Alaskan Oil Drilling Defeated

[Colonel Kraken]

Originally posted by Antonius Block
We ought to wait till every foreign source is exhausted before harvesting our own and selling it like it was diamond seeds.

Ha Ha! I never thought of this. Excellent idea.

 

[Colonel Kraken]

Originally posted by Unregister
That's good, it would've been horrible to have all that land being drilled.

Oh, you mean the 0.1% of Alaska?

 

[CurtSibling]

Originally posted by Colonel Kraken


Ha Ha! I never thought of this. Excellent idea.

By that time the US will be the only nation still using fossil fuel, and we will have to bail you energy dinosaurs out of trouble.

 

[metalhead]

Originally posted by CurtSibling
We all need energy, and we cannot easily change the way our infastructure relies on the resources that industry is desperate to hack up landscapes for.

Fine and good.

But I would say to you that we also have the technology to seek re-usable forms of power, and cleaner for our surroundings.

I know this,
As my father is an high executive in the energy sector, and even he bitterly comments on the wastage experienced by the industry.

And how it could be minimised by proper usage of available technology.

Many people whine that we cannot implement other types of energy consuption in our industries and cities. This is utter rubbish.

Many companies are happy to keep the status quo, milking huge profits from the current situation.

My argument is that people are more important than profit.

I know your view, and you know mine.

Apparantly not, because I agree with pretty much everything you've said here, except I believe that re-usable energy is being pursued vigorously. Maybe not by everyone, maybe not by most, but there are some out there who are.

People are definitely more important than profits. But try explaining that to a big corporation.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

For those who are like, ah, damn, we should have drilled...

Isn't it enough to possess the potential to do it later? Why should we hurry into it? We have all these other interesting means of securing oil....

 

[Siegmund]

I don't mind if we choose to wait to drill until we need it more / until oil prices are even higher. (If you live in Alaska, high oil prices are great news and balance the state budget and keep taxes low ... I know the rest of the country isn't enjoying it as much.)

What I have a real problem with are the people who portray ANWR and the North Slope in general as "America's Serengeti." It's not beautiful. It's so flat it makes Florida look mountainous. Wildlife? Yes, there are mosquitoes, mosquitoes, mosquitoes, mosquitoes, the occasional arctic ground squirrel, mosquitoes, clumps of caribou in places (which are hunted, even inside the refuge), and mosquitoes. Go there in summer and sink to your knees in brown muck at every step, go there in winter and freeze... it has been left untouched this long for reasons other than a desire to preserve wilderness.

And it goes on forever. Well, no, not forever ... but tens of thousands of square miles that all are like this. There is no danger of caribou having nowhere to go or of strip malls springing up every ten miles along a new highway when the time comes to use the oil.
When the time comes to need the oil,

 

[Richard III]

As I have said twice in previous ANWR threads, some people confuse environmentalist planning with tourist planning. It doesn't have to be pretty to be environmentally useful, nor should it have to be pretty to be worth preserving.

A big chunk of forest I helped preserve in BC is, arguably, uglier than a clearcut area nearby. But the clearcut area isn't natural. The uncut area is.

R.III

 

[Noldodan]

As to comments that we should drill there as an alternative to buying foreign oil... Drilling more oil in Alaska wouldn't help much. Currently, most of the oil from Alaska goes STRAIGHT to Japan! It is a shorter distance to ship by, and it sells for more over there anyway, thats why the oil companies sell their oil there.

 

[Jeratain]

Pshh who needs Alaska when we've got Iraq now

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Just what I was thinking, and probably the bill was defeated to kind of cover the president's arse- "hey look, you won't let us go get it from Alaska, so we have to do some clearcutting in Bagdad..."

 

[Siegmund]

@Noldodan:

It may be that some of the Cook Inlet oil goes to Japan. And for several years we did a brisk business selling Alaskan coal to Korea.

North Slope oil, however, *cannot* be exported -- to the great annoyance of the state of Alaska, which would really prefer to sell the oil at market value instead of having the price be artificially depressed by a few dollars a barrel, because of the limited market and the extra shipping expense. The state tried, and failed, to get this changed a few years back.

 

[Tony Soprano]

Unfortunately, this decision to not drill in ANWR is exactly why some people think we are at war. OIL. If we don't shore up our own oil supplies in the U.S we will always depend on other countries to keep us powered.

 

[MrPresident]

If we don't shore up our own oil supplies in the U.S we will always depend on other countries to keep us powered.

I doubt America will ever be self-sufficient in oil, especially at current prices. The way to reduce dependence on foreign oil is not to increase domestic production but decrease domestic demand. It is not that hard just introduce energy efficient policies should has companies turning off their computers at night and stuff like that.

 

[Akka]

Originally posted by metalhead
Are you kidding? Auto manufacturers and energy companies have been working on fuel cell operated cars and alternate energy sources for years. I know it runs counter to popular theory, but there is no worldwide push to keep oil as our main source of energy.

I tend to think differently.

