[quote=Prime95;136254]It's basic math - prices are a function of supply and demand. Any increase in supply is helpful.[/quote]... except, of course, when the supply is being extracted from reservoirs that are of foreseeably finite extent and an increase brings us closer to a time (the Post-Oil Age) for which we're not sufficiently preparing. In that case, it can be argued that we're being penny-wise and pound-foolish by concentrating on lowering current prices now when that will exaggerate the foreseeable disruptions in the future that will be far, far more costly than a mere dollar or two per gallon.

And, do we really have a supply problem, anyway? I can't recall seeing any recent reports of service stations running out of gasoline [i]as they actually did in 1973-74[/i]. Can you cite current examples where the supply is actually too small rather than being considered "too expensive" by some folks? Has anyone who had sufficient cash been unable to find gasoline for sale?

[quote=Prime95;136271]Way to go cheesehead. Completely ignore the main point of my post and quickly get lost in the weeds.[/quote]May we hold you to a standard that each reply must address the main point of the post to which it responds? :-)

And ... what [I]was[/I] the [U]main[/U] point of that post?

Whether you're the only one holding some opinion? (That's your lead sentence.)

The differences between Republican and Democratic espousals? (but not, you've made clear, whether there's any inaccuracy in your statement of those espousals)

A review of basic econ- ... er ... [I]math[/I]?

The assertion that both increased supply and decreased demand are helpful and double the benefit? (Someone might ask for a definition of "the benefit".)

Whether there is common sense in Washington?

Or something else?

[QUOTE=cheesehead;136274]it can be argued that we're being penny-wise and pound-foolish by concentrating on lowering current prices now when that will exaggerate the foreseeable disruptions in the future that will be far, far more costly than a mere dollar or two per gallon.[/QUOTE]

You're right. Much better to wait until we've figured out a wide array of alternative energy sources. Much better to send trillions to mideast countries now so that we can keep our oil in the ground until it is worthless.

[quote]And, do we really have a supply problem, anyway? [/quote]You're right supply and demand don't affect prices until you actually run out of product. I slept through that part of the lecture...

[quote]And ... what [I]was[/I] the [U]main[/U] point of that post?[/quote]The republicans are right. Drill now to increase supplies. Reduce dependence on overseas sources. Send less money to nations that are often at odds with U.S. goals.

The democrats are right. Develop alternative sources of energy. Mandate fuel efficient cars. Tax the crap out of gas guzzlers.

Instead Washington does neither - or minor progress when major action is required.

P.S. to Ernst (and tying it back to the thread topic). Does Obama earn more respect than McCain when he says we can't drill now because it will have no [B]immediate[/B] effect on prices.

P.P.S. In my haste to get this written before going to bed I included "Put in a floor price for oil so we cannot go back to the cheap energy days." as a democrat idea. Actually both parties are in focused on lowering prices for the consumer. I think their focus should be on making the U.S. energy independent and efficient. Thus, putting a floor on oil prices (say a $150 minimum price for a barrel of oil) gives alternative energy companies incentive to invest safe in the knowledge that oil prices won't fall to $80 a barrel and put them out of business. Should oil fall below $150 the government rakes in the dough and can spend the revenue on more alternative energy research or reducing the deficit or whatever...

Perhaps we should take this to the gasoline prices thread at [URL]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=2313[/URL].

[U]Moderators? How about transferring this, starting where we stopped discussing Presidential candidates?[/U]

[quote=Prime95;136275]
[quote=cheesehead;136274]it can be argued that we're being penny-wise and pound-foolish by concentrating on lowering current prices now when that will exaggerate the foreseeable disruptions in the future that will be far, far more costly than a mere dollar or two per gallon.[/quote]You're right. Much better to wait until we've figured out a wide array of alternative energy sources.[/quote]By "wait", I presume you mean "wait to concentrate on lowering prices".

I don't advocate that.

Didn't you see the news reports a couple of days ago that oil market prices fell when China announced that it would allow its subsidized fuel prices to rise? Q: Why would that affect oil prices that way? A: The traders expect that action to give Chinese people a better incentive to reduce their fuel use than they have now. (After all, we've just seen that Americans have lowered their gasoline consumption in response to increased price. It's not just an untested theory) A U.S. government announcement that it was going to do something, such as increased funding for wind/solar energy to stimulate that market, that could reasonably be expected to persuade Americans to lower their oil use would have the same effect on oil market price ... and since unlike China we don't subsidize (not directly, anyway) our fuel prices, lower crude oil prices are very quickly reflected in lower U.S. gasoline prices.

