Well XOM for example , 20% is owned by 8 or 9 major institutional investors. I would imaging XOM would certainly pay attention to those guys.
When Shell had it’s Brent Spar fiasco back in 96, they listened to people, eventualy, after boycotts and general bad press.
Conservation can begin now, at a personal level and at a company level. I fail to see how it will take years and cost billions. And if it does take that long and cost that much, why should that not happen anyway?
Corporations may be publicly owned, but they only respond to their institutional investors. And those investors want to maximize profits for their clients. So yes, those investors in the oil companies are making money for their clients who could be Ma and Pa Kettle.
The real point is nobody wants to give up anything yet they all complain about high gas prices. Americans prefer to remain fat, lazy and self-centered.
Exactly. Why do we need the government to force us to conserve, if we are, in fact, so upset by the rising costs of oil.? No one is forced to buy a gas guzzling SUV, and how many of those are being sold these days compared to 2 or 3 years ago?
You said there is no media coverage of conservation, but I see news stories all the time about how people can cut their energy usage. Most of it is just common sense anyway. Drive less, reset the thermostat, drive slower, plan you next car purchase around fuel efficiency, insulate your house, buy energy efficient appliances. This isn’t rocket science.
It depends upon the scale of the conservation. What I don’t understand is why it is an either/or situation. Why can’t you push for conservation while at the same time increase domestic production? A multifaceted approach seems the most logical. Further, I don’t see the downside to allowing offshore exploration even if the impact on our production was near zero. Even if all the E&P companies simply drilled dry holes with the new leases, at least the federal government made money from the lease sales.
If I were a stockholder (and I’m not), he would ask my opinion any time a shareholder vote was needed. Nevertheless, I understand that this isn’t really what you are looking for. It wouldn’t matter if he asked my opinion, I would still get the economic benefit of equity ownership.
It should start now, and I think it already has to some extent. How does drilling offshore stop us from expanding conservation efforts? They seem like completely separate events to me except for the role they can play in an overall energy policy, which you must admit would take more than simply conservation.
Because we want to focus on the areas with minimal downsides. No one is saying we shouldn’t allow exploration anywhere - there are plenty of offshore fields where it can be done, and I believe you said the issue was not having the equipment of the capital to exploit them. I personally think that it is time to push for more nuclear power.
The real problem here is that a lot of people don’t trust the oil companies to drill in sensitive areas with the proper level of ecological safety. It is not that they are going to deliberately hurt the environment, but that the environment will get hurt anyway from inevitable accidents or mistakes, and maybe from cost cutting.
Not you, but don’t you think it odd that many of the same people in favor of offshore drilling are opposed to strong conservation measures for being too costly? If the Republicans got strongly behind a big push in MPG goals, for instance, there might be less resistance on drilling.
IIRC, the California Coastal Commission effectively has veto powers over any new federal oil-drilling leases off California coasts, and they are against new drilling.
One thing I’m having trouble understanding… what good will it be to drill for more oil in the US when we all know it’s going to be offered on the international market? Isn’t it better to conserve our own reserves against the really bad times that are no doubt coming?
Well, we really don’t even know how much is down there. And our reserves are always going to be offered on the world market-- unless you want to restrict their sales to the US, in which case you could do that now. Maybe we’re in the really bad times now. How do you know otherwise? Or, maybe we’ll be in those times by the time those wells com on-line.
I agree that this would make for a good compromise.
Seems to me that there are less risks in drilling offshore in California than in the Gulf considering the biggest risk is hurricanes. Also, the shelf of the gulf has been pretty well explored. There is still a lot of activity, but it is done more by the smaller independants than the majors and super independents.
It would help our trade deficit for one thing. It would increase tax revenues. It would add to jobs in America. It would potentially reduce our reliance on politically instable areas of the world.
What I’m addressing is the proposition that domestic drilling will somehow help with high domestic prices. If we’re sending it overseas, then that’s no help to us.
I see the value in having some fallback capacity in case the rest of the world runs dry, or if Chavez and the Arabs turn off the pipe. But what if we use up this capacity before that happens? I think it’s better to use up everyone elses’s oil first, developing alternative energy tech aggressively. Hopefully by the time everyone elses’s reserves run dry, we’ll be sitting on top of large reserves that we can afford to export.
:rolleyes: That didn’t take long.
The idea I think, is to go in both directions at once. While we drill for more oil, we can continue the quest for alternative energies. We are a society, world wide, that is lubricated by oil. We will not and cannot just walk away from it as some would have us do. Bush may be an asshole, but he, to date, is the only person that’s actually DOING anything about the crunch we’re all under. Gas needs to be cheaper. That’s just fact. We can start THAT ball rolling by drilling for the oil / oil shale under our OWN earth right here. We can declare energy independence from the Middle East and insure our own economic and physical security. Then, we can start building nuke plants to power our cities and towns, and pursue, along several straight lines, alternative fuels and energies for the consumer. We need to do all of this with the caveat that the US oil goes ONLY to US refineries, and not one single drop gets proffered to the world market until we have conquered this nightmare.
And for the love of god, 86 this corn gas nonsense.
That’s just ridiculous. Even if you drilled out the entire ANWR, Gulf Coast, and California, we wouldn’t even be close to energy independent. It’s going to take nuclear energy to do that. Also, we’ll still have a need for oil even if we switch over 100% nuclear… you need it for plastics, organics, lubricants, etc. We need to be working on alternative energy sources immediately.
I believe that Venoco (ticker symbol: VQ) has drilled new wells in state waters in California. I at least know they have done some redrills and enhancement of existing production. Plains (PXP) may also have drilled some wells offshore as well.
Your point stands though, the production is fairly limited and very restricted as to new exploration.
This is opinion, not fact, and so far you haven’t supported this opinion. Why does gas need to be cheaper?
Drilling for oil has costs as well as benefits. History has shown us that off-shore drilling and drilling in ANWAR has a reasonable possibility of creating environmental disasters and/or degradation. I, for one, would gladly accept an increase in the price of gas to avoid a major environmental disaster in ANWAR. Since the benefits of drilling are A) a long way down the road, and B) not very significant in the long term energy picture for the US I don’t think opening it up to drilling is worthwhile. I’m less clear on the cost/benefit analysis of off-shore drilling.
On the other hand, simple changes to gas mileage fleet requirements, changes in the tax structure for SUVs/Gas guzzlers, increased credits for alternative energy (solar, wind), and some increased funding for mass transit in carefully selected areas would go a long way towards reducing our usage now, and changing the playing field for future changes.
I’m all for increases in drilling, but not at any cost, and not in all areas.
There is not much difference between domestic prices and global prices. It is a global commodity. I don’t personally think that drilling here will have a major impact on prices (although it might), but if there is an impact, it will occur whether it is sold domestically or overseas. Finally, why would you think we would sell it over seas when we are a net importer already. What would be the point?
What would be the point? Profit. I don’t mean that as a carp or complaint; that’s simply how it is. They make a product that is sold on international markets, and they use those markets to maximize their profits. They don’t sit around dreaming up ways to help the American consumer or achieve energy independence. They don’t care one way or the other. I guess what it comes down to is that other countries are more starved for certain petroleum products than the US, and there’s nothing that says companies have to satisfy US demand before they start exporting.
I don’t even pretend to understand the reasons behind it, but While the U.S. oil industry want access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries.
And bizarrely, apparently US petroleum exports to Canada, a net exporter, are higher this year than ever (same article above).