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i'm a little perplexed by this, and think it's a boneheaded thing to do. the strategic oil reserves are supposed to be for emergencies, or when there's an interruption in the supply of u.s. oil. this fits neither scenario, and i think, sets a bad precedent. and why now, when oil prices have already been on the decline? if you want to help lower the cost of oil, why not allow for more drilling, lifting the defacto ban he has in place? this is 2 days worth of consumption he's releasing, and will have no long term impact. so now the SPR is used to manipulate the price of oil? purely political move imo.

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Drilling and doing business with people who dont hate us is the best thing we can do.

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i think this is basically the last form of stimulus available to him.

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This is part of an international effort involving several other nations.  The stated goal is to ease any shortage caused by the 'Arab Spring,' but I also wonder if its meant as a threat to oil companies, kinda a way of telling them if they want to jack up prices we'll flood the marked and force prices through the floor.

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Originally Posted by Bryant Platt:
This is part of an international effort involving several other nations.  The stated goal is to ease any shortage caused by the 'Arab Spring,' but I also wonder if its meant as a threat to oil companies, kinda a way of telling them if they want to jack up prices we'll flood the marked and force prices through the floor.

it just doesn't make sense for US to do this. we aren't effected by the crap going on in libya. our oil supply is at current, fine. and it's not as if the prices are shooting up now. if they really wanted to be effective with this, the time to have done it was when the prices WERE starting to shoot up. but really, this constitutes a great cost to the taxpayers, for absolutely NO long term benefit. it's just bad business imo. like a PR gimmick or something.

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:

Originally Posted by Bryant Platt:
This is part of an international effort involving several other nations.  The stated goal is to ease any shortage caused by the 'Arab Spring,' but I also wonder if its meant as a threat to oil companies, kinda a way of telling them if they want to jack up prices we'll flood the marked and force prices through the floor.

it just doesn't make sense for US to do this. we aren't effected by the crap going on in libya. our oil supply is at current, fine. and it's not as if the prices are shooting up now. if they really wanted to be effective with this, the time to have done it was when the prices WERE starting to shoot up. but really, this constitutes a great cost to the taxpayers, for absolutely NO long term benefit. it's just bad business imo. like a PR gimmick or something.

If this were done a year from now, then I'd be suspecting a PR gimmick to gain face before the election, but now is far too early from that.  So as far as public perception goes, I don't see what would be to gain.  As far as the impact from libya and the several other disruptions in the Middle East, that's a big part of oil companies justification of why gas prices jumped up so quickly.  Although prices were slowly coming down by the time this decision was made, it's still about a dollar a gallon higher than it was a year ago and is still having a negativism impact on our economic recovery.  This should yield a notable short term benefit, and I think it could have some positive long term consequences.  If we can show oil producers and oil companies that we can flood markets if they abuse prices (and as such drive down their profits), then perhaps they would be more hesitant to play with prices.

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The Obama administration announced Thursday the answer to a question it hass been mulling for months: It will tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to release 30 million barrels of oil over the next 30 days.

The administration is hoping the move will lower the price of oil. While the move led to immediate declines in the short term, this move will do little to impact prices and energy security over the long term and only proves that the administration’s energy policy is a disaster. Rather than take steps to allow more domestic production, when the United States possesses tremendous energy assets, the administration is engaging in fly-by-the-seat-of-its-pants energy policy to score political points.

Indeed, amid a softening growth outlook for the U.S. economy and sagging poll numbers, the move to tap the SPR makes political sense for Obama, who is in desperate need to change the subject. But it also promises to hurt the interests of the United States, which ought to be the president’s top priority.

Rather than draw down on these limited reserves, Obama ought to speed up the red-tape-entangled permitting process for offshore drilling projects at home and increase lease sales to domestic reserves. In fact, if the president truly valued the American consumer and domestic energy security, he would never have enacted his job-crushing, energy-killing drilling moratorium in the Gulf last year – followed by a refusal to grant permits

According to the House Natural Resources Committee, the ban cost us 900,000 barrels of domestically produced oil every day – a total of about 135 million barrels, more than four times the amount the president is now sacrificing a security asset in order to tap. In this case it’s Obama’s Gulf ‘permitorium’ that constituted the real supply disruption.

