U.S. Exporting 9 Times More than Potential Offshore Resources

As the GOP mantra echoes across the hall where John McCain accepts his nomination, the sound you hear is “DRILL DRILL DRILL” and “END DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL“.

The Facts that prevail here are stunningly deceptive. We are currently exporting more than we intend to drill, and the prevailing administration and its party, have utterly failed us. Energy as an investment for many producers has the mechanism of sale by bid, meaning that the highest bid gets the oil, as opposed to the highest local need gets the oil. The time may be near to impose some level of regulation.

Article: http://ctngreen.com/2008/oct/?page=94 for graph of the relative value derived from drilling offshore.

Markey to Bush: Keep Our Oil At Home
WASHINGTON (August 19, 2008) – Even as calls to open up large swaths of America’s offshore areas to oil drilling continue, America is setting new records for exports of domestically produced oil and petroleum products. Today Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, sent a letter to the president asking him to explore stopping the exports of U.S. oil to foreign nations.

“Mr. President, keep our oil at home. While American families have been shelling out big bucks at the pump, we’ve been shipping American oil and petroleum products abroad to places like China, Singapore and Venezuela,” said Markey. “If we want to help America become energy independent, we should first look to American oil being shipped to foreign countries.”

According to the letter, the United States’ record export levels this year amounts to nearly 10 percent of all the oil the United States consumes every day. U.S. oil exports increased to 1.806 million barrels a day in May 2008 — the most recent month for which data is available — from last year’s average export level of 1.433 million barrels a day of oil and petroleum products. In addition, the United States reached the highest level of oil exports in our nation’s history in February of this year.

These oil exports far exceed projections for oil from offshore drilling. The letter notes that projections from the Department of Energy for offshore drilling say that “at the height of production, in 2030, increased offshore drilling would produce only 200,000 barrels per day – one ninth the amount of oil we currently send to foreign countries every day.” The letter also notes that, at the current export rate, by the time the first barrel of oil could be produced from increased offshore drilling, America would have already exported the equivalent of nearly 40 percent of the oil that is projected to lie beneath protected areas offshore.

“This is yet more proof that there are countless efforts America could make to increase our energy independence that dwarf any results from offshore drilling,” continued Markey. “We should be stopping oil exports and increasing the production of renewable energy and plug-in hybrid vehicles, not depend on Big Oil’s offshore drilling pipeline dream.”

The Official document: http://globalwarming.house.gov/tools/2q08materials/files/0144.pdf

An excerpt direct from the Republican Platform Statement (PDF)

“If we are to have the resources we need to achieve energy independence, we simply must draw more American oil from American soil. We support accelerated exploration, drilling and development in America, from new oilfields off the nation’s coasts to onshore fields such as those in Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska. The Green River Basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming offers recoverable shale oil that is ready for development, and most of it is on federal lands…”

Hello? Drill and export is essentially the market solution desired by Oil Companies at the expense of the US Citizen.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/19/johnmccain.uselections2008?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews