I can't see how drilling in Alaska helps reduce our dependency on oil. US uses over 7 billion barrels of oil per year, so we're talking about maybe 1.5 years worth of oil in ANWR.
Saladbar, I think that you are only taking into consideration our oil reserves. I was not talking about the reserves. If we were to drill for the untapped oil in areas of Alaska, it is estitmated that we could pump out about 10 billion barrells of oil. Now that might not sound like a substantial amount of oil, but if you break down the numbers and spread it out over a number of years, it could reduce America's oil imports from the middle east by about 25%.
And if we, as you said, can learn to reduce our oil consumption by stopping the purchase of SUV's and other big gas consuming vehicles, that 25% could increase a significant amount.
The other problem is that we do NOT have enough oil refineries to produce product. In other words we do not have enough of our own refineries to convert crude oil into gasoline. On many occassions there are barges and barges with crude oil just sitting out in the ocean somewhere untouched because the refineries that we have are at capacity in converting crude oil to gasoline and heating oil. So what happens is a false demand is created for gasoline in the summer months and then a false demand for heating oil in the winter months. The refineries cannot keep up with the demand for either of these products because there are not enough refineries out there to take that crude oil that is sitting on these barges and convert it to heating oil or gasoline. If there were more off shore refineries in this country, then the barrels of crude oil sitting out there on those barges would be converted more speedily thus eliminating this false demand for those products which in turn causes the cost of gas and heat oil to go lower.
The lack of refineries, the use of large SUV's and gas guzzling vehicles, the untapped oil in Alaska and the manipulation of pricing by OPEC and other middle eastern oil producing companies is what contributes to the high prices that you and I are forced to pay for gasoline and heating oil.
As for the use of Diesel fuels, well we saw what happened after a few years with that plan. Diesel fuel bacame more expensive than regular gas.
Don't kid yourself. The big boys in control have all the bases covered. They'll do whatever they can to make their money.
Don Cardi
Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.
