President Bush recently pulled the EO banning domestic drilling. Today, Tuesday, the price of oil dropped to $139.
In a dramatic move yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.
Now isn’t this interesting?
Democrats keep saying that it will take 10 years or longer to produce oil from the offshore areas. And they say that oil prices won’t decline for at least that long. And they, along with Obama and McCain, bash so-called oil speculators. And today we had a real-world example as to why they are wrong. All of them. Reid, Pelosi, Obama, McCain — all of them.
BZ
We’ll see. I sure hope it’s a trend and not a knee jerk thing.
VW
a sure way to make speculators scatter is make talk on expanding the supply of whatever they’re speculating on. if that goofy bitch Pelosi would get on board, the price would drop even lower.
But still, we need to produce here, not just talk about it, to have any long lasting steady lower prices.
Other nations drill off our shores. We should be doing the same!
If we had been doing so for a while, even a short while, OPEC wouldn’t have the leverage to damage us at the pumps.
If you think we’ve seen a precipitous drop already, on nothing more than talk, wait until the real drilling rigs start digging…
We CAN drill our way out of this mess, it’s simply a question of doing it…
We can blame all the people we want but don’t forget, it was daddy Bush that put the ban into law in the first place.
Just think how much the price would fall he GWB used the word invade, as in invade Saudi Arabia and take it.
Just saying.
Sorry to go off topic, but how’s it going up there BZ? Is the smoke starting to dissipate and you’re breathing better? I sure hope so.
Just think he could have dropped the EO in 2001… 2002… 2003… but that would require an energy policy to understand the need to drill in areas and see how that would effect the long term viability of the Nation. Glad he took them off. Wish he would have done that coming to office.
To Nancy Polutsi
If Bush’s dropping of drilling ban does nothing for the price of gas RIGHT NOW, please explain how DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING helps the price right now.
Ranando: you’re correct. GHWB.
Z: Getting a tad better during the day but the smoke stick dumps in at night, choking and gray.
WMD: Why isn’t EVERYONE asking that question??
BZ
Just in: oil prices dropped even more today, Wednesday:
“NEW YORK – Oil prices tumbled Wednesday, extending a steep and unusually volatile slide into a second day, after the government reported a surprising spike in U.S. crude and gasoline supplies.
Light, sweet crude for August delivery dropped $4.50 to $134.24 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices fell $6.44 Tuesday in the biggest one-day drop in dollar terms since the Gulf War.”
So. . .as TF points out: you think there really IS a SHORTAGE of oil or is this all BULLSHIT?
BZ
“you think there really IS a SHORTAGE of oil or is this all BULLSHIT?”
“the government reported a surprising spike in U.S. crude and gasoline supplies”
Which means that the US didnt use as much as the govt thought it would. Either we decided it was too expensive to use or we are conserving more. This does not mean that the supply level has changed and China and India sucked up the amount that the US didnt use. The drop in the price means that the market thinks the US will conserve/not use even more than last month.
A major problem is the lack of refinery capacity in the US and the number of different fuel types we consume. Somewhere in the back of my head I remember there being 19 different basic gasoline blends for the US, alone, based on winter/summer, pollution level, federal restrictions, state restrictions… CA has some awful number like 35 blends that vary throughout the year via locale.
You can’t get those blends off the world market, gasoline is still relatively inexpensive without blending.
America needs an energy policy that looks at all parts of the energy systems we use: not just drilling, but refining, new source innovation, new transfer methods, new storage technologies, and aiming to get us off of fossil fuels as a mainstay in 30 years or so. Not whimsy of whatever a politician thinks is ‘right’ but a policy that incentivizes the marketplace to develop the necessary capacity for now and the future. Instead we vote on politician whimsy… that hasn’t worked so well.
Shell was in Onscario looking to build a mega refinery around Sarnia. It was scrapped, and rumor has it that they will probably build it in Texas.
If we want to see relief at the pump, the word aint “drill” it is “refine.”
as my husband said: If they say that drilling now is a waste of time, then they can say that about anything such as college.. Then why go to college?
Also, as you said BZ, drilling now means a HUGE drop in prices just by mentioning it and even taking steps toward it. SO it DOES Help both in the immediate and the long term. The libs can’t see past their environmental religion enough to get the job done.
How much money have we already invested in bio fuels only to come up empty? Besides, even if they came up with something doable in the next 3 years, what do they expect, everyone to just drop their cars and car payments and hurry up and buy one of their smaller environmental cars? What do big families do, put their kids on the roof racks?? Or buy 6 seater bicycles?
O.K. big Hybrid Suv’s?? It would take 10 years to make up for the cost of a hybrid in gas saved.
We have to drill now so that when this happens again we will be prepared and usually when the libs say it will take 10 years, you can take 5 to 6 years off of their doom and gloom estimation since their predictions are always wrong or off anyway.
I think this recent hike has been a huge warning for us to get off our duffs and be ready for the next time it happens. Also, if Iran and Israel go at it we will be ready. We are FOOLISH for not doing it now.
I think the prices are going down and it is possible they will REALLY fly down in the next 6 months. I think it will be historical as far as how fast they will drop. So as I said, we should remember this time when gas is $4.00 a gallon and prepare for the future.
Yes, completely concur: we need REFINERIES built at a prodigious rate! Yes!
BZ