Drilling off Florida coasts

[Momar]

Sorry I didn't know where else to post this, so please move or remove it if it is inappropriate. I think the issue has a bearing on all of us that regularly use our coast.

The US House Representative for most of us in Pinellas (Rep Bill Young) will once again be voting tomorrow on whether to lift the moratorium on drilling off of Florida's coastline for oil. A subcommittee narrowly upheld the moratorium last week but this week the full committee will vote on it. Rep Young has consistently voted for the moratorium (and against drilling).

You can contact him at the following phone # to express your opinion, if interested. If you choose to do so, please do so today as the vote is tomorrow.

Rep Bill Young:

St Pete: 727 893 3191
Wash DC: 202 225 5961

Bill.Young@mail.house.gov
360 Central Ave Ste 1480 St Pete, FL 33701


Matt O

[toby wilson]

Will it lower gas prices??? LOL

[Todd RT]

A friend of mine emailed this to me today:

OPEC sells oil for $128.00 a barrel.

OPEC nations buy U.S. grain at $7.00 a bushel.

Solution: Sell grain for $128.00 a bushel.

Can't buy it? Tough! Eat your oil!

Then, oil will come down.

[Danimal8199]

Todd,

great idea, then we can start working on our trade deficit, increase the purchasing power of the dollar and then i can start buying my kites over seas at half price! :D

[sparkyman]

Our great powers that be,( who are controlled by corporate interest ) will say it lower prices. That is if we drill closer off the coast of Florida. We are now on the down slide of the hydro carbon curve. No way we can drill to lower prices. Oil is actually to preciuos to burn. Invest in the future. Step One. Efficency. It is the least costly with imediate results. Step two. Renewable, such as solar, wind, hydro & closed looped geo thermal do not emit CO 2. Clean electricity and new battery technology will take us safely into the future, for so many reasons. Get involved. For the future of others who have yet to come. It is our responsibility to leave what we love, better then what we have now.

[BigR]

Jordan,

we are already past peak oil

drilling now will do nothing

we need alternative energy now

Bush fu@ked us

this one is spot on ( but his emphasis is on gold, whereas all commodities apply ):

http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=42919

I would take this one with a few grains of salt w/o verifying facts:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Maybe we will still have kites in the end

[conchxpress]

Cuba has contracted it's buddy China(formerly known as Red China before it started making all our products) to begin drilling off it's coast. This is part of the same oil field that the U.S. energy companies have been lusting after for the last 2 decades. So who gets it first? It would be nice to still be able to gaze westward into the sunset off our coast and see nothing but the setting sun instead of the lights from oil platforms as in the case of the Texas coast. But we may not be able to actually get to the coast to watch the sunset.
I read that China's energy needs are growing so fast that it would need to construct one nuclear power plant per week to keep up with the demand. Now where did you say your kite was made?
Another interesting tidbit is that every time Japan sends an oil tanker to Saudi Arabia, it is filled with fresh water. I wonder what's the cost per barrel of the oil Japan is buying?

[Unimog Bob]

I shouldn't reply after dinner and a few beers, but you must be smoking something from Al Gores stash so we'll call it even. peak oil has only been reached if you take 1/2 of the currently identified and recoverable sources and put them off limits. I will truly make personal sacrifices for a cleaner environment, but the goal of the environmental movement is to limit human development and prosperity. CO2 is not a pollutant it is a natural constituent of our atmosphere and the byproduct of nearly all life and almost all sources of life sustaining energy. to give government the power to control Co2 emissions is to allow them to control and tax everything. I love the outdoors, the water and especially the gulf. Do you remember how many gulf oil rigs were evacuated for Katrina? She plowed right up the only part of the gulf open to drilling. Do you remember all that crude washing up on the beach... No huh The evil oil companies have gotten that good at drilling. Live in a fantasy world if you want to, but without oil or massively more nuclear energy we would have to revert to third world conditions to exist on conservation and wind/solar/bio. Any way I can't wait for some more wind and we can all kite together again.

[toby wilson]

My car burns gasoline and oil not farts and burps.

[Danimal8199]

I think that the US is far from qualifying as a third world country! Even in the area of edumacatinon, I mean come on, do you know any third world countries that have the TBKA? that puts us so far ahead :)

I also find it hard to believe that chinas demands for energy are growing so fast that they would have to build a nuclear plant every week to keep up, because that is impossible, and they are still operating...

I wish there was a website that would state and back up some facts with data. I always here that we have so much oil we can power the world non-stop for the next 100 years without running out... the problem is we haven't been able to get to the oil... Is that true? I don't know, its what I read...

