Obama Rejects New Atlantic Ocean Oil Drilling (usatoday.com)

mdsolar writes: The Obama administration will abandon its plan to allow new offshore oil drilling on the U.S. southeast coast, dealing a blow to petroleum companies that had hopes of tapping new reserves. The Interior Department is set to announce today that it will not auction off certain drilling rights for Atlantic Ocean waters off the coast of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The reversal comes after environmentalists, coastal residents, and the U.S. military vocalized opposition to the plan. It also comes amid declining industry investment in new exploration and production activities as oil prices fell by about 70% since late 2014 -- although the industry is still seeking long-term investment opportunities under the assumption that oil prices will recover.

Comments

Re:Typical Obama logic

[jacob8404]

Oh right, think-of-the-children, I forgot that :D

But the fact is that to the contrary, I do care about the next generations: I want them to enjoy a prosperous, stable society with a small government and a high quality of life. I don't want them to live wondering how it must have been once upon a time in the early 21st century when energy was cheap and widely available, which, and nothing else, allowed people to have their own detached homes, travel without restrictions and have a life expectancy approaching 80 years.

Admittedly, all analogies are flawed, but still - when the first railways were built in 19 century Britain, they attracted very vocal opposition due to their perceived negative effect on society, their alleged unsustainability (it was a "scientific fact" that coal would only last for 20 years or so) and, yes, their genuine environmental impact. No-one at the time could imagine that one century later, we would have electric HSTs which would suffer from none of these problems while being much faster, much cheaper, much safer and much more frequent. Yet the development of coal-powered steam locomotives allowed the advent of precisely that. Today, the green progressives' attitude is similar to the then-opponents, who lobbied to limit the number of trains and force them to run slower.

In other words, of course one day oil will become irrelevant - but not because of green social engineering, or because we will use something greener. It will be because we will use something superior. I for one wish the next generations will be able to take advantage of it and I am infinitely grateful to our ancestors that they did NOT think of the future generations when they learned to use fire.

Cheap energy means cheap energy

[blindseer]

We are going to need oil for at least another 30 years. How can I say this? Simple. Boeing has been making planes on a 30 year schedule for a very long time. Any plane they produce today they intend to see flying for the next 30 years. These planes burn kerosene, and they will for 30 years. Therefore we need oil for the next 30 years.

Not enough for you? You think that isn't enough? That we'll just make new planes that don't need oil? What about trucks, tractors, bulldozers, ships... Let's stop here at shipping for a bit. As much as people might not like it but the world's shipping infrastructure runs on diesel fuel. No diesel fuel and shipping moves at the pace of horses and sails. That is unless we have the time to make a smooth transition to whatever comes next. Perhaps what comes next is synthetic diesel fuel, derived from algae or nuclear power. If we cut ourselves off from cheap oil then we could cut ourselves off from whatever could replace it.

To put up windmills takes coal fired aluminum smelting, diesel fueled trucks and construction equipment, and so on. If the price of oil goes up then the price of construction goes up, the price of shipping goes up, the price of materials goes up, therefore the price of windmills go up. Solar panel prices go up, ethanol prices go up, energy in whatever form gets more expensive.

Energy is energy. Expensive oil means expensive everything. Not drilling for oil does not make windmills or solar panels cheaper. As odd as it may sound we need cheap oil to move away from oil. We need to make oil so cheap that it becomes worthless. If we make energy cheap then it becomes unprofitable to drill for it. The path to cheap energy is infrastructure. Right now infrastructure is built with the energy from oil.

Besides, not drilling for oil in the USA means we buy it from somewhere else. Does anyone out there believe that any other nation will drill oil as responsibly, clean, and safe, as the USA would? If people want to prevent oil spills then we should be drilling for it under the supervision of the US EPA. Also, wars are fought over oil, what if oil from the USA were cheaper than from the dictators of the world? Would these despotic assholes be in power if they could not sell their oil? We need to make oil so cheap that they cannot profit from it. Impossible? Perhaps, but can we at least try?

Not drilling for oil in the USA is only making the world a less free, dirtier, and more dangerous place.