Oil market traders don't have to wait for actual outcomes to persuade them to agree on lower prices; all it takes is a sufficiently authoritative and believable plan that seems likely to lower future oil demand. If the U.S. government put into action (not just announced) a serious large-scale plan to speed development of renewable energy and energy conservation, crude oil prices would drop like rocks.

The Saudis [I]fear[/I] renewable energy development in the U.S.

[quote]Much better to send trillions to mideast countries now[/quote]... uh, better than what? I (and many others) propose actions -- sincere large-scale energy conservation and renewable energy programs -- that will have such a psychological effect on the oil market that it will lower prices very quickly.

Proposals for increased drilling in the U.S. does not scare the Saudis like the prospect of renewable energy does because they know very well that such drilling will never make any significant difference in the money we pay them to import their oil. By the time any such new U.S. production came onstream, it could do no more than partially offset the declines in production from established U.S. fields. Furthermore, recent U.S. oil consumption trends, _unless_ there are major changes like significant alternatives or a continuation of high gas prices to blunt that consumption, guarantee increased demand for OPEC oil for a long time.

How do you propose to significantly reduce gas prices over, say, the next ten years, more than what advocates of energy conservation and renewable energy propose would reduce them? (You do understand how long it would take to get new offshore or Alaskan oil production to market in significant quantities, don't you?)

[quote]so that we can keep our oil in the ground until it is worthless.[/quote]That is a flabbergasting concept! How, exactly, will U.S. oil in the ground become worthless?

[quote][quote=cheesehead]And, do we really have a supply problem, anyway?[/quote]You're right supply and demand don't affect prices until you actually run out of product.[/quote]Another "straw man". Q: Where did I say or imply that supply and demand don't affect prices until one actually runs out of product? A: nowhere - you made that up!

How about responding to what I [I]actually[/I] wrote: "I can't recall seeing any recent reports of service stations running out of gasoline [I]as they actually did in 1973-74[/I]. Can you cite current examples where the supply is actually too small rather than being considered 'too expensive' by some folks? Has anyone who had sufficient cash been unable to find gasoline for sale?"

- - -

I'll reply to the rest of your posting (where you explain the main point of your earlier posting) later.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;136279]By "wait", I presume you mean "wait to concentrate on lowering prices".

I don't advocate that.[/QUOTE]

And neither do I. Read the PPS above.

[quote]A U.S. government announcement that it was going to do something,....Oil market traders don't have to wait for actual outcomes to persuade them to agree on lower prices[/quote]like drilling to increase supply....

[quote]The Saudis [I]fear[/I] renewable energy development in the U.S.[/quote]which is exactly why I advocate both approaches...you did read the part where I said the democrats are right.

[quote]By the time any such new U.S. production came onstream, it could do no more than partially offset the declines in production from established U.S. fields.[/quote]You are very good at spouting the democrat line. Drilling can't solve the problem completely therefore do nothing. You have not explained why you think oil pricing is immune from the law of supply and demand - more supply will reduce prices.

[quote]Furthermore, recent U.S. oil consumption trends, _unless_ there are major changes like significant alternatives or a continuation of high gas prices to blunt that consumption, guarantee increased demand for OPEC oil for a long time.[/quote]Again read the part where I said the democrats are right.

[quote]How do you propose to significantly reduce gas prices over, say, the next ten years, more than what advocates of energy conservation and renewable energy propose would reduce them?[/quote][B]Easy!!![/B] Read what I wrote, both drill to increase supply [B]AND[/B] conserve to reduce demand.

[quote](You do understand how long it would take to get new offshore or Alaskan oil production to market in significant quantities, don't you?)[/quote]But as you already pointed out, markets will anticipate the upcoming increase in supply and prices will go down (or up more slowly) some time before coming online.

