week ending mumblings.....

So Senate Democrats want the Government to determine just how much profit is too much for oil companies and to tax them with a "windfall profits tax."
This borders on acting outside of the Constitution. It also reads like what was once done in a place called the Soviet Union.


From the Wall Street Journal....
"California won't drill for the estimated 1.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil off its coast because of bad memories of the Santa Barbara oil spill – in 1969.We won't drill for the estimated 5.6 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil in the moonscape known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) because of – the caribou.
In 1990, George H.W. Bush, calling himself "the environmental president," signed an order putting virtually all the U.S. outer continental shelf's oil and gas reserves in the deep freeze. Bill Clinton extended that lockup until 2013. A Clinton veto also threw away the key to ANWR's oil 13 years ago.Our waters may hold 60 trillion untapped cubic feet of natural gas. As in Brazil, these are surely conservative estimates."

Meanwhile, China is reportedly drilling for oil some 60 miles off the Florida coast.

From today's Boston Herald..

By Boston Herald Editorial Staff | Sunday, June 15, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Editorials

The Gallup Poll reported last month that 57 percent of the American people favor oil and gas exploration in offshore waters and wilderness areas now off-limits. But politicians of both parties seem determined to whine about oil at $130 a barrel without doing a thing to increase supply.

Environmentalists have succeeded in selling the false proposition that exploration risks unacceptable pollution.

Our nation may refuse to produce certain oil, but it produces unlimited hogwash. Large amounts of oil and natural gas are produced off Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and in state waters off California. There hasn’t been a major offshore spill since the 1969 incident off Santa Barbara, Calif., that gave birth to the modern anti-drilling movement. Hurricanes roar through production areas in the Gulf of Mexico without spilling oil.

Locked up offshore is at least an 11-year supply of crude oil plus an 18-year supply of natural gas. Every other nation with offshore reserves happily drills for them. A Chinese outfit is exploring, on behalf of Cuba, areas only 60 miles from the Florida coast.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska could contain a 17-month supply of crude all by itself. But environmentalists weep for alleged damage to caribou and other wildlife habitat. More hogwash. That refuge is the size of Maine; all production areas together would fit in Logan Airport.

Not enough oil to justify the risk? Then tackle the vast oil shale formations of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, which contain a 278-year supply that should start being profitable at $70 per barrel - also off-limits.

The Democrats are hopelessly advocating - unsuccessfully so far, thank heavens - a production-suppressing “windfall” profits tax.

Yet John McCain, while open to some offshore exploration, in January said he opposed drilling in the Arctic refuge.

Why? “As far as ANWR is concerned, I don’t want to drill in the Grand Canyon, and I don’t want to drill in the Everglades. This is one of the most pristine and beautiful parts of the world.”

This unwarranted aesthetic sensitivity helps condemn motorists to $4 gasoline. Voters will not put up with bipartisan fecklessness much longer.