Drilling off Florida coasts

[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.