[quote]That is a flabbergasting concept! How, exactly, will U.S. oil in the ground become worthless?[/quote]Imagine the democrat utopia 100 years from now. We have all electric vehicles, 90% efficient solar cells, cheap fusion electricity, carbon taxes, whatever. Oil has become an economic loser - it costs $40 a barrel to drill and cannot compete with the $20-per-barrel-equivalent from the electric company. Your preciously preserved oil is now worthless.

[quote]Another "straw man". ...
How about responding to what I [I]actually[/I] wrote: "I can't recall seeing any recent reports of service stations running out of gasoline [I]as they actually did in 1973-74[/I].[/quote][I]Straw man, straw man, straw man!!![/I] A cheesehead favorite reply. Of course, your whole argument about running out of supply in 73-74 was a straw man too - but I suppose that one's OK. No where did I claim we were out of supply now. Your comment had no bearing on what I actually wrote - oil prices are subject to the laws of supply and demand

[QUOTE=Prime95;136254]Am I the only one who thinks that we should do both??? Republicans espouse drill more but no new regulations, Democrats espouse alternative energy and conservation but no new drilling or refineries.

It's basic math - prices are a function of supply and demand. Any increase in supply is helpful. Any decrease in demand is helpful. Do both and you get double the benefit. Is there no common sense in Washington?[/QUOTE]

The problem with that "let's do both" approach is that in the U.S. more drilling and the promise of more supply [whether it's ever actually realized or not] has long been used - especially by Republican presidents and houses of congress - as a convenient political cover for doing precisely zilch to "wean ourselves off foreign oil."

Check out this timeline [in which the historical CAFE data are taken from [URL="http://www.pewfuelefficiency.org/docs/cafe_history.pdf"]here[/URL]]: :

1. 1974-75: Arab oil embargo. Gas prices spike, major economic disruption, but U.S. and Asian auto industry quickly adapt and start mass-producing fuel-efficient cars. [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy"]Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations[/URL] enacted by Congress.

2. 1977: Trans-Alaska Pipeline completed. To date, the TAP has delivered 15 billion barrels of North Slope oil, an average of slightly over 1 million barrels per day. Current U.S. demand = [url=http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption]20.7 million BPD, so even with a similar proven reserve of oil in the ANWR pumping at full capacity, this equates to just 5% of U.S. demand.

3. 1980s: The "Reagan Revolution" and rise of the neoconservative movement in the U.S. From the above Pew Trusts PDF: "Vehicle efficiency increased steadily throughout the early 1980s, due to phase-in of the fuel economy law. Between 1975 and 1985, passenger vehicle mileage doubled from around 13.5 to 27.5 mpg, while light trucks increased from 11.6 to 19.5 mpg. In the mid-1980s, Ford and GM, however, lobbied the Reagan Administration to lower the standard. NHTSA complied, setting a 26 mpg standard for 1986, prompting Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca to declare, `We are about to put up a tombstone, "Here lies America`s energy policy."' At industry's urging, for each of the next three years NHTSA kept fuel economy levels at 26 mpg, below the benchmark set by Congress. The agency also failed to raise light truck standards during this period, holding them at 20.5 mpg. Finally, in 1989, NHTSA restored the 27.5 passenger vehicle standard, but lowered light truck requirements to 20 mpg."

4. 1990s: Gas prices remain low. Detroit starts ramping up production of pickup trucks and SUVs, which are classified as "light trucks" and thus exempt from the CAFE regulations, in a big way. Again quoting Pew: "In 1990, Senators Richard Bryan (D) and Slade Gordon (R) sponsored legislation raising fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks 40% over a decade. It passed 14-4 in the Commerce Committee, but was filibustered on the Senate floor. Had it passed, the U.S. would currently be saving more than one million barrels of oil per day. When the Clinton Administration began the process for raising light truck standards, Congress responded with an appropriations rider taking away its authority to increase vehicle efficiency. This anti-fuel economy rider remained in force from 1995 to 2000. According to the Government Accountability Office, NHTSA’s technological expertise with respect to fuel economy has yet to recover from the impact of these congressional riders. The steady increase in light truck sales, partly driven by the loophole holding trucks and SUVs to lower fuel economy standards than other passenger vehicles, actually drove down fleet-wide efficiency during the 1990s. The average car and truck sold at the end of the decade went about a mile less on each gallon of gas than it did 10 years earlier."

