Why NOT Drilling Offshore Is A NoBrainer

When it comes to the topic of offshore drilling I've got to think "Don't Do It", this is a no-brainer. I just can't understand why the government is so gun-ho about offshore drilling, like it will be a magic fix for the current oil crisis?

Offshore Drilling

There is no proof as to how much oil can be recovered from drilling offshore. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there might be around 17.8 billion barrels offshore which IS a lot of oil, but at the rate we're consuming it is only a few years worth. This amount of could potentially reduce U.S. imports for a decade or two or sustain U.S. production when other fields decline, but only if this oil was not exported.

This all sounds great right? Wrong, it would take years and years for this oil exploration to produce real results. It is not projected to reduce gas prices in the short term, and even the White House continuously emphasizes that this is not a quick fix. So if drilling offshore would take half a decade to produce any real oil for this country, why would we spend that time polluting our oceans instead of focusing this countries efforts on alternative energy, new legislation and regulation?

Global Market

Unfortunately, the US is part of the global market when it comes to oil, so all the oil that we drill in the US gets dropped into the global bucket of oil. This means that if the US drilled an extra 5 million barrels (doubling it's current production), it wouldn't even be a drop in the the global market's bucket, and definitely wouldn't bring the price of gas down in the US. (The US currently produces around 5-8 MM barrels a day, uses around 21MM barrels per day & the world uses well over 83 MM barrels per day.)

Exporting

The US exports 12.5-20% of the oil produced (1.048 million barrels a day in 2004), so if people are concerned about the price of gas and don't want to concentrate their efforts on alternative energy, then they should at least start with regulations on exporting! How would it benefit anyone (besides big oil companies) if we allowed tons and tons of offshore drilling, and then all the oil was just exported to India and China??? Big oil companies don't care about the US, even Exxon which is US based, they will sell their oil to the highest bidders in the global economy.

Leased Oil Land

The next issue that seems very relevant is the fact that there is already somewhere around 65-68 million acres of American land that the oil companies hold leases on. Why don't they start drilling that before polluting the oceans unnecessarily? They have the potential to DOUBLE the US oil production from this unused, leased land.

Huge US Government Oil Reserves

The US Government has been stockpiling huge oil reserves in the name of Homeland Security. They currently have around 700 million barrels of oil stockpiled, and are no longer adding to the reserves. One way to immediately lower the price of gas in the US would be to tap these reserves, but the government says that this oil needs to be kept in case a real oil shortage, or if a crisis arises. I wonder how much of this oil wouldneed to be used to make a difference in gas prices in the US? I also wonder how far this 700 million barrels would go in supplying the US with gasoline and heating oil? This seems like an issue that should be addressed and researched deeply BEFORE we start ruining our environment.

Any and all of these above issues would be a much better place to start concentrating your efforts if you were the US government. It is simply not worth the environmental risk to our oceans, especially since they are already in pretty bad shape (Pacific Garbage Patch, Plastic Bottle Raft, Coral In Danger). Why we aren't focusing more on alternative energy, and alternative ways to produce crude oil I'm not sure? It seems like every week I read a story about a private company that is making huge strides with alternative energy, and even new ways to produce oil. I hope for our country's sake and the sake of our oceans and wildlife that this oil crisis solved, and not at the expense of the environment.