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US strategic oil fields that Go undrilled
Investor's Business Daily
Energy: Hillary Clinton wants to tap the U.S. petroleum stockpile to increase supply and lower the price. Brazil has found a better way — drill for more. And what about that strategic reserve her husband vetoed — ANWR? On the night last week that light sweet crude and home heating oil set records of $98.62 a barrel and $3.11 a gallon on the New York Merc, Mrs. Clinton urged the president "to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Northwest Heating Oil Reserve to send a signal to the market and ease concerns about low crude oil stocks that are driving prices higher."
As much as we welcome the senator's recognition that the law of supply and demand is not some right-wing fantasy, she ignores the fact that she and her party have worked mightily to restrict that supply. As for the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, it didn't get there by magic. Somebody had to drill for it. In 1995, co-President William Jefferson Clinton vetoed a budget bill containing language that would have opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration.
"This budget," he warned, "would give oil companies the right to drill in the last unspoiled arctic wilderness in Alaska." Horrors! He also threatened to veto any bill containing similar language. If President Clinton in 1995 hadn't blocked drilling in a few thousand acres of frozen tundra in an area the size of South Carolina, ANWR would today be delivering more than a million barrels of American oil daily.
The irony is that in claiming to protect "unspoiled arctic wilderness," he ignored the environmental and energy success at Prudhoe Bay. Lying 60 miles west of ANWR, Prudhoe Bay was another development that was supposed to yield merely a six-month supply of crude while ravaging the environment. But Prudhoe recently observed its 30th anniversary, during which it has delivered its 15 billionth barrel of oil. At its peak, it produced 2 million barrels a day as the migrating caribou herds increased in size.
John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, reminds us that more than 131 billion barrels of oil and more than 1,000 TCF (trillion cubic feet) of natural gas are ready to be exploited in and around the U.S. At nearly $100 a barrel, that's a lot of national treasure being squandered. Much of these oil and gas resources — 78 per cent of the oil and 62 per cent of the gas — are on federal lands and in coastal waters, locked up under frozen tundra and the Outer Continental Shelf. What kind of signal, Sen. Clinton, does the market receive by keeping such huge reserves off-limits?
Cuba recently granted China's state-owned oil company permission to explore for oil within 50 miles of the Florida coast on Cuba's side of the Florida Strait. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the North Cuban Basin, accessible from U.S. waters, may contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil. If our enemies can drill there, why can't we?
The U.S. is in fact the only major industrial country that is not actively seeking and exploiting its domestic energy reserves. While we sit on our hands, countries such as Brazil know how to achieve energy independence.
Yes, Brazil has a robust ethanol program, as advocates of that alternative energy regularly point out. But the country still explores for oil. And last Thursday, it announced a major discovery in waters off Rio de Janeiro. The Tupi field is estimated to contain as many as 8 billion barrels of recoverable light crude.
Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, created after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, contains 695 million barrels of oil. ANWR is estimated to contain 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to the Energy Information Administration. How about opening up that strategic reserve, Sen. Clinton?
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 17 December 2007