The Paddock

That is pretty freakin funny.

It was an obvious political move (nothing new for this guy) to try to prop up his sagging poll numbers. The dems will defend him until the bitter end though.

Dee, this is kind of a circular argument. We are producing more because of policies and initiatives before Obama even took office (assuming that it takes about 5 years to make a field productive). Secondly, we can easily double US output in 5-6 years by tapping ANWR, the Artic find and through fracking. Granted, it won't make us "independent" but it will allow us to stop buying from unsavory characters.

Lets be honest. Environmentalists don't want us to tap into our energy potential due to their belief that it will decrease R&D on renewables. So we play this dangerous game of roulette hoping that in the next 15 to 20 years, we can continue to export oil to meet our needs before the entire ME blows up (not to mention Venezuela, Nigeria etc).

The US consumes approx 19 million barrels of oil a day. I've seen zero evidence from anybody that any type of renewable energy plan will alleviate that in the foreseeable future. So we better figure out how we can better meet our own energy requirements now so we can extricate ourselves from giving two craps about what happens with the Persian Gulf nations.

The attached article is several months old but it describes the problems domestic producers are facing and the longer term implications.

Not sure if anyone on here is guilty of this, but conservatives have been accusing the president recently of trying to purposely raise gas prices. Obviously if he is advocating releases from the strategic reserve to increase supply to lower prices the former cannot be true.

The critics will have to pick a side in this, he can't be trying to raise and lower prices at the same time.

could you explain this? what tax dollars are being paid to who to do exactly what????

Again, I'm not looking at ANWR as anything other than what it is. The "potential" to allow the US to stop buying from some of the unsavory characters. I don't look at it as the total of the worlds consumption but how it would increase US production thus decreasing our reliance on foreign sources.

Example- ANWR has the potential to provide 1 million barrels a day for a fairly significant period of time (10-15 years). That production by itself would replace either Saudi or Venezuelan imported oil.

Your cut and paste quotes on ANWR are correct but aren't the context I'm speaking of. Chinese and Indian oil consumption growth is what has put the squeeze on oil supplies over the last 5-7 years. That's not going away. For economic as well as security reasons, it is imperative that we have a comprehensive energy strategy to include production, conservation as well as alternatives (think we've agreed on this before). I've never looked at ANWR as a means of full US energy independence because there will never be such a thing.

Bottom line is there is A LOT of fossil fuel potential in the US that we should be able to access. The Canadians and Norwegians have no problems whatsoever tapping into their natural resources that are in environmentally sensitive areas and do so in an environmentally friendly way. Why can't we?? Hitting the strategic oil reserve is bad policy and does nothing accept provide a very short respite in prices. Instead of gimmicks, we need a real and comprehensive policy!!

I don't know why he did it either. Politics. But he can't win with you people. If he holds the oil reserves you bash him. If he releases oil from it you bash him.

Me Too! I knew you and I could agree on some things.

False on several fronts Deeeefense. obama may have opened up "more areas" for exploration but he increased the red tape to make permiting impossible. The amount of exploration is down signficantly since he took office because of the new regulations he put in place.

The new wells coming online were permitted and constructed largely in the bush adm. But the fact is that we are actually producing less now than we were in the 2000's and LOT's less than in the 70's

Chart attached.

http://www.tysknews.com/News/reprints/110510-1_insider_Obama_oil_bull.html

@hoptownukfan: Look at the article (have never heard of tysknews btw) and check the diagram. In the "2000s" scroll to the right......We are producing more crude oil (5,512) in 2010, since 2004 (5,419). Oil production dropped in the Bush years - specifically from 2004-2008. (Actually there is a decrease in domestic production each year Bush was President 2000-2008).

You'll notice that in 2009 the production increased, and it then it increased again in 2010. Both years Obama was President.

I'm not sure what putting "regulations in place" has to do with the amount of domestic crude oil being produced. It's either being produced by X thousands of barrels per day, or its not......regardless of the red tape.