Their lame excuse oil industry is already in possession of 68 million acres of oil leases and that Big Oil should drill away on those before they come around asking the federal government for any more land or ocean floor. Why? They haven't found any yet on that land and Oil prices are approaching FIVE DOLLARS A GALLON. And what happens in winter when prices are hight and people start having to warm their houses? Of course the democratic congress doesn't care they have low mortgage rates thanks to VIP Countrywide Finance deals.
Read some of their statements Below and you can be disgusted by the Democratic Partisanship:
Here is Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts :And you know, today is an historic day. The president has decided to take out some of the oldest ideas which the oil and gas industry have had for destroying the most pristine wilderness and shoreline that we have in the United States. After eight years, President Bush and Dick Cheney have turned the GOP into the "Gas and Oil Party." That's the legacy that they are going to leave.
Even though there is still 68 million acres of land that they have under lease that they could drill on, they have decided rather than drilling there, they want to drill where we want, as a nation, to protect because of the sacred nature of that land, which is where our beaches and our pristine wilderness areas are.
And what we're going to do, Mr. (Rahm) Emanuel, Mr. (Nick) Rahall, Mr. (Maurice) Hinchey and the Democratic Party is going to do, is we're going to give them a chance in the White House to put their money where their mouth is. We're going to give them a chance to impose fees on the oil industry on the public lands where they do not drill, where the American people have already given them an opportunity to drill. And we will increase the fees as the years go by, because otherwise, they will have wound up warehousing where the oil is in the United States that the American people, the Democratic Party, everyone wants them to drill, but they're refusing to drill, and at the same time, they're insisting that we should go to places that should be preserved forever.
The oil industry has argued that it doesn't produce oil on much of the land and ocean floor it has leased from the federal government because there often isn't enough energy in those areas to make it profitable to do so.
Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, put forward the argument on Fox News Sunday just days ago:
CAVANEY: Well, we are developing. And there's a big misunderstanding. If they understood the industry, they would appreciate the fact that we bid for those leases competitively in the open market. We pay the government to get them.
We have to pay annual lease fees on those particular leases. And at the end of the lease term -- five years, six years, whatever it may be -- if we haven't done anything on those leases, they go back to the government to be bid again.
What's going on is they -- the first step in our industry is called exploration. In other words, the creator didn't put oil and gas on every plot of land. So we have to go and explore.
We're willing to put our capital at risk to find out whether or not there's oil and gas there. And there's been very few cases where there is oil and gas in amounts that are commercially usable. And those are the ones that you can develop.
The rest of them, why drill where you know there's no oil or gas? And let those things go back to the government.
Capitol Hill Democrats have heard these arguments but sound like they don't believe them.
This was Rep. Rahm Emanuel today from the Democrats' response to Bush.
As you know, the four of us introduced legislation last week, the use-it- or-lose-it legislation, to the oil companies as it relates to these 68 million acres and the leases that they hold on those acres to drill, and as Nick said, are equivalent of 14 years worth of consumption of oil by the United States, import and export -- imported and produced domestically, 14 years worth that they are not drilling today and leases have been issued.
We sponsored that legislation because we do believe, unlike the White House, that you have to have both a supply and a demand approach to energy policy. But when it comes to the president's approach, and the Republicans, they have a one-trick-pony approach. They've been saying this since day one. It's all about drilling.
We were the party that put together fuel efficiency standards for this country and finally passed, after 32 years of debate, that legislation. This morning Ed and I sent a letter to the president to agree with the EPA so you can accelerate the fuel efficiency standards of the auto industry... Even since we passed this legislation, you can do it faster by changing the assumptions in there. And the EPA's own study says that, and we'd hope the president would adopt what the EPA has now worked up.
At one point during press conference, Hinchey of New York seemed to veer from the Democratic talking points to suggest that U.S. refineries be nationalized.
Our Republican friends also talk about the need to, you know, set up ways in which the material can be refined; refineries. Well, do we own refineries? No, the oil companies own refineries.
Should the people of the United States own refineries? Maybe so. Frankly I think that's a good idea. Then we could control the amount of refined product much more capably that gets out on the market.
When it came time for reporters to ask questions, a reporter jumped on this:
Q I've got a question about the issue of -- you mentioned the issue of nationalizing refineries and having nationally owned refinery capacity. A lot of other countries have nationalized their oil industry. You mentioned that the oil and gas companies may not want to drill on these lands, so that they can take advantage of ever- higher gas prices. Is there any thought to having bills that would nationalize some of these refineries or start a national oil company?...
... REP. HINCHEY: Yeah, there's thought going on about this. Frankly, this is something that I think is essential. And I think it's only a matter of time before it takes place. I think that the -- we'll -- what we have to do has to be in the interest of the American people, primarily, basically, in the interest of the American people, not in the interest of some major corporations. And the determination as to how much of this very important material gets refined, and consequently out on the market, is in the hands of the oil companies. And they just do. They make those decisions based upon their efforts to drive up the price as high as they can and keep it as high as they can for as long as they can.
So I think that this is something that this Congress should be thinking about. And certainly it's something that I'm thinking about, and I think that there are a few others already in the Congress who are thinking about it as well.
REP. EMANUEL: Let me just add one thing -- and then I you know have a question, and then we got to get going -- is as it relates to the refinery issue, there's been a tremendous amount of incentives, tax and otherwise, given to the oil and gas companies to expand or build new ones.
As I -- now I'm a little on weaker grounds. I think it's been, what, 20 years since a new refinery has been built.
REP. : Yeah.
REP. EMANUEL: And then clearly, the need is there. They haven't met that. And I think whether you support or don't nationalization, the question is what it is going to take to get the energy industry, given that we've given both direct and otherwise assistance, to build more refining capacity.
Source: Swamppolitics.com
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