Bush urges to lift the ban on drilling in the ANWR

There is no risk of ground water or fresh water contamination involved with drilling in Alaska. As far as federal drilling laws go they are very strict. A federal permit takes months to get and is a bitch to fill out, trust me.

Lets also think about this logically, wouldn't an oil company take every precaution to keep the environment clean and protect their reputation? Currently there are only majors and 1 independent in Alaska, Pioneer, and they take much better care of the environment than even the locals. There is no risk of spill in drilling. These would be complicated wells and I can guarantee they would have a closed mud system, which means not a drop of drilling fluid touches the ground. Completion would also be extensive. They would set a water string of casing to cover up ground water, I assume I have never looked at any drilling programs from that area, and they would have to circulate cement to surface. It would be a very clean, and expensive, job.

Production would also be heavily controlled. If you spill any oil anywhere in the US there are huge fines and you have to pay to clean it up, obviously. There would be on site people from the BLM and any spills would be instantly noticed and cleaned. Pipeline technology has also advanced. I am not involved with downstream very much but there is very sophisticated monitoring of pipelines along with regulation.

Oil companies are not evil, they are providing a service for the betterment of man kind. They are good people who care about the environment.

Whoever said we need to protect northern water is extremely misguided. How do you propose we get the water to cities thousands of miles away? A pipeline? a giant canal? A water tanker? Not going to happen. Its not important as a resource but it is important to keep it clean and oil companies know that.

That is not to say that there will be no environmental impact, there will. Some animals may die and extensive roads and pipelines will have to be built. This is one of the cost of affordable oil. Its important to understand that our country can NOT survive with out oil. There is no alternative to oil. There just isn't. No current alternative fuel has a positive energy swing. That is to say that you get out less than you put in.

Nuclear solar and wind are viable but they too have their drawbacks but this is not the forum for this.

So basically open up the ANWR we need the oil and it would have limited environmental impact.

I am a pretty hard core liberal but when it comes to this one I have to say drill it. It has to be done its foolish to suffer when a significant source of oil is present. If the price of oil rises to quickly technology will not be able to catch up and our country could collapse.

^ since you're obviously the most knowledgeable person here on the drilling issue.....

is it true that we're using the current trans-alaska pipeline at 25% capacity?  i heard something about it has a 2MG/day capacity and currently we're only pushing .5MG/day thru it. 

im sorry but im w/ Bush on this one, those steps and others would lower gasoline prices and “strengthen our national security.”

All I can think of after reading this through this thread is how truely scared I am for my future. I'm with FlyingSpoon on this one.  We need some real change. Not just "vote Obama for change" change.

THANK YOU!!!

That shit pisses me off so much that other countries are basically taking oil out of our backyard but we cant do shit because the faggots in office are sitting with thier thumb up thier butts.


as for the limited suply-"oh it will run out fast anyway whats the point"-shit,  i dont think you relize how much this will help get rid of speculators.  From anouncing that we are drilling in anwar, it has been predicted that the price will go down about .80 cents....just from fucking anouncing it.  thats because investors will be like ohhh shit son, we are going to loose money because we bought gas that was way more expensive then its about to be, then they will stop buying prices will go down. and i will be happy because i just payed 4.37 a gallon.  do i think its a permanent fix. no. is there a permanent fix? no. because its fucking oil. and its going to run out, its nothing new

by the way, somebody please embed this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOpcPfAarjY

No they wouldn't. Drilling in ANWR wouldn't lower prices at all since oil is sold on a global market. Further more this would give the oil companies more territory to squeeze oil from which will only prolong our addiction to it.

There are NO redeeming outcomes to this drill site (or any new drill site for that matter). Any positive aspect you can find for drilling in ANWR I can counter with a cleaner option that would be just as beneficial if not more for society at large.
Seriously, try me.

The point here is that this isnt about the animals in ANWR or the price per gallon of gas, its about further supporting the dirty politics that the oil companies thrive on and delaying the inevitable global switch to some new forum of cleaner, safer and more long term solution for our energy demands. If you can;t see that those policies are morlally wrong, you need to go get your head checked out. We did't use oil forever remember...ever heard of steam power? Or before that animal and man power? Times change and so do out sources of energy. American based Oil companies are holding back this new technology in order to thrive on the resulting dirty and technologically stagnant economy. I dont even need to rhyme off the stats about Europeans and Scandinavian countries that are making these new forms of energy viable options in the face of big oil, because you already know how well they are doing.

