According to what I’ve been reading about 70% to 75% of Americans favor increased drilling for oil. I’m wondering if dopers reflect that percentage. Feel free to add any information such as opinions about drilling in ANWR or offshore drilling or anything else you care to mention.
But please don’t get this thrown in GD or The Pit. This is just a survey, not a debate.
I’ll go first. I favor increased drilling in both ANWR and offshore.
I’m not in favor of increased drilling.
Strongly opposed.
I really don’t have a problem with drilling where ever there is oil. I know the environment *could * be damaged by offshore drilling or drilling in the ANWR, but the important part is could. Some of the taxes on oil could be used for repairing the damage done. IMO, and this is what is asked for, is that having a valuable and badly needed resource and not using it is a waste.
SSG Schwartz
It’s an insignificant amount, it will take ten years to get to and they’re just going to sell it to China anyway. It’s all a scam.
Reluctantly, I concur. But it has to be done along with serious conservation efforts and aggressive research into alternative fuels, solar, fusion, wind power and cogeneration.
I’m all for it - it keeps me in business 
With the possible exception of the really deepwater stuff, it won’t make a jot of difference to the price of a gallon of gas.
It’s a scam for votes. Americans today are easily led by false promises.
Funny how there is no honest, indepth discussion about real energy conservation and alternative energy sources, except when the media portrays it as wacko.
This country is addicted to too cheap oil. And despite some pain in the news about high gas prices, the pain is superficial. If you can continue to self-medicate (tobacco, alcohol, gambling, caffeine) to your heart’s content and complain about the high price of gas, you’re not being honest and you’re still not hurting to make a true change in energy waste.
Drill. Drill. Drill. And drill some more.
Off Shore: Opposed but not strongly so. If it’ll hush people up who think it’ll make a difference, well…
ANWR: Strongly opposed.
I think the time has come. Put me down as in favor of it, but with the same provisos that Elendil’s Heir listed.
Against it, at least without some (most likely too onerous) conditions.
I haven’t researched it, so I have no particular opinion one way or the other.
I really have to wonder, if consumers think they’re at the mercy of foreign oil producers now, what’s it going to be like after the US reserves are depleted?
In favor of, but very confused by the arguments against. Especially the “it should be banned because they wouldn’t drill even if it were legal” one. Indeed, should we ban flying under your own power (like Superman) as well?
Pretty much sums up my reason for being against it. It’s just prolonging the inevitable.
I strongly oppose it.
I’d support more drilling for oil in places on land, where we can extract oil from shale fields (say, in Montana and so forth) that were unprofitable 30 years ago but which would now make more economic sense.
However, in general, I oppose what the oil companies are asking for, which is more oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Haven’t we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina about how dangerous it is to put all our oil-refining capacity at the mercy of a single unreliable weather system?
Sorry for the slight hijack here, but this got me thinking about the Gaia Hypotheses. IF the Earth could be regarded as a biological entity, what could be classed as Earth’s ‘blood supply’?
I’ve heard the comparison between the rain forests and a humans lungs, but what other analogies could we use for the rest of our body? Could oil be akin to the planet’s ‘blood supply’, or is it more like a tumor beneath the skin?
I think you just redefined ‘slight’.