Drill Baby Drill !

mfb99

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Major news sources report that Ryan Zinke and the DJT administration are pushing to open all off-shore areas to oil drilling.

For anyone who still thinks Ryan Zinke is a modern day TR, you are a fool.........

Zinke is a shill for the Extraction Industry, plain and simple. He is about stock valuations for companies like Exxon and Peabody Coal. He is about lining the pockets of the Koch brothers and other DC swamp creatures.

My question is what does it take you Zinke fanboys to recognize that Zinke is the most harmful thing to OUR Public Lands that this country has ever seen?

I guess for some, for the tribalists who continually vote against their own interest, nothing will change your point of view.

For those who see Zinke for what he is, call your Congressional leaders and fight back against Zinke and the DJT administrations assault on OUR Public Lands 202-224-3121

Here is one of the articles that ran yesterday. It is from the NYT.

The Trump administration said Thursday it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all United States coastal waters, giving energy companies access to leases off California for the first time in decades and opening more than a billion acres in the Arctic and along the Eastern Seaboard.

The proposal lifts a ban on such drilling imposed by President Barack Obama near the end of his term and would deal a serious blow to his environmental legacy. It would also signal that the Trump administration is not done unraveling environmental restrictions in an effort to promote energy production.

While the plan puts the administration squarely on the side of the energy industry and against environmental groups, it also puts the White House at odds with a number of coastal states that oppose offshore drilling. Some of those states are led by Republicans, like Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, where the tourism industry was hit hard by the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster in 2010 that killed 11 people and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Governor Scott vowed on Thursday to protect his state’s coast from drilling, saying he would raise the issue with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

“I have asked to immediately meet with Secretary Zinke to discuss the concerns I have with this plan and the crucial need to remove Florida from consideration,” he said in a statement. “My top priority is to ensure that Florida’s natural resources are protected.”

The governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Oregon and Washington have all opposed offshore drilling plans. Virginia’s governor-elect, Ralph S. Northam, a Democrat, said in a statement Thursday that expanding drilling would jeopardize his state’s tourism and fishing industries, as well as military installations. Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, also a Democrat, called drilling a “critical threat” to his state’s economy.

Mr. Zinke said the drilling plan was part of “a new path for energy dominance in America,” but said he planned to speak with Governor Scott and other state leaders before the proposal was finalized. “It’s not going to be done overnight,” he said.

Oil industry leaders cheered the reversal, calling it long overdue.

“I think the default should be that all of our offshore areas should be available,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance. “These are our lands. They’re taxpayer-owned and they should be made available.”

The Obama administration blocked drilling on about 94 percent of the outer continental shelf, the submerged offshore area between state coastal waters and the deep ocean. Mr. Zinke charged that those restrictions had cost the United States billions of dollars in lost revenue and said the new proposal would make about 90 percent of those waters available for leasing.

The Interior Department would open 25 of 26 regions of the outer continental shelf, leaving only the North Aleutian Basin — which President George Bush protected in an executive order — exempted from drilling.

Interior officials said they intended to hold 47 lease sales between 2019 and 2024, including 19 off the coast of Alaska and 12 in the Gulf of Mexico. Seven areas offered for new drilling would be in Pacific waters off California, where drilling has been off limits since a 1969 oil spill near Santa Barbara.

President Trump signed an executive order in April requiring the Interior Department to reconsider Mr. Obama’s five-year offshore drilling plan, which had invoked an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to block new lease sales in large areas of the Arctic and Atlantic. The ban “deprives our country of potentially thousands and thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in wealth,” Mr. Trump said at the time.

Finalizing the new plan could take as long as 18 months, experts said, and in the meantime challenges are expected in the courts and in Congress.

In a joint statement, 64 environmental groups called the plan a “shameful giveaway” to oil companies. Many said they were exploring legal options.

Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, vowed to pursue “all legislative tools” to block drilling off the East Coast, including the Congressional Review Act, which allows agency actions to be undone by Congress. Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, said the state is “evaluating all of our options” to protect its coast. And, several groups warned, a future Democratic administration could again redraw the boundaries of allowable drilling.

But for now, Republicans’ efforts to roll back restrictions on energy production are winning the day. Last month Congress opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling as part of the tax overhaul. And last week the Interior Department rescinded an Obama-era rule that would have added regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on federal and tribal lands. It also repealed offshore drilling safety regulations that were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law School and a former Obama climate adviser, said the latest Trump proposal was more about sending a message. In the Arctic in particular, she said, low oil prices and the decision by Royal Dutch Shell to give up all but one of its federal oil leases indicate drilling is not on the near horizon.