What America needs to do now is get out of bed with big oil and finally sack up to their self proclaimed position of "global leader" because right now your shitting the bed for the rest of us that are forced to share this rock with you...

/rant

I don't know much about down stream. Thats more mechanical engineers. I do know that it was built to last 10 years and we are way past that now so a new pipeline would have to be built.

im sure thats true. because the pipeline was originally only supposed to transport oil for like 10 years. it has outlived its expectancy by a long, long time. and speaking of...today marks the 31st anniv. of oil being pumped through it.

drilling is worth if even if it only brings down prices by a cent. fuck the environment.

i swear, every post i've seen of yours has been "fuck liberals" or "fuck hippies" or "fuck the environment". why the hate? do you realize that you literally cannot live without the environment?

i swear, every post i've seen of yours has been "fuck liberals" or "fuck hippies" or "fuck the environment". why the hate? does your ignorant ass for a brain realize that you literally cannot live without the environment?

if i am correct that is a picture of STEAM stacks from a nuclear power plant. now that enormous cloud you see in that picture is STEAM aka WATER

go to school please

Jesus u sure had a poor education.

 couldnt agree more

people dont realize just how big alaska really is and how small drilling rigs are in comparison. im willing to bet 95% of you have never even been up to AK.

is good in theory, but when that shit runs dry we r effed in the a, we needs to start thinkin about the alternative shit, whether or not we r gonna drill there!

idk if this is new info but Alaska isnt Venezuela or the middle east
the climate and environment is affected much more by humans than most other places in the world
PLUS i think you need to do more research before you post
it does ruin the environment

no it does not, drilling for oil does not "ruin" the environment at all. Have you ever been to a drilling site? Drilling temporally ruins the view with a large derrick but that is soon moved. Production facilities, depending on the completion, can have little to no effect on the environment. What might effect the environment is road building and pipeline building.

If I was a land owner I would much rater have a drilling site than a strip mall or a highway but no one shits bricks when someone builds a highway. Or a fucking suburb.

The north slope and ANWR are some of the most sensitive and closely watched hydrocarbon drilling sites. Massive fines and close government controls keep the oil companies in line. In fact it is hard to make a profit at 56 dollar oil. The animals actually crowd around the pipelines in the winter time for the warmth. I've seen it happen. Have you ever been to Alaska on the north slope or the ANWR and seen these places? The drilling environments are barren wastlands. The concern is that a pipeline will effect migration. it does not they like the pipeline like I said.

this government is  completely criminal. dont even claim this patriotic bullshit, its patriotic to protest things that are fucked up, its why our government is designed like it is. first, smoking vs. a criminal war? who wins? and how does smoking hurt others? it doesnt. the shit the us government does DOES hurt people.

We all know that every conservative here will be celebrating this shit, and everyone else wont be. i honestly dont have the time to say this a billion times so im only going to once. for tonight at least.

1) Oil drilling does damage. Its not like were just spouting this off for no reason, do you really think so many people would be throwing so much into this if it DIDNT do any damage? And Jefferson fucktard, just because it doesnt look gorgeous doesnt mean it isnt an important part of the ecosystem and environment.

2) Now, for all you people screaming about "ZOMGZ BUT GAS IS SO EXPENSIVE". First of all not to generalize but you people need to stop buying massive gas guzzling vehicles, and start buying something half decently fuel efficient. Second, drilling wont do shit, it wont do ANYTHING for about 7 years, then when it does, it will lower gas by about ohhhhh 10 or 20 cents. Then withing 10 to 15 years of that, it will run out, and well be fucked again.

