UPPERWEATHER.COM _{-Meteorological Musings}

Within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), oil companies have leased 3 million acres of 22.6 million acres available to lease. No production has occurred on any of those lands

Wow! That would upset anyone! Until you read the rest of the sentence.

and industry has drilled only 25 exploratory wells there since 2000.

Now you know why. The exploratory wells turned up not enough oil. If they go through all the hassle of looking through mounds of satellite data, aerial photos, decide there is a slight possibility, pay thousands for a lease, pay thousands for all the legal paperwork to be done, pay tens of thousands to drill, and it still does not produce enough to keep that well active, then why would you do it again?

This is supposed to be an argument on why we should not open up more lands? What about this next conclusion?

If we extrapolate from today's production rates on federal land and waters, we can estimate that the 68 million acres of leased but currently inactive federal land and waters could produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day.

That would nearly double total U.S. oil production, and increase natural gas production by 75%. It would also cut U.S. oil imports by more than a third, and be more than six times the estimated peak production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)

One, we already showed that oil companies would be drilling there if it was profitable to do so. It is not. There is not enough oil there.

Two, why would the 4.8 million per day from these acres (which is not true but let's give it to them for a second) double U.S. oil production, while:

According to the EIA, opening ANWR would reduce U.S. crude oil imports, but not until 2022-2026 and only by a few percentage points. Further, it would not significantly increase total world oil production, nor would it significantly affect world oil prices.

They are comparing apples to oranges on purpose to confuse people.

Between 1999 and 2007, drilling permits for oil and gas development on public lands increased more than 361%.

That is because the laws changed. Oil companies have to have a permit in order to even look at the property now. The BLM has been putting so many restrictions on the use of it's land, that the oil companies must purchase a permit to even fly a plane over the land. Of course the number of leases has gone up.

You have to look at the below Figure 1 from the House Resources Committee.

Tell me that is truthful. There is absolutely no possible way to correlate the two. They left out the most important part of the equation: DEMAND!! What has demand done? What have the OPEC speculators done? This committee is so dishonest!

Bottom line, to me, is:

1. Oil companies say they can produce a lot of oil from offshore wells and ANWR.

2. They say they can make gas, food and energy prices go down.

3. These are some of the most intelligent business men in the world.

4. They have been playing the stupid political game that we ask them to. Such as, buy a permit before looking at it, spend millions to leave the Earth better than it was, pay outrageous taxes and be nice.

5. Politicians are stupid.

6. Let's Drill!!