“But the decision is a signal, just like the one Congress sent with ANWR, that Republicans want to open the nation’s public lands and waters for business,” she said.

Frank Knapp, president of the Business Alliance for Protecting the Atlantic Coast, said thousands of small businesses, from restaurants to hotels to commercial fishing operations, oppose drilling off their states’ waters.

“It’s not consistent with our vibrant tourism, fishing and recreation,” Mr. Knapp said. “Their concern is their livelihood, the local economies. We all saw what happened to the Gulf Coast with Deepwater Horizon.”

Of particular interest to oil companies — and concern to many Florida lawmakers — will be the decision to open the eastern Gulf of Mexico, said Kevin Book, an energy consultant and managing director of ClearView Energy Partners. He noted the area is attractive to the energy industry because there is already a large amount of infrastructure in the region.

“You can talk about the Atlantic all you want, but you’re 10 years, 15 years from production,” Mr. Book said.

Analysts said the oil industry was unlikely to rush headlong into new areas. While oil companies have eyed regions like the East Coast for years, oil and gas operators are still smarting from the steep fall in oil prices that began in 2014 because of a global oil glut, which has only recently eased.

Despite the recent sharp rise in prices to about $68 a barrel for Brent crude, companies remain wary of spending, particularly in areas where the amount of oil and gas present is unknown and production is likely to be expensive without existing pipelines and other infrastructure.

“It is going to be a really long story,” said William Turner, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie in Houston. “It is not going to be gangbusters.”



Cheers,

Mark

Ye Shall Be Free To Roam......
 
Where do you want the oil and fuel you use every single day to come from? I bet not one person thinks about this when they are driving thousands and thousands of miles every fall while hunting multiple states. I know I don't. We are users of oil and that's not going to end any time soon. I realize there are better places than others to drill and that nobody wants this in their back yard.
 
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Where do you want the oil and fuel you use every single day to come from?

Are you suggesting we nationalize our energy sector? ;)

We export energy. We don't keep it in the country for our own use anymore. The market for oil is global, not regional. Industry has thousands of permits sitting idle because the market isn't there for their product. If we want to be energy independent, then we should also regulate the industry to a point where we get to keep that energy, and it won't negatively impact our air, water, land and wildlife.

As for the impacts to the fisheries, Deepwater/Horizon is still causing problems for marine life and the impacts to fisheries were severe, wrecking not only sport fishing offshore, but commercial fishing as well. That was one of the reasons Exxon had to pay $20+ billion in fines.

BTW - the regulations put in place after the Deepwater/Horizon spill have been eliminated again, giving companies a pass to simply ignore protocols and drill as cheaply as possible without worrying about the impacts. #MAGA.
 
Are you suggesting we nationalize our energy sector? ;)

Thats a stretch.

Intentionally so.

The argument that we need to drill is a dog whistle. It ignores reality in the marketplace, exports, and other options. Yes, people drive and use oil. If we moved towards better efficiency (as we did under the last president) we use less oil, spend less to do so and increase our overall quality of life. Right now, there are roughly 6,000 permits to drill sitting idle on public lands. Williston and the Bakken play isn't booming due to market influences, nothing else. Infill projects can breathe new life in to developed plays, further reducing impacts. Focusing on smart development rather than repealing the very regulations that protect our drinking water and air puts people ahead of corporate profits and that's exactly what our government should be doing. Instead of their current course of action.

The short term gain we get from new wells is no longer being offset by long term solutions to the issues developments create. There is a conservative and reasonable case for keeping the regulations put in place after the free-for-all of the early 2000's.
 
Are you suggesting we nationalize our energy sector? ;)
If we want to be energy independent, then we should also regulate the industry to a point where we get to keep that energy, and it won't negatively impact our air, water, land and wildlife. .

Like you said the market is global...generally speaking we are not a net energy exporter
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...ald-trump-wrongly-says-us-net-energy-exporte/

When it comes to petroleum products we produce 13.5 million b/d, consume about 19 million b/d and export 6-7 million b/d. It's impossible to say exactly what percent of petroleum the US produces is used domestically and what is shipped abroad. International corporations are going to sell there products where they can make the most money, so unless you ban exports and nationalism the energy sector you are never going to "get to keep that energy". To further complicate the picture oil isn't oil isn't oil. Oil fields, and even zones in different oil fields, produce different types of hydrocarbons which are used in different ways by different countries. Example: Oil in East Texas maybe good for home heating oil so it's used along the east coast and is mainly used domestically, but the oil produced in the Bakken is better for gasoline so we export it to Canada and Mexico. Mexican oil is great for producing plastic so we import that for domestic use, while oil coming out of Pennsylvania is really only good for propane and which isn't used much in the US but is huge in Japan so we ship a lot of it over there. (Totally making up the field locations, uses and counties, but you get the point)