/end rant

This would actually be the perfect time to drill there, it'll be ready by the time gas shoots through the roof again. You all act like drilling ANWR is like drilling in Yosemite or Yellowstone.

im not gonna pretend to know alot about this subject like everyone else is doing in this thread, but i just find it funny how everyone is crying over gas prices, then bush does something about it that to my knowledge will hardly harm the enviornment, and everyone flips shit and hates him more.

intelligent bush supporter is an oxymoron

you are making fun of a kid that simply quoted a neutral state of opinion, real cool.

he hit the nail right on its head if you ask me. Most people DO hate bush because its what everybody else does. if you have forgotten bush did a good job in his first term....well good enough as could be expected, even with the unexpected war. its so easy to pick people apart when you dont know what is actually going on, thats why we have politics.

he did a good job in his first term?!?!??! A FUCKING GOOD JOB!?!?!?

He got us into iraq in his first term....
The economy had already started to crumble his first term (yes im aware this was not all his fault, but partially his)
i think those two alone would be a sign that he did NOT have a good first term


and was for your thing about thats why we have politics, i have no idea what your talking about.


are there people that hate bush because everyone else does? absolutely. they are just as retarded as the fucking obamabot changelings hailing him as their savior. however bush was an awful president, and if you think otherwise, your not intelligent. period.

thank you! when people have an actual legit reason for hating bush, thats awesome, and i respect that. i love asking people why they dont like bush, like 90% of the time their answer is something like "well he screwed up" or "he's dumb" when i ask them to explain they cant.

there are intelligent people out there that like bush, just like how 90% of obama supporters seem to be dumb shits, there are some that are smart, and there are also some who like bush that are actually smart too.

ill give you that. however to play the other side, that fact that there WAS so much material for them to put on youtube was frightening.

bingo.  The drilling is only a temporary fix, and a poor one at that. Is it really worth damaging the environment of the area and forcing some animals to change their migrational patters, thus causing many to starve and die, just so you can have 10cents/gallon cheaper gas for 10 years when you won't even begin to see the effects for at least 5 years? What a load of shit.  The only people really seeing the money saved (or gained, in large amounts, in this case)  will be the banking and oil companies...

America.......... pfft

no...


You and everyone else in our society is completely and hopelessly addicted to oil. Every single product that you use every day in some way is impacted by oil. When you are born the doctor delivers you with latex gloves then wraps you in polyester and thus begins your love affair with oil.

Your food is trucked in from miles away and fertilized by petroleum products driven by petroleum powered machines. The electrons you are using to power your computer are most likely from coal or oil combustion.

So as much as you hate the oil companies you owe them every material object you use.

Right now we get about 60% percent of our oil from out of the US. There is a lot of valuable oil in Alaska and the coast.

I would love to have America be oil independent but it is not going to happen without the help of oil. I have been to Alaska more than once. I have seen the impact on the terrain and it is very minimal. The vast majority of the drilling sites are in barren lifeless areas. Alaska is beautiful and the last thing anyone wants to do is destroy it. There was speculation that the caraboo population would decline with the pipeline because of the changing migration habits but it did not. In fact the population increased.

The fact is that that if we dont drill in the ANWR and we dont drill off shore we might be ok. But if the powder keg of a situation in the Middle East explodes and we all know the fuse is lit our country will collapse.

We live in urban sprawl where everyone has to drive to work. so industry stops. As we already know a 1% decrease in profit can cause a company to collapse. If on a long enough time frame we no longer have food and we are not set up to grow enough for ourselves.

So the solution is this. No one ever has had a problem with an energy surplus. We need to drill and invest heavily in alternative energy.

Exactly. We already have the technology to be completely oil free.  The only thing that keeps us back from this are corrupt politicians, corrupt businessmen, and lazy, pessimistic citizens that don't care because oil is more available and easier to obtain than alternative energy sources for the everyday person.  For fucks sake, if we legalized hemp alone, we could make almost every material that petroleum is currently used for (and more), and do so in a sustainable way that actually creates increased fertility of the land it is cultivated on. 

There are so many ways to make the drilling in ANWR obsolete but we never hear about them or see them being implemented in the amount that is necessary to ween ourselves off of oil because the ways that do so do not support the people who profit from keeping us addicted to oil.  We can't just keep drilling because we want to become energy independent.  That's not a sustainable way of thinking about it.  We need to utilize sustainable alternative energy sources such as Solar, Wind, Water, and (the most promising) Geothermal. 