5. 2000s: Oil prices begin a steady climb, in large part due to rapidly increasing demand from emerging economies in e.g. India and China. From pew: "In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences reported that cars and trucks could meet a 37 mpg, fleet-wide standard within 10-15 years without sacrificing performance or safety. The Academy also estimated that the nation currently saves 2.7 million barrels of gasoline per day because of previous increases in vehicle efficiency. After Congress lifted the freeze on fuel economy in 2000, President Bush enacted a pair of minimal light trucks increases. His latest rule, finalized in 2006, will raise standards from 22.2 miles per gallon to 24 miles per gallon between model years 2008 and 2011, a mere 2% annual increase. That light truck rule replaced the single average standard for each automaker's light truck fleet with a size-based system that sets mileage requirements according to a vehicle's footprint. In 2005 [B]after four years debate, Congress passed comprehensive energy legislation that failed to increase vehicle efficiency standards[/B]. In his 2006 State of the Union speech, President Bush talked about our addiction to oil, but did not mention vehicle inefficiency - one of the primary causes of that dependence. In his 2007 address, he set a target of increasing vehicle efficiency 4% annually but then proposed legislation that merely asks for the authority to 'reform' passenger vehicle standards without any guaranteed improvement. Bi-partisan legislation in the House and Senate (H.R. 1506 and S. 357) would grant the Administration its regulatory flexibility while requiring NHTSA to meet a fleet-wide 35 mile per gallon target, achieving the President's efficiency objective."


Do the major highlights in the above timeline strike anyone as being merely coincidental? Also note the perverse "moral hazard" incentives at play here: The cost of keeping fuel prices in the U.S. artificially low - by way of continual involvement in the Middle East and not one but several multi-trillion-dollar wars there over the past 2 decades - probably amounts to on the order of a dollar per gallon of oil. [Figure a couple hundred billion $ per year in military spending and direct and indirect aid to various ME regimes, i.e. on the order of a billion $ per day, which is roughly the number of gallons per oil the U.S. uses per day.] But American are horrified by the idea of a "gas tax". The irony of it all...

Anything that keeps our economy from making the inevitable switch to low-oil-demand mode is a bad thing, in my opinion. We know the switch is going to be needed sooner or later [and quite probably sooner rather than later], and the sooner we begin the shift, the less disruptive it will be and the more competitive the U.S. will be as a result. Also, Green Tech is a potential huge source of well-paying jobs and a real area of high-tech economic growth. Detroit failed miserably at it because Detroit is run by pals of the oil barons, but look at the activity in e.g. Silicon Valley and imagine if the government were to get behind this in a big way, with tax incentives and research money.

Given that [quoting Wikipedia CAFE page], "The United States has the lowest average fuel economy among first world nations; the European Union and Japan have fuel economy standards about twice as high as the United States", the potential oil consumption reduction form closing that vehicle-fleet efficiency gap dwarfs the potential for increased domestic oil production. The math is simple, lopsided and clear here.


[QUOTE=Prime95;136275]P.S. to Ernst (and tying it back to the thread topic). Does Obama earn more respect than McCain when he says we can't drill now because it will have no [B]immediate[/B] effect on prices.[/QUOTE]


Here's some numbers to back up Obama's argument [which many others have made before him]:

[URL="http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/28/111335/057/"]Drill here, drill now, pay less[/URL]: [I]Gingrich mounts campaign to support domestic oil drilling[/I]
[quote]"Green conservative" and [URL="http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/4/21/94214/5121"]We campaign spokesman[/URL] Newt Gingrich is mounting a new campaign: "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less."

His promise is that (blocking Lieberman-Warner and) opening up drilling off the coasts, in the Gulf of Mexico, in northern Alaska, and in the Rockies (for oil shale) would lower gas prices.

Now, for one thing that's just a lie. It's false. According to the EIA, the U.S. has about 21 billion gallons in proven oil reserves -- about 3% of the world's total. Even if we started drilling today, it would be 10 years before we got substantial production out of those fields, and 20 years before peak production. Ten years -- while gas prices have risen $0.50 just this Spring.

