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Oil Exploration Ramps Up In US Arctic
ananyo writes "A new round of exploratory oil drilling is due to begin in the Arctic this July. The oil giant Shell was granted permission some months ago by the U.S. government to drill two exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea and three in the Chukchi Sea, both north of Alaska, this year — between 15 July and late September. The project is finally coming to fruition after years spent fighting legal challenges. It will be the first oil-exploration program to run in U.S. Arctic waters since 2000, and could mark the start of the first offshore commercial drilling in the American north, although it would take another decade to establish production wells."
They realize quite perfectly if they have a major spill or blowout then the game is over.
You mean like BP's game is over?
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Any conversation about a sufficiently complex subject is indistinguishable from babble.
Bad.
I provided 1 trillion times the evidence and supporting reasoning of the parent. My post is better.
You both have it wrong. Here's how US public opinion on the matter actually works:
Average gasoline prices under $3.75/gal? "Bad oil company! No drill! NO DRILL! bad! bad! bad!"
Average gasoline prices over $4.50/gal? "I don't care if you have to line the well with baby seal fur and lubricate the rig with infant dolphin blood! Drill, damn you! DRILL!"
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Oil Guy: Do you find it ironic that we denounce global warming, but use higher temps and lower ice mass to get more oil for more Carbon emissions?
Tobacco Guy: no, not at all.
And how did you figure that out? Wishing to the economist fairy that a non-renewable resource will instead last forever, production will never be less than demand (despite demand rising exponentially), and never go into permanent supply decline?
Futures speculation affects short-term prices. Yes. But actual supply and demand affects long-term prices. Even OPEC learned this back in the 1970s when they artificially flattened supply increases, prices spiked during the oil crisis, the global economy crashed, demand correspondingly crashed, and then so did the prices despite OPEC desperately reducing supply. If OPEC couldn't artificially dictate whatever price they wanted back in the 1970s, what makes you think speculators can artificially set whatever price they like? Speculators can perturb the overall trend for a little while, and that's where they make their money, but the price is not disconnected from availability over the long term. On top of that, if prices rise sufficiently, demand empirically falls. If the economy does poorly, demand falls, and so do prices. This is not the signature of a system entirely controlled by speculation.
Also, if supply wasn't ultimately a constraint, then you wouldn't have companies spending money to try to find oil in remote and/or deep-water and/or harsh Arctic environments where it easily costs 10x as much to drill and produce as it would on land closer to markets. They're drilling here because the conventional/cheap supplies are dwindling away. They're drilling here because they have no other choice if they want to maintain production levels. If that's not a sign of a real issue with regards to availability, I don't know what could convince you. Why spend 10x as much for a barrel of oil there if, supposedly, they could get all the oil they wanted from somewhere else cheaper?
We're genuinely in the bottom half of the barrel.
Higher oil prices are the answer. They are the only external force that will cause Joe 6-Pack to care about better city planning, public transportation and the like.
So, you want poor people to pay more for food, medicine, housing, energy, and clothing, besides not being able to afford to get to work, the doctor's, the kid's school(s)?
That's the effects higher oil prices have. Not just higher gasoline prices. Nobody who advocates for higher oil prices ever mentions that or offers any practical solutions, if they'll even talk about it at all.
It won't only affect those living outside urban areas or the rich. It will take a real toll in human lives. Mostly the working poor and those on Social Security.
You just ooze the milk of human kindness, don't you?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.