All that aside, removing these regulations and trying to incentivize production on public lands seems asinine, if companies don't want to drill on federal leases for $2 an acre for a 10 year lease where in areas like Permian they are paying $14k-30k for a 2 year lease why should we try to make the federal lands economical by bending over backwards and dropping the little regulations and environmental protections there area. With the exception of Alaska almost all US crude is produced on private lands, because that's where the good rock is located. The market doesn't really want to drill on public lands not sure why politicians do?

map.PNG.
 
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It was just announced that one of my favorite hunting spots is about to be transferred in the other direction. From private Timber Company to the National Forest. That land was for sale and dangerously close to losing access forever to it and adjacent NF. The money came from the LCWF. LCWF gets its money from offshore royalties.


https://www.lwcfcoalition.com/about-lwcf/
Every year, $900 million in royalties paid by energy companies drilling for oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) are put into this fund. The money is intended to protect national parks, areas around rivers and lakes, national forests, and national wildlife refuges from development, and to provide matching grants for state and local parks and recreation projects. Over the years, LWCF has also grown and evolved to include grants to protect working forests, wildlife habitat, critical drinking water supplies and disappearing battlefields, as well as increased use of easements.
 
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It was just announced that one of my favorite hunting spots is about to be transferred in the other direction. From private Timber Company land, to the National Forest. The money came from the LCWF. LCWF gets its money from offshore royalties.

Assuming that congress appropriates funding to it LWCF. The future of LWCF is still very much up in the air as congress won't permanently reauthorize it nor will they fully fund it. In fact, they cut it from the previous fiscal year by $125 million to $275 million.

LWCF is also capped at 900 million per year, so any new revenue for offshore doesn't necessarily translate to increases in funding for LWCF projects. Likewise, Rep. Bishop and others want to radically change LWCF so that it's used for maintenance & infrastructure rather than conservation, which would end these kinds of projects. Sec. Zinke has indicated he supports this, and does not support new acquisitions unless they are minuscule.
 
Assuming that congress appropriates funding to it LWCF. The future of LWCF is still very much up in the air as congress won't permanently reauthorize it nor will they fully fund it. In fact, they cut it from the previous fiscal year by $125 million to $275 million.

LWCF is also capped at 900 million per year, so any new revenue for offshore doesn't necessarily translate to increases in funding for LWCF projects. Likewise, Rep. Bishop and others want to radically change LWCF so that it's used for maintenance & infrastructure rather than conservation, which would end these kinds of projects. Sec. Zinke has indicated he supports this, and does not support new acquisitions unless they are minuscule.

While O/S drilling is taking place, and Congress continues to be worthless, what happens to the money? Is it just building up to the $900M cap waiting to be authorized to be spent, or is it going elsewhere?
 
While O/S drilling is taking place, and Congress continues to be worthless, what happens to the money? Is it just building up to the $900M cap waiting to be authorized to be spent, or is it going elsewhere?

It's used for other purposes as set by congress. The cap is the what the top end of appropriations could be, not a set amount that sits idle and grows. If that were the case, we'd have tens of billions for conservation.
 
"better efficiency under the last president"....let's see, that was make us so broke we could not afford oil or gas?

Were it up to me, we would drill, baby drill....and build refineries here in the U.S. and keep fuel cheap. The excess? Would be sold abroad and the proceeds used to pay down the National Debt..
 
"better efficiency under the last president"....let's see, that was make us so broke we could not afford oil or gas?

Were it up to me, we would drill, baby drill....and build refineries here in the U.S. and keep fuel cheap. The excess? Would be sold abroad and the proceeds used to pay down the National Debt..

That makes absolutely no sense at all. How do you know when you have "enough?" Keep drilling and create an oversupply and the price of crude oil plummets making non-profitable to drill and build refineries. While ultimately destroying our country's environment.
 
"better efficiency under the last president"....let's see, that was make us so broke we could not afford oil or gas?

Were it up to me, we would drill, baby drill....and build refineries here in the U.S. and keep fuel cheap. The excess? Would be sold abroad and the proceeds used to pay down the National Debt..

It ain’t up to you thankfully. We have refineries here in the US, my brother and son work for 2 of them in Billings and Laurel.
 

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