Here are a few interesting facts to put what I said in perspective:

-The US Dept. of Energy has stated that if we fully harvested wind in just 3 of the 50 states, we could generate enough energy to power the entire country.

-Wave/Tidal power is estimated to have the potential to produce 50% of the world's energy usage alone.

-An MIT study concluded that there is currently 13,000 zeta jewels available in the earth, with 2,000 of that being easily harnessed.  Keeping htis in mind, the total energy consumption of the entire earth is only 0.5 ZJ.  This means that Geothermal energy could produce enough energy to power our planet for 4,000 years.

i followed all of that except


what the fuck is a zeta jewel?

Oops. It's Joule not Jewel. My bad for the confusion. I can be a bit dyslexic at times ;)

A Joule is a measurement of energy.  A Zeta Joule is 1,021 Joules I believe.  All of the countries in the entire world only use a half of a single Zeta Joule. As I stated before, there is an immediate 2,000 easily accessible Zeta Joules through the earth's heat.  On top of this 4000 years worth of energy, geothermal energy renews itself, making it a sustainable, renewable source of energy to power our future. Combine that with Solar, Wind, and different forms of Water energy sources and we can have 100% of our energy sources not just be sustainable, but infinite.

aaaaaaah joule. now i follow

lol gas prices are 1.47 for unleaded where I live, so i don't give a flying shit

however, i was hoping that the Alaska drilling thing would have to be a last resort, seeing as how his "plans" never really seem to have any planning at all...

kinda like a cheeseburger without cheese lmao

See the problem is that the technology might exist but it is not ready.

We have all been lied to as the readiness of these technologies. I can go through every one if you want but I will just touch on the major ones.

-Wind-
Measuring the total energy in 1 windy state and saying that 100% of that energy is harvestable is not correct. Even if a wind turbine was placed everywhere in that state there are energy losses present. Such as friction losses and also transmission losses. A significant ammount of energy is lost in just sending the power over great distances. Room temperature super conductors could solve this problem but they are decades away. In fact wind energy in a lot of cases runs at a net loss in that the energy used in production, construction, maintenance, and transmission is less than what is produced. Only the newest most massive and expensive turbines are to our benifit and they have to be placed in ideal location like North Dakota. Sorry East coast but your too far from these places and the transmittion losses are too great.

I have to go right now but I will touch on solar, geothermal, corn, tides and any other ones I think of later but the sad truth is that at their current level of technology none of these technologies are the end all solution.

"drill baby drill"

-Solar-

Solar is the future but it is not there yet. This really is the solution solar panels have a greater efficiency than many thought possible. However several problems still exist.
1) its not always sunny, and in many places cloud cover can last for weeks.
2) solar panels are fragile and hard to build. They are technically challenging to reproduce.
3) a solar panel is only efficient if it is 100% exposed. That is that if say a leaf lands on a solar panel it looses a large portion of its power making ability.
4) You need to store the energy made during the day that means batteries which are far more harmful to the environment than oil.
5) They are not economically feasible. The rate of return is too low compared to conventional technologies. That is that there is no incentive to install solar technology. at 5 dollar a gallon oil were talking but you fools fell right into our plan and no one is worrying about alternative energy.

You've got to realize though that you're talking about these technologies in their current state. Most arent economically feasible due to the ridiculous cutbacks and incentives that the government showers the oil industry with. Give those sames cuts and incentives to alternatives and I have no doubt the cost effectiveness will become better.

Our government always says its trying to promote green technologies and get our nation off oil, but until the incentives on the oil industry end, its a fucking sham. You're not going to see any change until that happens.

The government does not afford any incentives to oil companies. In fact there are many regulations on oil production. This is a complete myth. There might be some incentives as far as drilling locations go. And there is some tax credits to try to produce unconventional reservoirs but this is not the issue.

There is an extremely large amount of energy stored in a barrel of oil and this is what keeps it competitive.

This is capitalism... for now ha, the government does not decide what energies succeed. If solar really worked it would be used. In fact the government gives a lot of money to wind power just to make it economical.

and your right in their current state, new technology and advancements could change the economics.

Dude, no.

(http://cleantech.com/news/node/554)

Greenpeace believes Europeans spend about $10 billion or so (USD equivalent) annually to subsidize fossil fuels. By contrast, it thinks the American oil and gas industry might receive anywhere between $15 billion and $35 billion a year in subsidies from taxpayers.

