[Coach_Owens87]

Bush lifting the ban on domestic drilling helped it drop $16 a barrel last week so I'm sure when they start drilling it will effect it a little more than 2-4 cents. I'm not talking about just the present time either, if you don't think it will help gas prices in the future then you are out of your mind. And I wish you would stop *****ing about clean air and water, at least you don't live in China. We will always have clean water, the government wont tolerate it's citizens having contaminated water to drink. Unless, of course, you live in Elkhorn City.

The government may care about our drinking water, but mining companies dont, just go visit Steer Fork, or Montgomery creek in knott county, the water in most peoples wells is horrible, full of chemicals, but no one cares about them, but thats another story, and another thread.

I think youre the crazy one for actually thinking that bush lifting the "executive ban" on offshore drilling affected anything. Congress has to lift the ban before any drilling can actually occur, so bush's little act meant nothing, which just shows you that that The oil market is manipulated, and this is just part of it, nothing more, nothing less.


And it's not me saying that this wont affect gas prices, all the studies say so, but people on the right often forget about facts, and just move on to rhetoric.

Here is an exerpt from a report by TIME

But there's a flaw in that logic: even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer continental shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027. (If oil prices continue to skyrocket, the savings would be greater, but not by much.) Opening up offshore areas to oil exploration — currently all coastal areas save a section of the Gulf of Mexico are off-limits, thanks to a congressional ban enacted in 1982 and supplemented by an executive order from the first President Bush — might cut the price of gas by 3 to 4 cents a gallon at most, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. And the relief at the pump, such as it is, wouldn't be immediate — it would take several years, at least, for the oil to begin to flow, which is time enough for increased demand from China, India and the rest of the world to outpace those relatively meager savings. "Right now the price of oil is set on the global market," says Kevin Lindemer, executive managing director of the energy markets group for the research firm Global Insight. President Bush's move "would not have an impact."

The reason is simple: the U.S. has an estimated 3% of global petroleum reserves but consumes 24% of the world's oil. Offshore territories and public lands like ANWR that don't allow drilling may contain up to 75 billion barrels of oil, according to the EIA. That may sound like a lot, but it's not enough to make a significant difference in a world where global oil demand is expected to rise 30% by 2030, to nearly 120 million barrels a day. At best, greatly expanding domestic drilling might eventually lower the proportion of oil the U.S. imports — currently about 60% of its total supply — but petroleum is a global commodity, and the world market would soak up any additional American production. "This is a drop in the bucket," says Gernot Wagner, an economist with the Environmental Defense Fund.


3-4 cent drop in the next 30 years, wow thank you bush for doing absolutely nothing besides helping your rich oil buddies. It's nice that I can save 3 cents a gallon in 2027 while the president of BP is pulling in 12 million a year, what a wonder president we have. And they dont need to open up our waters, oil companies already have around 30 million acres of land they havent started drilling on, why not use that first?

Instead of investing money into offshore drilling, we should invest in renewable energy like wind and solar, I know that they arent ready for mass use now, but a lot of the blame can go to this adminstration, they have wasted 8 years helping big oil, while they could have been helping America find an answer to our energy problem. Oil is not the answer, but who cares when your raking in record profits.