The auto manufacturer that develops the first hydrogen powered automobile will be revered, and that patent will be worth trillions.

For now, what my friend who is working in this business tell me is that they lack the funds to accelerate the research because nobody is really wishing to put money in.

Many of the best and brightest minds in the world are working as hard as they possibly can on these solutions. They simply aren't viable, but don't just assume that because we don't have them yet that there isn't a will to produce them.

I think there is a will to produce them, I just think that this will is FAR to be as strong as it should.

I agree with you that we need to develop alternate energy sources. The problem is, it may be 20 or 30 years before such a vehicle is mass-producable, and afordable to the general public. This doesn't help a thing right now, when increased domestic oil production could significantly reduce many of the problems we face due to our reliance on foreign oil.

My opinion is that if the will was really here and the efforts really made, we would have had these vehicle for years.

 

[metalhead]

Originally posted by Akka

For now, what my friend who is working in this business tell me is that they lack the funds to accelerate the research because nobody is really wishing to put money in.

I think there is a will to produce them, I just think that this will is FAR to be as strong as it should.

My opinion is that if the will was really here and the efforts really made, we would have had these vehicle for years.

Not to disparage your friend's opinion, but I just don't buy it. Many automobile manufacturers have been road-testing fuel-cell automobiles for a few years now, and have been developing other methods of propulsion, including gas-electric hybrids and natural gas powered vehicles. Just look at the progress that major car manufacturers worldwide are making in manufacturing the next generation of oil-independant automobiles:

http://www.autoalliance.org/fuel_cells.htm

 

[Akka]

Originally posted by metalhead
Not to disparage your friend's opinion, but I just don't buy it. Many automobile manufacturers have been road-testing fuel-cell automobiles for a few years now, and have been developing other methods of propulsion, including gas-electric hybrids and natural gas powered vehicles. Just look at the progress that major car manufacturers worldwide are making in manufacturing the next generation of oil-independant automobiles:

http://www.autoalliance.org/fuel_cells.htm

What I see is that, despite these many number of models, there is still nearly only oil-powered cars on the roads.

I'm not talking about a vast plot theory. What I say is that car manufacturers are preparing themselves to the after-oil era, but for now most of the actors are very happy with oil.
Oil companies, well that's pretty evident. Even without resorting on paranoid ideas, it's easy to imagine they can just lobby to prevent governments from being too much favourable to alternative cars.
Governments : not only the lobby, but oil taxes are good for money.
Car manufacturers : well, they can sell either oil-powered, either alternative cars. No particular incentive to go either way.

I think there is just a general lack of will to make things move. It will happen in time, when the public opinion will look with a good eyes to the new cars, but it will take MUCH more time than if there was really a politic will to get oil out of the road.

 

[Dralix]

Originally posted by Akka
I'm not talking about a vast plot theory. What I say is that car manufacturers are preparing themselves to the after-oil era, but for now most of the actors are very happy with oil.
Oil companies, well that's pretty evident. Even without resorting on paranoid ideas, it's easy to imagine they can just lobby to prevent governments from being too much favourable to alternative cars.
Governments : not only the lobby, but oil taxes are good for money.
Car manufacturers : well, they can sell either oil-powered, either alternative cars. No particular incentive to go either way.

I think there is just a general lack of will to make things move. It will happen in time, when the public opinion will look with a good eyes to the new cars, but it will take MUCH more time than if there was really a politic will to get oil out of the road.

You missed one of the actors, although you did elude to it in your last paragraph.

The consumer demand for alternative fuel vehicles is still low, although growing. Part of that, I think, is due to concerns (real or otherwise) about refueling. People would hate to run out of fuel many miles away from a refueling station, and alternative fuel stations are not yet commonplace.

 

[metalhead]

Originally posted by Dralix


You missed one of the actors, although you did elude to it in your last paragraph.

The consumer demand for alternative fuel vehicles is still low, although growing. Part of that, I think, is due to concerns (real or otherwise) about refueling. People would hate to run out of fuel many miles away from a refueling station, and alternative fuel stations are not yet commonplace.

I think the real concern is cost. Right this minute, you could buy (or at least lease) a working fuel cell vehicle, and if you lived in NYC, you could even find a place to refuel it. The problem is, the technology is much too costly to market to the general public.

If you assume that the technology doesn't exist, than that is a faulty assumption. The problem is, the technology isn't yet affordable enough for the general public. This, of course, also lowers demand for alternative fuel stations, which is why you don't see any. Remember, computer technology was around for 40 years before it became affordable enough to market to the general public, and it took 10 years after that for computers to really take hold in the consumer market.

 

[CurtSibling]

Originally posted by Tony Soprano
Unfortunately, this decision to not drill in ANWR is exactly why some people think we are at war. OIL. If we don't shore up our own oil supplies in the U.S we will always depend on other countries to keep us powered.

And you always will, As MrPrez pointed out.

You need to concentrate on developing new forms of powering the nation.

Sooner or later the oil will run out.

Then you're in a pickle.