Right now, Saudi Arabia is sitting pretty, enjoying sky-high oil prices. They are ignoring our entreaties to pump more because they like these supply constraints just fine (and they probably can't pump any faster if they wanted to). Say we start pumping those reserves out into the world oil market. What's to stop Saudi Arabia from dialing back production a little bit, so supply (and prices) stay roughly the same? Answer: nothing. U.S. domestic oil prices rise to meet world prices, and those prices are outside our control.[/quote]Note that the Saudis may not even have to ratchet back their production deliberately - there is mounting evidence that Saudi production-per-well has been declining for years, and they are hitting rapidly diminishing returns from increased drilling and higher-tech extraction techniques.

This Week's Sunnyvale Valero Gas Prices
 

[code]Fri, 13 Jun: 4.45[sup]9[/sup]
Mon, 16 Jun: 4.46[sup]9[/sup]
Tue, 17 Jun: 4.47[sup]9[/sup]
Wed, 18 Jun: 4.47[sup]9[/sup]
Thu, 19 Jun: 4.47[sup]9[/sup]
Fri, 20 Jun: 4.47[sup]9[/sup]
[/code]A mere 2-cent price rise this week - up a total of 48 cents per gallon, or 12.0%, in the past 4 weeks.


[I][From yesterday's headlines, which I never got round to posting at the time]:[/I]

[URL="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aQF.lvnDZrT0&refer=news"]Oil Falls More Than $4 as China Announces Fuel Price Increase [/URL]: [I]China, the second-biggest fuel consumer after the U.S., will increase gasoline and diesel prices by as much as 18 percent[/I]

I wonder if they decided to reduce the subsidies [which will still remain substantial, a fact the above article doesn't mention] because of political pressure from their trading partners, or because of the huge expense of maintaining them in the face of near-$150 oil? [Which one analyst estimated at ~$40 billion per year at the current oil price]. Anyway, that "plunge in oil prices" lasted all of, what -18 hours?

Of course the folks making billions in commodities speculation are trying their best to keep the party going:

[URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/18/AR2008061802732.html"]Washington Post | Wall Street Lobbies to Protect Speculative Oil Trades[/URL]
[quote]Wall Street banks and other large financial institutions have begun putting intense pressure on Congress to hold off on legislation that would curtail their highly profitable trading in oil contracts -- an activity increasingly blamed by lawmakers for driving up prices to record levels.

Representatives of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, along with the trade associations for hedge funds and other financial groups, have lobbied the offices of key legislators, briefed senior staffers on committees that oversee pivotal parts of the energy markets and distributed research materials explaining their view about oil and how it's traded.

In a pair of lengthy and sometimes testy closed-door sessions in the Senate last week, executives from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, two of Wall Street's largest investment banks, made the case that their multibillion-dollar investments in energy contracts have not led to higher oil prices. Rather, they told Democratic staff members of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the trades allow international markets to operate efficiently and that the run-up in oil prices results not from speculation but from actual imbalances of supply and demand.

But the executives were met with skepticism and occasional hostility. "Spare us your lecture about supply and demand," one of the Democratic aides said, abruptly cutting off one of the executives, according to a staff member in the room.[/quote]

[QUOTE=cheesehead;136279]
A U.S. government announcement that it was going to do something, such as increased funding for wind/solar energy to stimulate that market, that could reasonably be expected to persuade Americans to lower their oil use would have the same effect on oil market price ... and since unlike China we don't subsidize (not directly, anyway) our fuel prices, lower crude oil prices are very quickly reflected in lower U.S. gasoline prices.

Oil market traders don't have to wait for actual outcomes to persuade them to agree on lower prices; all it takes is a sufficiently authoritative and believable plan that seems likely to lower future oil demand. If the U.S. government put into action (not just announced) a serious large-scale plan to speed development of renewable energy and energy conservation, crude oil prices would drop like rocks.

The Saudis [I]fear[/I] renewable energy development in the U.S.

... uh, better than what? I (and many others) propose actions -- sincere large-scale energy conservation and renewable energy programs -- that will have such a psychological effect on the oil market that it will lower prices very quickly. [/QUOTE]

So even though these changes will take a certain time to implement (say 10 years) a "large-scale energy conservation and renewable energy program" will have a psychological effect on the oil market....