[Erick]

I believe we need to start taking more advantage of all the different forms of alternative energy such as WIND!!!!!
We all know what wind can do for us!

[Momar]

I will say this much that I know to be true:
As part of the 2006 deal to put much of Florida's coast off-limits to drilling (including the Tampa Bay area until something like the year 2019), a part of the eastern coast of Florida was opened to drilling prospecting interests. No oil company has done any great amount of exploring there yet and none has done any drilling in that area to date.

If thing were as desperate as they lead us to believe as far as oil supplies, why have areas that are open to oil companies (including many many many acres of dry-land oil fields) not been fully utilized to their potential? Why open up more areas if those that were already opened (and presumably have oil under them) have not even been examined by oil companies?

Oil reserves are fairly plentiful today and supply is not any more limited than it was 4 years ago, but prices are double. Instead, speculative investors are putting all their money into funds that buy oil and trade it. Maybe the price will collapse (like housing prices did) on it's own before this off-shore drilling campaign gets enough steam.

FYI: this is from an article regarding the "urban legend" of China drilling off of Key West and near Florida:

"But U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., argued Thursday on the Senate Floor that there is no proof that China and Cuba are planning to drill for oil anywhere offshore.
"China is not drilling off the coast of Cuba," Martinez said. "Reports to the contrary are simply false. They're akin to urban legend."

Ditto on supporting wind power. And soon!

[conchxpress]

I wouldn't rely too much on what Mel Martinez says or does not say. Let's just leave it at that.

[onthefritz]

Interesting change in views with Gov. Charlie Crist...


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D91CGGV81&show_article=1

[Momar]

I wouldn't rely too much on what Mel Martinez says or does not say. Let's just leave it at that.

On that we can agree. :D

[amber]

wow. this is what all our threads need to be like. People with different opinions who are being respectful to the other team. We'd get a hell of a lot more done. I do not agree that the environmental movement is focused on limiting human property and development. Working in environmental education, I have been lucky to work with some great scientists and researchers who are "environmentalists". My personal "environmentalist" attitude is to simply stop screwing the earth up so much that it no long functions as a proper ecosystem. Its all a ripple effect. Global warming = sea temperatures rising. Coral reefs have a very small window of tolerance for sea temperature. It goes up or down too high and the coral bleaches and there's no food or shelter for the fish and thus no food for the sharks and then they'll start eating the kiteboarders. ;)
Remember when you ask for "information and facts" that 90% of statistics can be skewed to produce the wanted results.

[Danimal8199]

Yeah Amber, I heard that 85% of all statistics are made up anyway :)

[BigR]

not all stats, just the ones coming from our government.
do you really think inflation has been only 4%?

[Tom Stock]

One nation under GOD. Gold, Oil, and Drugs.

[Sean B]

The fear-mongering about China drilling 60 miles of the coast of Florida was perpetuated by Dick Cheney's speech in which he cited columnist George Will's claims that, that was the case. It obviously wasn't because Cheney's office later admitted that the vice-president had made a mistake in his claim. China IS doing some exploratory work in western Cuba, on land, on a lease. Cuba has began leasing out blocks of water "60 miles off the cost of South Florida" to foreign oil companies for exploratory drilling. None of which, however are of Chinese descent.

IMHO....America has vast oil reserves, large enough to sustain our country until a viable form of alternative energy can be organized and implemented. Call it one-hundred years just for the heck of it. That's plenty of time with modern technology and the resources of the American government to come up with a solution. It seems logical to release portions of our own reserves to control oil prices, and in the meantime focus on alternatives. We make OPEC-nations richer while making the daily lives of many Americans much more difficult petrol-wise, all while the economy is tightening up. OPEC-Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela, Ecuador...Indonesia recently dropped out. Yikes...

America needs to get off it's dependence of foreign oil producers, especially at a time when tensions with the middle east are growing. All middle-eastern OPEC nations have to do is refuse to ship oil to the west, which they have in the past, and we would be crippled by the subsequent price of crude oil. Of course, this being only one of the many problems America faces fulfilling it's oil needs. The devaluing of the dollar is contributing slightly to our price of oil, but not much as prices of oil throughout Europe have increase just slightly less than ours. The difference being the value in the dollar, since we buy our oil from the same suppliers.

Inflation has a lot to do with it. Prices of apples, lettuce, etc. have increase more than gasoline. Fortunately we can choose to eat cupnoodles instead! Most of us can't choose to ride a bicycle 20 miles to work everyday and back.

Anyways, cool thread. :)