Sure, I do, so does the Congress who wrote the laws back before we were born. How is drill it or lose it going to help? My next point is if there was oil under the ground they would drill on it. Since they have paid the government for the lease they are stuck with it when there is no oil under the ground. Keep in mind that if there is oil there it takes at least ten years just to start drilling due to regulations. This is the part you are not being told by your con men I mean Congressmen. As I stated the land does not have to have a drilling rig on it for it to be worked. That rig is the end of the process not the beginning. So the oil company pays the government say, 3 million dollars for the lease. Then they have to pay for a permit for the test well, and then they have to pay the government for the actual oil rig. So after they pay the government 12 million dollars they can start to drill and if they hit a dry hole and have to move the rig over a few thousand feet to try again they have to pay the Government for a new permit. Are you as an oil company executive going to toss 15 or 20 million a pop just because you hope there is oil there or the potential for oil there or are you going to make sure there is a good chance before you start to drill? So why are your Congressmen friends trying to shorten the leases? Maybe to line their pockes with bribe money? How much does the envrionmental lobby pay them? Ever wonder why they are against the price of oil going down? Are they invested in speculation?



Not at all, I am sure there is oil on some of the land, even your lying idiot Con men say that the companies are drilling there but there is acreage that is not being drilled. Could it be that that land has been surveyed and is not going to produce enough oil to be worth the expense of drilling? If you bothered to read what I wrote you would have seen that the process as laid out by the Congress is time consuming. You start off with the lease because there are signs that there might be oil in that area. You then do a detailed survey of that land to find the most likely spots where you might find oil. Still no oil yet, and a few years have gone by. Your geologist says this looks like a good spot to put in a test well. Environmental impact studies are done, challenges are made by environmentalists, all of that has to go through the courts, when it is resolved they can now dig a test well. If it comes up with oil they have to get another permit, more studies, more court challenges, and more years. Still no one has put up an oil rig. Drill it or lose it. You finally clear the court system and set up your rig and drill only to find out the place you are drilling is on the edge of the pocket and now you have to change direction of the drill. If you are too far off you have to move the rig. Another permit and more court challenges and more years spent. Still no oil, but you know where it is. On average it takes 10 years just to get to the oil. So ten to twenty years is about right for a lease under good conditions. If you find that some endangered field mouse lives there then you have to stop all work until that is remedied. Can the drilling be done in such a way as to not hurt the mouse?

Again the point is that the leases already have a drop dead date. If they don’t find oil they can’t renew the lease and all the work done on that land was for nothing. So they have to work quickly because time is short. If they find oil on the ninth year and don’t bring in a well they can lose the lease so how long can they sit on the land and not produce oil? Maybe three years on a ten year lease if they are lucky.

Again I am telling you that what those dishonest congressmen have done is played on your fears with lies. The environmental lobby does not want new drilling and this is their answer, tell the people that 68 million acres are sitting without any work being done so the oil companies are trying to shaft us all. just remember that the oil companies testified before congress many times since the 70’s and each time they have begged for the freedom to drill where they know there is oil and the Congress has stopped them each time. This time they are having a hard time because now we have the internet and can look things up. History has proven that when we stop drilling, stop building refineries, and stop building nuclear power plants the price of oil goes up. Yes, evil oil has stated that nuclear power plants are needed to help keep the price of oil down. This is all part of the Congressional record and easily checked if you want to know the truth.



Why are you advocating higher oil prices?

Not if - 1: There is none there

or 2: The technology does not exist to extract it profitably.

The democrats want the oil companies to waste money looking for oil where none has been found or feasible, instead of where it has been found and is feasible. And this helps the production of oil how?

Doc, it allows them political cover by saying that they are for drilling while at the same time preventing it as their political environmentally friendly masters dictate.

There's been a lot of drilling in my teeth - but so far, no oil!

Be sure to let me know if you find some oil there, and if you do I want you to know that I have always loved you. buddy, friend, pal!  

According to the Minerals Management Service, of all the oil and gas believed to exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, 82% of the natural gas and 79% of the oil is located in areas that are currently open for leasing.

Oil and gas leases are issued for a 10-year term that can be renewed.