[QUOTE=cheesehead;136279]
Proposals for increased drilling in the U.S. does not scare the Saudis like the prospect of renewable energy does because they know very well that such drilling will never make any significant difference in the money we pay them to import their oil. By the time any such new U.S. production came onstream, it could do no more than partially offset the declines in production from established U.S. fields. Furthermore, recent U.S. oil consumption trends, _unless_ there are major changes like significant alternatives or a continuation of high gas prices to blunt that consumption, guarantee increased demand for OPEC oil for a long time.

How do you propose to significantly reduce gas prices over, say, the next ten years, more than what advocates of energy conservation and renewable energy propose would reduce them? (You do understand how long it would take to get new offshore or Alaskan oil production to market in significant quantities, don't you?)
[/QUOTE]

...but committing to a program that will increase supply (say in 10 years) won't have any effect on the oil market?

The conclusion I have taken from Cheesehead's arguments is this:
a. a Democratic plan will effect market psychology and bring down oil prices.
b. a Republican plan will not effect market psychology and not bring down oil prices.

I agree with Prime95 - why can't we both increase supply AND decrease demand?

2 New York Times Editorials on the same subject
 

It appears my views on this issue pretty much agree with those of the New York Times Editorial board. Dang - does that make me an elitist tree-hugging liberal?

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/opinion/19thu1.html]NYT Editorial: The Big Pander to Big Oil[/url]
[quote] It was almost inevitable that a combination of $4-a-gallon gas, public anxiety and politicians eager to win votes or repair legacies would produce political pandering on an epic scale. So it has, the latest instance being President Bush’s decision to ask Congress to end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of America’s continental shelf.

This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America’s leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.[/quote]
The editorial goes on to note some interesting facts about the leases the oil companies already have.


[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/opinion/20krugman.html]NYT | Paul Krugman: Running on Vapors[/url]
[quote]Blaming environmentalists for high energy prices, never mind the evidence, has been a hallmark of the Bush administration.

Thus, in 2001 Dick Cheney attributed the California electricity crisis to environmental regulations that, he claimed, were blocking power-plant construction. He completely missed the real story, which was that energy companies — probably some of the same companies that participated in his secret task force, which was supposed to be drawing up a national energy strategy — were driving up prices by deliberately withholding electricity from the market.

And the administration has spent the last eight years trying to convince Congress that the key to America’s energy security is opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling — even though estimates from the Energy Information Administration suggest that drilling in the refuge would make very little difference to the energy outlook, and the oil companies themselves aren’t especially interested in punching holes in the tundra.

But it still comes as a surprise and a disappointment to see John McCain joining that unfortunate tradition.

I’ve never taken Mr. McCain’s media reputation as a maverick seriously, because on most issues, he’s a thoroughly conventional conservative. On energy policy, however, he has in the past seemed to show some independence. Most notably, he voted against the really terrible, special-interest-driven 2005 energy bill, which was backed by the Bush administration — and by Barack Obama.

But that was then.

In his Monday speech on energy, Mr. McCain tried to touch all the bases. He talked about conservation. He denounced the evils of speculation: “While a few reckless speculators are counting their paper profits, most Americans are coming up on the short end.” A weird aspect of the current energy debate, incidentally, is the fact that many of the same market-worshipping conservatives who first denied that there was a dot-com bubble, then denied that there was a housing bubble, are utterly convinced that nasty speculators are responsible for high oil prices.

The item that made news, however, was Mr. McCain’s call for more offshore drilling. On Tuesday, he made this more explicit, calling for exploration and development of the currently protected outer continental shelf. This was a reversal of his previous position, and it went a long way toward aligning his energy policy with that of the Bush administration.

That’s not a good thing.

As many reports have noted, the McCain/Bush policy on offshore drilling doesn’t make sense as a response to $4-a-gallon gas: the White House’s own Energy Information Administration says that exploiting the outer shelf wouldn’t yield noticeable amounts of oil until the 2020s, and even at peak production its impact on oil prices would be “insignificant.”

But what I haven’t seen emphasized is the broader picture: Mr. McCain has now aligned himself with an administration that, even aside from its blame-the-environmental-movement tendencies, has established an extensive track record as the gang that couldn’t think straight about energy policy.

Remember, they didn’t just insist that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators; on the eve of the Iraq war, administration officials were also adamant that regime change in Iraq would add millions of barrels a day to the world oil supply, driving oil prices way down. (In fact, Iraq’s oil output took five years just to recover to preinvasion levels.)