There is at least one bright spot with this news from the White House: it seems that President Obama finally realizes that increased supply will bring down prices. But if President Obama really wants to see long-term energy prices decline, he must allow American energy workers to develop our billions of barrels of oil both onshore and offshore.






i mean i've read a lot of articles about this, and i just don't like it. like i said, this is a last gasp effort at stimulus; at artificially manipulating the markets. this is just more of the same thing we've seen since the recession started. governments trying to blunt the impact and prop the economy up. what's the problem? it only drags things out. we're trading short term benefits for long term repercussions. just like with the fed's failed quantitative easing programs, sure you get a short term bounce from all the extra money you're printing, but then you're left with years of inflation. it's the same thing with the housing situation that got us into the recession. sure, everyone in government and business benefitted from the artificial housing bubble created by laws meant to get more people into homes, but then when all these people couldn't afford to pay their mortgages, and the artificial bubble popped, the whole economy took a dive.

governments should stop trying to act as an economic buffer. you have to let the markets level out. by trying to encourage booms, and absorb busts, we're only making the problem worse.

and then you have people blaming the markets for all our woes? as if it's capitalism's fault? this is not capitalism, nor is it the markets' fault. it is this statist model, this big central planning mold, in which the governments of the world attempt to manage and manipulate the markets that is the problem.

this international oil release is much of the same. you will see a temporary beneficial impact, but what will the long term implications be? if anyone truly believes that this is the answer, and not increased domestic production, then...i just don't know what to say to them. all this is, is more of the same.

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You do realize the moratorium on deep water drilling was lifted a year ago, right?  

I already answered your question, twice.

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Didnt all the oil rigs and platforms hire themselves out to Brazil though?  Also, I thought (but am not sure) that only a few companies were now allowed to drill in deep water.  Not nearly as many as before.  Further, I would suggest that we aren't refining enough gasoline and were only drilling (back then) maybe 50% of what we should be.

So basically even if we can go back to drilling what we used to be drilling....we're only back to what we were during the Bush era, and prices were outrageous then.

We need to drill.  
We need 3 times as many refineries.
And we need to open up other areas of drilling like ANWAR.  Wyoming (I think) is begging the govt to allow drilling in their state.

But there again, Mark would know a lot more than I do on this.

We also need to develop more clean coal technology.
We should look further into utilizing shale-oil technology.
And though Japan has scared me off of nuclear power...it still might be worthwhile.  France seems to be doing well with it.

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Originally Posted by Bryant Platt:
You do realize the moratorium on deep water drilling was lifted a year ago, right?  

I already answered your question, twice.

of course it was, but how many new leases have been issued? answer, one. and they are so tied up in red tape that they haven't gotten into operations. as i said, it's a de facto moratorium. obama and the EPA are preventing any new drilling.

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:

And though Japan has scared me off of nuclear power...it still might be worthwhile.  France seems to be doing well with it.

yeah, so long as you don't put the reactors on friggin fault lines, next to the coast.

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:

Originally Posted by Dennis Young:

And though Japan has scared me off of nuclear power...it still might be worthwhile.  France seems to be doing well with it.

yeah, so long as you don't put the reactors on friggin fault lines, next to the coast.

Haha, yeah, PG&E tried to build a reactor on the Little Salmon Fault, which has an estimated slip rate of 5.5 mm/yr (Witter et al, 2002).  That said, they chose that site after a particularly unethical geologist tried to erase the fault (he later lost his PG license).

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Originally Posted by Bryant Platt:

That said, they chose that site after a particularly unethical geologist tried to erase the fault (he later lost his PG license).

I just have a picture in my head now of some guy in a lab coat running around the countryside with a giant pencil eraser scrubbing at the ground... :-)

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Yeah.  Why someone would want to build a nuke plant anywhere on the so-called Ring of fire is beyond me.  I would suggest not allowing any nuke plant anywhere near our Pacific coast.  I think we have 1 in Alabama.  I could envision them along the Mississippi River and other large rivers in the heartland.  But they'd have to get a handle on all this flooding.  Also maybe Texas and areas of the Gulf.

Nuclear Energy is a good idea.  But that Japanese disaster showed me what can happen if you lose control of one of those things.  Scared me to death.  Plus, imo, they would be soft targets for terrorists.  The military probably should be guarding all the plants.  (And that would be much better duty than fighting a war off in some God-forsaken desert).

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3 nuclear incidents in how long? 60 years? one without a containment shell and was built poorly (chernobyl), one that caused no harm (3 mile island) and a third that will in the long run, probably not cause too much damage. i don't think this is reason not to pursue the energy source. hell, how many coal accidents have their been?