Since the 1990s, the federal government has consistently encouraged the development of its oil and gas resources and the amount of drilling on federal lands has steadily increased during this time. The number of drilling permits has exploded in recent years, going from 3,802 five years ago to 7,561 in 2007.

Oil and gas companies have shown that they cannot keep pace with the rate of drilling permits that the federal government is handing out. In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land; yet, in that same time, 18,954 wells were actually drilled. That means that companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 extra permits to drill that they are not using to increase domestic production.

Higher gas prices would force our country to seek other options, such as, greater energy efficiencies and the development of alternative fuels.

Yes it would. Good answer.

I will grant you that necessity is the mother of invention the price of gas is already high enough to get people working but since the price it artificially high the urgency is not there yet. What I mean is that we all know the price is not the real price so it will come down eventually why waste time working on an alternative no one will use in five years? All the higher prices will do is hurt people not spur invention.

Look at all the things invented when we had the gas shortage in the 70’s none of it is being used today, instead we are dusting off stuff invented in the 40’s and updating them rather than new things because it will take years to develop and test and no one believes the price will stay this high long enough to bring new inventions to market.



But you said that the drill it or lose it bill was supposed to do this and now you say that the government is already doing what the bill is designed to do.



Are you sure this is the reason? Before you said that they were sitting on the leases to profit from the high oil price, now you seem to be saying that two thirds of the leases are being worked and the oil companies can’t keep up with what they have. Could it be that the oil companies have looked at the land and found that it is not worth drilling there yet and other lands look better and cheaper to drill so they go after those first? I don’t know for sure so I am speculating.



Right some can be renewed but at what cost? They have to pay a fee to get the rights and a yearly rent to the government. So the greedy oil companies are spending billions of dollars on leases they got 10 years ago hoping the price will go up so they can not drill the land at the high price just to drive the price even higher. Sounds a bit strange and convoluted to me.

Again, according to the Minerals Management Service, of all the oil and gas believed
to exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, 82% of the natural gas and 79% of the
oil is located in areas that are currently open for leasing.

Far be it of me to call you a liar, it is just that only 15% of all U.S. coast lines are authorized for drilling, meaning 85% if off limits including the 400 billion barrels of the coast of Santa Barbra and the I forget how many billions of oil and natural gas off the coast of Florida, that the Chinese are drilling for the Cubans. As far as I know only Texas and Louisiana allow drilling off shore. Sorry I just re-read what you wrote. OUTER shelf, and the stuff I am talking about is closer to home. Apples and oranges kind of argument.

I don’t want to call you liar, but where did you get these numbers?

According to the Minerals Management Service, the offshore areas of the United States are estimated to contain significant quantities of resources in yet-to-be-discovered fields. MMS estimates of oil and gas resources in undiscovered fields on the OCS (2006, mean estimates) total 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of gas. These volumes represent about 60 percent of the oil and 40 percent of the natural gas resources estimated to be contained in remaining undiscovered fields in the United States

However, most of the country's estimated offshore reserves - about 75 percent - lie in areas that have been drilled for years or are being opened for exploration. Roughly 48 percent of the nation's estimated reserves, or 41 billion barrels, lie beneath the western and central Gulf of Mexico, where oil companies armed with new drilling technology are pushing into ever deeper water. Another 27 percent of the estimated reserves, or 23.6 billion barrels, are believed to lie off the north coast of Alaska, where the federal government sold oil exploration leases this spring, despite fears that the work would hurt the polar bear population.

California has about 23 percent of the country's estimated offshore reserves, with 10.13 billion barrels in federal waters that begin 3 miles off the state's coast. An additional 1 billion barrels may lie closer to shore, in waters controlled by the state government.

Special report with Brit Hume Fox News Channel Monday this week. I believe you can view it on their website.



Okay I have been to the site and now I get where you are coming from. Keep in mind that all they are talking about is federal land not state controlled property. The 400 million barrels of oil off the Santa Barbra coast is controlled by the state of California not the federal government. Those wells were capped off when the state banned offshore drilling.

Here my point is that you are taking federal statistics but not the US as a whole. South Dakota has ten billion barrels on federal land but the state won’t let people drill there.