The recent spike in oil prices has finally got everyone's attention. In the upcoming presidential campaign, there will be many issues to chew over (oil, jobs, economy, Iran, Iraq, etc.); but right now, it is all about oil.
Washington Liberal Democrats, taking their marching orders from environmental special interests, blame Big Oil for all our woes. They have done everything to demonize oil companies including the embarrassing spectacle of sanctimonious Senators hauling oil executives before a Senate Committee in what appeared to be a tribunal with the execution penalty already
decided. The world witnessed these parsimonious panjandrums belittle and berate the very people who produce the product that is in such demand while refusing to allow them to explore and drill for new sources of the product to reduce the shortage. To make matters worse, Congresswoman Maxine Waters - Democrat from California (a most colossal repository of ignorance), actually threatened these oil executives with a government takeover of their companies! This from the same bunch that runs the Senate restaurant that loses almost $2 million dollars of your money per year!These Washington professional idiots believe that oil companies are to blame for high prices, and they think that you do too. But here's an eye opener. Recent polling data from Gallup shows the percentage of voters blaming oil companies for skyrocketing gasoline process has dropped from 34 percent to 20 percent over the past year. Now for those who did not pay attention in public school math class, that means that 80% of voters do not blame Big Oil. The blame lies with Congress!
But for Congress (mostly Democrats), we have oil right here we can drill right now! Besides 10.4 billion barrels in Anwar, that barren little flyspeck in the tundra of Alaska, there is oil nobody is talking about. The Bakken fields beneath North Dakota, Montana, and Canada hold an estimated 400 billion barrels of oil. In comparison, Saudi Arabia's biggest field, Gahawar, has an estimated 55 billion barrels.
The Bureau of Land Management has 279 million acres under federal management where oil and gas could potentially be extracted. But more than half of this is totally off limits. Off-shore, where another 86 billion barrels lie in wait, is also restricted. Then there's liquefied natural gas, oil shale, and the various coal-to-liquid and sequestration technologies that are all but ignored.
The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal, but we can't produce it. We're still the world's third-largest oil producer, but we could be the Saudi Arabia of oil if our companies were free to drill. Oil CEOs like Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobile and David O'reilly of Chevron keep saying this. But politicians are not heeding their message. They are listening, instead, to shining examples of ignorance and incompentence like Maxine Waters - Liberal Democrat - CA.
