I recall sitting on the sofa watching the 2008 GOP convention and hearing the intoxicating refrain “Drill Baby Drill”. It was like the sensation of sitting in the dentist chair with my brainstem bathed in cool nitrous oxide vapors and face numbed with lidocaine. I found myself tumbling head over heals in a mild, drooling, narco-twilight state while my twitching eyeballs attempted to focus on McCain. My fellow citizens had drummed themselves into an enchanted war dance and gathered to hear Colonel Kurtz, but without the banana leaves.
Then I snapped out of it. Drill baby drill. This was not just a work order or a requisition for drilling staff to please set up a few drilling rigs in the morning. This was an exhortation to rip those smirking tree huggers from their stations, pulp the trees to make a paper dunce cap for Pelosi, and call in the Air Force to oversee saturation drilling of the continental shelves, and do it pronto!
“Drill baby drill ” was a catch phrase along the lines of “Damn the torpedoes! ” or “somebody get a rope! ” Its conception and use was a masterful bit of applied propaganda- A figurative running of the liberals out of town on a rail.
But what was lost in the excitement were the pragmatics of oil production. You need to boost refinery capacity to increase the supply of refined fuels. And, what oil company is going to attempt to flood the market in a bid to drive down oil prices? What oil company is going to step in and provide cheaper crude to US refiners so that they can, dutifully, distribute cheaper gasoline when the global market price is so high? Only the dumb ones. Do they think that Santa Claus runs Exxon?
I thought GOP’ers were market savvy, laissez faire devotees swingin’ the big stick of Ronnie Reagan tough love? What has happened to these people?
Seems to me that oil in the ground is like money in the bank. Why are we so anxious to deplete North America of its supply?? What about pulling back on demand to counter the high prices? That is the one big stick that consumers have in the market.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Considering how far their policies are from their principles, and how their base and others continue to vote for them anyway, I’m cynical enough to think that they don’t really believe that more drilling will lower gas (energy) prices, but their target audience does. Their target audience is dumb enough to buy the line, and more drilling acts in their best interests (or at least in the interests of some of their business supporters) , so they’ve got no reason to stop. Ignorance of long-term consequences has gotten them a comfortable (well, sort of) seat in power.
One of the (prospective) OH Republicans is proposing tort reform as a way to get OH jobs back, and the cause-and-effect logic seems to bear a similar relationship to reality (we lost manufacturing jobs and mostly don’t have good enough education to generate a tech base and not enough of anything to attract educated people from elsewhere. We aren’t Detroit, though one of my friends quoted someone as saying “Toledo is Detroit without the culture or hope.”)
I think the Republican Party is about an evil fantasy held in unison and the suspension of reality required to maintain it. The suspension cables are getting frayed, and the bridge deck is swaying like Galloping Gertie, but the ones running the show have inflatable rafts. A lot of people are going to be shark food when the fantasy fails, though.
“I think the Republican Party is about an evil fantasy held in unison and the suspension of reality required to maintain it. The suspension cables are getting frayed, and the bridge deck is swaying like Galloping Gertie, but the ones running the show have inflatable rafts. A lot of people are going to be shark food when the fantasy fails, though.”
My dear fellow, very well put.
The reality of the upstream (drilling) oil business is that even if everyone in Washington opens up new areas, it takes seven to ten years to produce oil – if all of the pieces fall into place and exploration and drilling go smoothly. Generally big fields take up to ten to fifteen years to start producing oil that can be shipped anywhere.
The oil companies already have lots of leases on federal lands that they either are not using or have put further down the priority lists. These offshore explorations can cost a billion dollars each, so oil companies are very cautious in commiting to one until they have lots of exploration data.
So what impact will there be? none, except for the psychology and the speculators investing in Haliburton and other companies that supply oil exploration efforts.
Management is about process not product. When a ship sinks those chained to its oars drown while the big drum-banging lout has a flotation device.
1) Do nothing. Just desserts. The guilty on all sides are auto-punished. The economy recovers after destruction of the criminal nouveau riche.
2) Dump a $trillion (200 years of NSF funding, three Pentagon annual budgets) into private otherwise unpayable mortgages and reschedule payments for the rest of those bastards’ lives. If they cannot/will not pay they get ejected. Let criminal aspects of the banking system die a natural death.
3) Dump a $trillion into bankers’ pockets while mortgaged homeowners die. That does nothing. Dump minimum $6 trillion for derivative investments’ revaluation. All savings, pensions, and real investments inflate to ~10% of their current buying power while friends of Bush the Lesser own the whole planet.
Choose wisely. As (1) does not require managerial oversight it is the most viable option.
Hmm.. how does this help again?
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/oil-offshore-drilling-graph-us-consumption.php
Even if you do nothing U. Al, most of these douchebags will walk away scot-free. Limited liability, dontcha know. I’m with you all the way though, let the people who screwed things up get screwed. That said, the companies getting bailed out aren’t all in severe danger. ?Many just don’t want to devalue their shares by issuing new ones.
At least we didn’t get social security hooked to this hamster wheel.
I’m right behind you. In fact, Carter’s famous (and lost in history) State of the Union speech declared that we need to conserve oil and not be dependent on the Middle East. His plan was to make us independent and more aware of reserving gas for the future, so that by the year 2000, we would have a sustainable US. When Reagan moved into the White House he encouraged the Big Three car companies to ignore all of that, and to continue making their honkin’ tonkin’ trucks even bigger. Bring that Hummer on! So, where are we now? I thank my lucky stars I drive a Prius! Drill, drill, drill is not the answer! Do they know how long it takes to refine from the drill to the tank? The GOP has not done their homework! Well, you now know who I’m voting for this election…
The GOP has lost its way like the Democrats did some time ago. Bush’s war has soured people. It remains to be seen if the Tribulation wing of the GOP can muster the fearful masses from their trailers to vote in a few weeks. I guess that was pretty snarky.