Drilling more oil won't save us

You have to love Michele Bachmann.

The loony Republican Congresswoman from CD6 makes my job so much easier. She's never had an original idea, but she always manages to take Republican talking points to such an extreme that it's a joke. Her latest crusade is Newt Gingrich's reality-defying plan to "Drill Here, Drill There, Drill Everywhere." Of course, she once again felt free to expand on the talking points, claiming that we could drill ourselves back to $2/gallon gas. It's nice to see that logic isn't getting in her way.

Yesterday, Pat Doyle of the Star Tribune had a great article which refuted most of the arguments of whackos like Bachmann. For instance:

The Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) holds too little oil to reduce gas prices more than a few cents per gallon, and new sources of oil could take decades to develop, according to government analysts.

Of course, none of the Republicans' plans for drilling will do the trick. I've pointed out before that Norm "W" Coleman's plan to expand offshore drilling would only provide us with 2.8 billion barrels of oil over 20 years, or 35 days worth of global consumption. Even between the two of these plans, are we going to see $2/gal gas any time soon? Not likely.

Gas-crazy conservatives don't just stop there, though. They are determined to keep using oil, even when there are viable alternatives that we could develop. The latest fad they are thumping their chests over is oil shale. But is this really an option? Doyle again:

Oil shale in Western states might be significant enough to one day exceed imports from Saudi Arabia, but it faces tough technological hurdles to become reality.

"It [oil shale] is sort of meaningless in the sense that it's such a large resource base and we're so far from producing it," said Philip Budzik, an oil and gas analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration. "It's not going to be tomorrow, and it's not going to be in 10 years."

The bottom line: Conservative plans to drill our way back to $2/gal gas are a pipe dream. We could drill every square foot of unused space in this country--something they would likely be okay with--and it wouldn't get us much improvement in gas prices. Yet they refuse to consider improving fuel efficiency and they want nothing to do with alternative energy sources. We've been addicted to oil far too long to have a quick fix, but the Republicans are impeding any chance we even have of a long-term fix.

Like this post?
Drilling more oil won't save us	Subscribe by RSS	Subscribe by Email
What is this?	What is this?