened to all who can exploit them in a timely and reasonable manner. The only role for the government is to maintain order.
Posted by: Bill K. on July 23, 2008 10:03 PM
Throw the bums out and get Drilling!
Posted by: gs on July 24, 2008 11:58 AM