Why such a large margin of error? The exact number is slippery and hard to quantify, given the myriad of programs that can be broadly characterized as subsidies when it comes to fossil fuels. For instance, the U.S. government has generally propped the industry up with:

• Construction bonds at low interest rates or tax-free
• Research-and-development programs at low or no cost
• Assuming the legal risks of exploration and development in a company's stead
• Below-cost loans with lenient repayment conditions
• Income tax breaks, especially featuring obscure provisions in tax laws designed to receive little congressional oversight when they expire
• Sales tax breaks - taxes on petroleum products are lower than average sales tax rates for other goods
• Giving money to international financial institutions (the U.S. has given tens of billions of dollars to the World Bank and U.S. Export-Import Bank to encourage oil production internationally, according to Friends of the Earth)
• The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve
• Construction and protection of the nation's highway system
• Allowing the industry to pollute - what would oil cost if the industry had to pay to protect its shipments, and clean up its spills? If the environmental impact of burning petroleum were considered a cost? Or if it were held responsible for the particulate matter in people's lungs, in liability similar to that being asserted in the tobacco industry?
• Relaxing the amount of royalties to be paid (more below)

Case in point, the government supports the oil industry in lui of giving the money to alternatives. Which would be fine, except they purport to want to change our nations energy dependence, and its impossible with the current state of things. Blaming alternatives themselves is bullshit, the real reason why all of these have yet to succeed is because the government is still under the heel of Big Oil and Big Agro, and they wont change ships until the mast finally dissapears.

You may be right about the Wind energy inefficiencies and downfalls but that doesn't mean we shouldn't "heavily invest" in it to improve it's efficiency for the future.  Andyou are wrong on the solar, new technologies do not require constant sun to produce energy and are not as fragile as it used to be.  There is a company called Solyndra that produces photovoltaic tubes (i.e. spherical) so that it can absorb the sun's energy all day rather than just when it is over head. They also claim that they can even gernerate energy when there is cloud cover, maybe not excessive cloudcover, but it's a start. These new tubular solar panels are also aerodynamic so they do not need to be weighed down to protect them from the wind, thus, saving a lot of money on material costs.  The original ones were rather fragile and would often break in hail storms, but the compnay has improved the durability and now do demonstrations where they throw softballs as hard as they can at an individual panel and it does no damage to it.  This is just an example of one company.  As you can see, the technology IS there.  We just fail to pour the proper resources into it.

The point is, where one form of sustainable energy fails, another one picks up it's slack.  If it is blue sky with no wind, then the solar panels come into play.  If it is heavily cloudy with a long-term low front moving in, thus creating a lot of wind, then the solar panels will not work but the wind turbines will.  In any form of weather, hydro will be able to produce energy because the ocean is in constant motion.  There are also ways to create wave and tidal power without harming the native wildlife.  Geothermal energy still needs development, which i'm sure you will use as a counterpoint. I agree. So lets stop investing so much of our money in war and drilling for oil and pour it (pun intended) into the development of a  cleaner future.  We will most likely have to make sacrifices in able to achieve this but in the long run, the benefits will outweigh the temporary sacrifices we had to make in order to achieve a clean tomorrow. I'm sorry you are so entrenched in your belief that oil is the only and best way to currently power our lives.  That is false.  Currently, it is just the only way we know that works because it's had so much money invested in it in the past by companies and politicians blinded by the thought of money.  It's time for this to end as it is destroying our earth, hindering our economy, and creating wars and genocide throughout the world. 


Wtf do you mean by "you fools fell right into our plan"?  I sincerely hope that was a joke.  What do you gain by confusing people into allowing the oil tycoons to continue to destroy the environment in exchange for some money in your pocket?  Temporary satisfaction?  Oh, that'll be great when nature decides to bite us back in the ass... oh wait, it already is.   And don't give me that "drilling only causes minimal environmental damage" bullshit.  Oil companies intentionally pollute the environment in order to cut costs.  Look at what Chevron did in the Amazon and how poor a job the clean up after the Valdeez oil spill clean up was if you don't believe me.