Ellimem wrote a blog about offshore drilling and this is my response. I figured it will probably be to long to fit in the comments section and I might as well get more Ereps this way sooo...

Ellimem and many other other americans have bought into the propaganda the oil companies are spewing. I get annoyed every time the congress holds one of these joke "investigations" into oil companies record profits because all that happens is they give oil bigwigs an platform to further their deciet of the american people. It's always "get rid of our taxes" or "more offshore drilling." Things that truthfully won't help anybody's pocketbook except their own.

What ellimem forgot to mention in his blog is that oil companies have plenty of offshore drilling leases that they refuse to develop already. Why should we open up protected areas when we already have sites available to increase the supply which are untapped? That's why our first action, rather than giving oil companies everything that they are asking for, should be a use it or lose it policy that requires oil companies to develop the sites that they have within 5 years or lose their lease. Once they do that I'll start listening to ideas about opening new areas for development. Someone needs to put a fire to their feet on this issue.

Next thing we need to do is tap into the strategic oil reserve that we have been sitting on all these years. This would have an immediate effect on the price of oil in america. I know the logic behind the reserve (One day the Middle East will run out of oil and then we can have all the power and stick it to them like they have been doing to us for all these years) but the fact is that the Middle East will not likely run out of oil in our lifetime and by the time they do we will have alternate energy sources anyways. The strategic oil reserve gets more and more irrelevant every day as we make strides concerning alternative energy.

Finally, we need to do more to look into alternative energy sources. I think this is the one thing everybody agrees on. Look a T. Boone Pickens, A former oil man investing in wind and solar energy. Why spend 20 years to develop a soon to be irrelvant energy source (all the while desroying our environment) when we could spend 10 years developing alternative energy and set the pace for the world. I don't believe in a "gas tax holiday" because we use those taxes for vital  infrstructure needs and especially because it carries no obligation to lower the price of fuel. There is nothing keeping the oil companies from simply taking the money saved from taxes and padding their profit margin causing oil futures to go up even more. I think we should divert more of those taxes towards research and development into alternative energy. 

We need to demand more from the oil companies. There was a time when people had a sense of decency, compassion and love of country. Today we are at the cancer stage of corporate growth and we give them way too much credit. Big Oil doesn't give a damn about your "pain at the pump" they will run the U.S. into the ground and move headquarters to Dubai, China, or India leaving us to pick up the pieces. Why stand up for people that would do that? 

-M