Oil from ANWR

Oil from ANWR

Finally, we are going to get the oil from beneath the tundra of the Alaskan Natural Wildlife Refuge (or ANWR). We certainly need it and the area there needs the income from development.

We are producing, domestically, close to half of the oil we have historically produced. Not because it isn’t here. Because the environmentalist won’t allow us to get to it, or, they have raised the costs of doing business so high for the oil business, especially refining, that it is not profitable for the oil companies to go after, find, and refine it. So, we turn to OPEC for the bulk of our oil purchases and they soak us. It is past time to break the strangle hold the foreign oil producers have on our economy and us.

Now, we need to get past the imposition of rules and regulations against “off shore drilling” as well. The oil is there. It is within our territorial waters, and we need it. We should go get it.

At some point in the future we will have a gasoline alternative and some sort of fuel, which will replace the petroleum, based fuels. But not now. As painful as that may be to accept, for some of us, it is a fact of life and one we must live with and make the best of. So, until that time in the future, we will continue to need oil. Without it the economy of the US will crash overnight. The Depression of the 1930’s will look like a Sunday School picnic.

We have millions upon millions of barrels of oil available to us from our own domestic Shale deposits. It has been cost prohibitive to squeeze it out of that rock, but with the price of imported oil over $50.00 a barrel, oil from Shale is indeed an option now.

In the meantime, stay the heck out of the Strategic Oil Reserves.

A few days ago, a couple of Senators were pushing the President to open the reserves and pump some oil to reduce the prices. That is a ridiculous suggestion. First we are at war! Secondly, we are at war in, or near, our source of oil! Thirdly, if we tick off enough people over there they could easily turn the spigot off! Fourthly, we won’t stand for it, and will immediately broaden the war to simply take the oil. And finally, opening the oil reserves will not only lessen our oil security, if the supply is interrupted, but it will only make a tiny few cents per gallon difference anyway. It is not worth the gamble.

I reside on the outskirts of one of the largest swamps in the southeast. I am told, though I have personally never seen them, that there are capped off oil wells in that swamp, capped since the Second World War, as a part of the nations oil reserves. Frankly, I hope they are there. If they are not there, why not go prospecting for oil in those swamps?

Until we have an alternative fuel, which will produce the energy of oil, we are stuck with that black gold. No amount of wishing for an alternative, or imposing strict rules to force companies into researching for it, will work. Time and insufficient supply will solve the problem. That is in the future somewhere. It is closer than it has been but we are still a long way from that day.

In the meantime, we will fight wars, and continue to search for more domestic sources of the stuff, including knocking holes in the tundra and sucking the oil from beneath the surface of ANWR.

Your Obedient Servant,

“Longstreet”