Offshore drilling will not decrease any oil dependancy.

[Ridingthelightning]

The highest projected peak production of off shore American drilling will be 200,000 barrels in roughly 20 years. There will be no production any time soon since the infrastructure must be built first.
200,000 barrels seems like a lot (8.4 million gallons of oil) but not when you compare it to the amount of oil the country uses every day. In 2004 the established amount of oil used per day in America was 20.73 million barrels per day. Thats not a number I pulled out of thin air, its in the public record, look it up. The world as a whole uses over 80 million barrels of oil a day. So using some math you see that America uses 1/4 of the oil in the world per day, and is easily inferable that we use 1/4 per year. So that means we have to buy 1/4 of the oil in the world.
Oil companies own the oil they drill regardless of where it comes from. Just because the drilling is on American soil doesn't mean we'll get all of it. Since we buy 1/4 of the oil from around the world, its assumable we'll only get 1/4 of the oil produced from the new offshore sites. 1/4 of 200,000 barrels is 50,000 barrels. So... 50,000 barrels divided by 20.74 million is... drum roll... 0.0024, which is 0.2%. We get 0.2% more oil per day. Now this oil is not all converted into gas, so no one can assume we'll even get 0.2% off a gallon of gas.
As I drove to class today gas was $3.41. Do you know what 0.2% of that is?
0.00682. That means you'll only be saving 6 tenths of a penny, but that won't happen for another 20 years. Who knows what gas prices will be then.

I'm not particularly against offshore drilling, the animals that would be lost there have no particular importance to me. BUT! Don't listen to the republican bullsh!t nonsense that you'll save money by drilling there. IT WON'T HAPPEN!

 

[MacAvoy]

I'm too lazy to read all the numbers that you wrote but your right, off shore drilling won't decrease our dependancy on oil. It will though eventually increase the supply of oil, which according to supply and demand, reduce the price of oil ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL.

This is regardless of its offshore, in Alaska or on the moon.

 

[speakeasy]

The amount of oil in Alaska isn't much as a share of the world reserve. People thinking Alaskan oil is some silver bullet are just fools, I don't know any other way to put it. Besides, most the oil drilled in Alaska ends up being shipped to Asia. This Alaskan oil nonsense is nothing but an empty Sarah Palin talking point. All we'd be doing is prolonging the inevitable and at great expense. But that seems to be what are government is best at anyway, with this $700 billion bailout. Our economy is going to tank anyway, all this does is just prolong it and draw it out even further and in the end will probably cost us WAY in excess of $700 billion. The same government told us Iraq would cost $60 billion. Pretty laughable, eh? Now here we go again. It's sickening.

But anyway, as far oil, we need to start investing in renewable energy. I don't know if Obama's plan will work, but it's at least a start in the right direction. We also need to stop building sprawling cities that require tremendous amounts of energy just to get from home to work and to shop. We need denser more walkable cities where one can walk or bike to work or where public transit is a viable option. This is the way it is in all of Europe, and the way it is in some older cities in the U.S. But we unfortunately, almost all new development is based on the suburban sprawl model like Phoenix or Vegas where everyone lives far from the city center and jobs and has a big ranch house with a huge backyard and commutes an hour and a half each day. We need more hybrids. The technology is already here to have cars that get 50mpg. I think the last decade was full of opulence where people went nuts with big houses, spending, buying big gas hungry SUVs. I think we are going to see a contraction from here and things are going to shift the other way. No more buying houses you can't afford with China's money, the SUV has lost its luster as a status symbol and with a looming possible depression, no more pulling equity out of your house to finance consumer spending on plasma tvs.

 

[oakraiderz2]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147

I dunno what to think about this, but...i wouldnt be suprised if it was true.

 

[ketostix]

Your math is off I think and your logic is flawed. Every 1bbl of oil we recover domestically is a reduction in our dependency on foreign oil no matter how you want to spin it. And at a $100+bbl it adds up. I think your 200,000 bbl in 20 year prediction is off by a factor of several 1000's. Sure the yield from drilling in Alaska and off-shore will be a small percentage of our demand, but when you're talking about nearly a trillion dollar demand even very small percentages are significant. Also a bbl of oil is completely refined and used. It's value is the same basically as if it was a bbl of gasoline.

We don't have an economically viable alternative yet that will have even as big effect as more domestic production will. Why not do something you can do now instead of sitting on your hands theorizing about what we should do? It's easy to theorize we need renewable-energy alternatives and throw money at it, but that doesn't mean producing ethanol from switch-grass or whatever is an economic reality.

 

[Wiesman44]

There is so much new technology out there. There is no need for us to be this dependant on oil, but the US just seems to be complacent w/ their gasoline engine cars.

There's SO much technology out there that we can use to decrease our dependency on oil I wouldn't really worry about where we are in the oil department 20 or 30 years from now. JMO though.

 

[Ridingthelightning]

Very well put speakeasy.

ketostix - not to be a jerk but I gaurantee you my math is not off. I didn't site sources or anything like that because honestly I didn't feel like taking the time since I'm just posting this on a "How to get women" message board. The numbers are cold hard facts, and if necessary I'll prove it to you when I've got the time.

 

[ketostix]

The highest projected peak production of off shore American drilling will be 200,000 barrels in roughly 20 years.

ketostix - not to be a jerk but I gaurantee you my math is not off. I didn't site sources or anything like that because honestly I didn't feel like taking the time since I'm just posting this on a "How to get women" message board. The numbers are cold hard facts, and if necessary I'll prove it to you when I've got the time.

Your 200,000 bbls/day is the lowest estimate and doesn't include anwar and elsewhere. Plus you cannot divide the output by 4, just like if we produce 25% or so of world supply (our consumption) you can't divide that out. Also it would take about 5 yeas not 20 years. The people opposing drilling have easily been holding it up the last 5 years. I don't know about you but not sending OPEC at least $20-100 million more dollars a DAY or more if prices rise sounds like a good idea to me.


http://www.slate.com/id/2197283/

The most optimistic case for offshore drilling, from an oil industry group (PDF), predicts an eventual output of 1 million barrels a day.