Why offshore drilling is utter bullshit

Offshore drilling has become the latest GOP talking point, with Dubya lifting the executive ban on the process, urging Congress to do the same, and parading in press conferences that the government has responded to the gas crises by "removing the bans on offshore drilling!" These statements are so engulfed in bullshit that it can be difficult to summarize why they are so, but I think I can boil it down to three reasons:

1. Supply and demand. Instead of researching alternate sources of energy--which will be the only realistic way to lower gas prices and prohibit global warming--our leaders beg Saudi Arabia to increase their supply of oil, hoping the increase in supply will quench the unquenchable demand now running rampant in the global market. Offshore drilling, allegedly, will add to this supply, therefore lowering prices. What GOP mouthpieces fail to mention, however, are the GLOBAL numbers that dictate oil prices. There are roughly 86 millions barrels of oil being produced around the world. 86 million! Even with the rosiest projections for offshore drilling--let's say, 3 million barrels are excavated--the supply, in relation to the global markets, will be so minute that American gas prices will hardly budge, if at all.

2. Oil companies. I'm going to let you in on a little secret--when demand is high, you keep supply low, especially if you are selling a product with insurmountable demand that is likely to continue into the unforeseeable future. Nintendo does it with the Wii. Apple does it with the iPhone. Oil companies do it with their oil supplies. Something that Dubya never says about offshore drilling is that oil companies already claim substantive resources in several offshore areas; yet, in those reserves, only 21% of the potential oil has been tapped by oil companies. That's right--79% of that oil is just sitting there, waiting to be processed. Why are the companies waiting? TO KEEP SUPPLY LOW AND DEMAND HIGH! Exxon Mobile, this last quarter, posted the highest profits of any corporation EVER. I'm talking billions. In profits. The last thing we need is more oil in the hands of profit-hungry corporations, but the best thing they need is more leases from the Dubya Fascist Regime.

3. Time. This is probably the most ludicrous reality of the entire offshore drilling phenomenon. Dubya and his GOP cronies crow about how lifting the ban on offshore drilling will effectively answer calls to end the gas crises. There is a little, irritating caveat to this idea--any action by the government to stall gas prices needs to go into effect NOW. Offshore drilling is such a complicated, costly exercise that, I shit you not, oil reserves from those offshore sites could not surface until 2030. 2030! 22 years and millions of dollars to answer a problem that needs drastic action NOW.

And that, really, is the crowning jewel of irony in this whole thing. Global demand, mainly coming out of India and China, will never stop. The population of potential car-buyers in those rapidly industrializing nations is simply too big to assume demand will decrease any time soon, meaning, gas prices will continue to rise.* We will have $5 a gallon gas. Maybe even $6. And the only REAL answer to these problems, ideas that REAL leaders will front, will involve alternate energy and a decrease in dependence on foreign oil.


*Footnote: the only feasible way that prices will lower in the future is by strengthening the dollar. A weak dollar buys less in the global market, so naturally a weak dollar will go far less of a distance with a resource as valuable as oil; still, this is short term, as exchange rates are not the long-term answer to gas prices nor climate change.