Sep 24 2008
Drill, Baby Drill! – GOP Wins A Big One
Finally, the do-nothing  Congress did something good by ….  doing nothing!
Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.
Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July.
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This reminds me of how the DEMOCRAT LED Congress brought a victorious end to the Iraq War, they failed to do what they wanted to do (surrender Iraq to al-Qaeda at all costs – and there were a lot of costs). It seems the Democrats are at their best when they fail.
From their viewpoint it is a temporary walk back from ticking time bomb in the room to hang around their neck in the election.
They plan to win enough seats and the White House to ram a NoDrill 2.0 through after the election.
This is good news, but it doesn’t mean that any actual drilling is authorized yet. The most important issue is that the states have to be offered a revenue sharing deal, as Ed Morrissey has pointed out. This requires Congressional authorization, and Congress has already decided to punt this issue into the spring.
No authorization and the lifting of this ban is a dead letter.
The sad fact is that there are about 2 dozen regulatory ways in which offshore drilling is blocked. This action cleared up one of them.
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Drill rig leases are currently booked for the next five years. If a company decided today to drill, they couldn’t have a rig on site to start drilling until 2013. The Democrats are betting they can get the ban reinstated before then. They figure chances are good their majority in Congress will increase this election so they really have nothing to lose by letting it expire now. I will bet a cheeseburger and a coke that they take it up in the next Congress and if Obama is elected, the ban will sail through.
WWS is right, there are many more obstacles in the way, but the silver lining is that the American people overwhelmingly want to drill. By allowing the ban to sunset, the Democrats may THINK they are being cute, but actually the tactic simply puts the obstructionist congress-critters at odds with their own state constituencies.
I can see this helping Jim Gilmore in Virginia, for example. He is already showing Virginians how off-shore drilling could help the state budget crisis. Other states will follow suit. The issue is no longer national, where the enviro lobby could better control their purchased pols, it has been dispersed to the states now where the greens have not been focusing their efforts and contributions.
The Dems in Congress are effectively telling the environmentalists, “OK, you’re on your own now.”
Pelosi wants more natural gas. You have to drill for gas. The most natural gas is found along with oil. Drilling for oil in most cases IS drilling for natural gas. I can’t understand how they want to increase natural gas production without drilling and how they are going to avoid drilling in areas that also have oil.
It is total lunacy on the part of the Democrats.
Pelosi is on record as having stated that Natural Gas is not a fossil fuel. That’s why she likes it.
It’s hard to come up with a way to have a rational conversation with someone like that.
When are we going to start tapping into this previously unknown or unappreciated resource!!
3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—
Released: 4/10/2008 2:25:36 PM
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey Office of Communication
Reston, VA – North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.
A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.
USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment.
Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana – the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU.
At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold.
The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.
Results of the assessment can be found at http://energy.usgs.gov.
For a podcast interview with scientists about the Bakken Formation, listen to episode 38 of CoreCast at http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/.
When are we going to tap this unappreciated resource??
3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—
Released: 4/10/2008 2:25:36 PM
Reston, VA – North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.
A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.
USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment.
Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana – the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU.
At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold.
The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.
Results of the assessment can be found at http://energy.usgs.gov.
For a podcast interview with scientists about the Bakken Formation, listen to episode 38 of CoreCast at http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/.
Look, there is no need to tap that very costly resource. Yes, there might be a lot of oil in N. Dakota but it is trapped in lots of small pockets. There is so much oil just offshore of California that it literally oozes out of the seabed on its own. If we could drill some more wells, it would actually REDUCE pollution by reducing natural seepage in that area.
That oil in N. Dakota only makes sense to produce when oil prices are over $100 a barrel. The stuff off of California costs about $15 a barrel to produce.
The regulatory and legal hurdles to drill off California’s coast are huge. However, that would be the biggest recoverable oil at the least expense. Although I believe Florida has a lot of oil offshore in the Eastern Gulf.
It would help California out of its budget mess if the state would participate in the royalties and taxes. The economic boom it would produce for Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo would go a long way to reduce the budget shortfall. Maybe some of the new workers would vote Republican to shift the statehouse in Sacramento.