So why would Mr. McCain associate himself with these characters? The answer, presumably, is that it’s a cynical political calculation.

I’m reasonably sure that Mr. McCain’s advisers realize that offshore drilling would do nothing for current gas prices. But they may believe that the public can be conned. A Rasmussen poll taken before Mr. McCain’s announcement suggests that the public favors expanded offshore drilling, and believes (wrongly) that this would lower gasoline prices.

And Mr. McCain may also hope to shore up his still fragile relations with the Republican base. As anyone who has read what’s in his inbox after publishing an article on oil prices can testify, there are many people on the right who believe that all our energy problems have been caused by sanctimonious tree-huggers. Mr. McCain has just thrown that constituency some red meat.

But I very much doubt that Mr. McCain’s gambit will work. In fact, it’s almost certainly self-destructive.

To have a chance in November, Mr. McCain has to convince voters that he isn’t just Bush, continued. Energy policy is one of the areas where he could best have made that case.

Instead, he has ceded the high ground on energy to Mr. Obama, and linked himself firmly to the most unpopular president on record.[/quote]

[quote]To date, the TAP has delivered 15 billion barrels of North Slope oil, ... so even with a similar proven reserve of oil in the ANWR...[/quote]So if ANWR generates 15 billion barrels at a conservative value of $100/barrel that's $1.5 trillion dollars that stays in the U.S economy rather than ending up in the Middle East or Russia. Sign me up. If the U.S. government collected only $20/barrel in taxes/drilling rights that's $300 billion dollars that could be devoted to alternative energy research.

[quote]Here's some numbers to back up Obama's argument [/quote]I'm not debating the accuracy of his answer - it won't have any effect for several years. It's the evasiveness of the response that is revolting. Applying similar logic: Why spent $ on NASA - it won't [I]immediately[/I] get us to the Moon and Mars. Why spend money on cancer research - it won't get us an [I]immediate[/I] cure. Why spend money on alternative fuels research - it won't lower prices [I]immediately[/I].

[quote]It appears my views on this issue pretty much agree with those of the New York Times Editorial board. Dang - does that make me an elitist tree-hugging liberal?[/quote]Um, yes, but we love you and your wit anyway.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;136306]The problem with that "let's do both" approach is that in the U.S. more drilling and the promise of more supply has long been used ... as a convenient political cover for doing precisely zilch to "wean ourselves off foreign oil.".[/QUOTE]

This is the only coherent argument I've heard against both drilling and conservation. American citizens and Washington politicians are incredibly weak-willed.

A few responses now; more later.

[quote=Prime95;136295]Read the PPS above.[/quote]I was working from the text of your posting before you added the PPS, and failed to notice after posting my reply that your post had changed..

[quote]Of course, your whole argument about running out of supply in 73-74 was a straw man too[/quote][B] My comments on the 1973-74 oil crisis were [U]NOT[/U] a straw man! [U]I personally witnessed "No Gas Today" signs posted at service stations in my Tulsa neighborhood![/U] There were multiple reports on news stations and in the paper about service station owners being told by their suppliers [/B](who were delivering from our refinery just a few miles away)[B] that they'd have to skip deliveries, or that they couldn't have as much as they ordered. I was personally denied permission, at a station in Dallas TX that had no sign stating their policy, to fill up my car's gas tank rather than limit my purchase to a smaller amount.[/B]

I do not see that happening now.

How old were you in 1974? I was 25.

As I wrote, earlier, running out of supply means that no gas is to be found for sale even when the prospective purchaser has plenty of cash to make the purchase. There were multiple service stations running out of supply in Tulsa (and also in other areas, as reported by national news services) over a period of several months in 1974.

If you continue to dispute this, please state how your definition of "running out of supply" differs from mine.

[quote]You are very good at spouting the democrat line.[/quote]If you want to continue referring to the Democratic Line (I prefer to use this phrase) or "the democrat line", please state what you think the Democratic Line is. ( I don't want to take the chance of misinterpreting text from your previous posts as being what you think the Democratic Line is.) Then I will point out, if you haven't noticed by then and withdrawn your accusation, how what I've written differs from that Democratic Line.