Letters to the Editor
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Buddy, can you spare $1.2 trillion?
Since we're talking about cost...the great new cover story in Rolling Stone says that Bush, between 2001 and 2005, borrowed more money than the 42 presidents before him COMBINED. Now, that's not adjusting for inflation, of course, but even so. Holy shiite. My great-grandkids are going to be paying off this madness. Just one more body to lay at the feet of the nation's worst Resident.
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Death Toll
Actually, the total number of troops killed in Iraq is well over 2,400. The number reported does not include the number of troops who died from their wounds after combat. The real death toll, from what I understand well exceeds 5,000.
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Isn't refining capacity still the issue?
A million here, a million there may have some effect, but hasn't it been well-established by now that the real reason for the demand spikes is that oil companies purposely reduced refining capacity in the 90s? Can someone please ask the reporter to inquire about that issue?
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or the 100K Iraqians
but who cares about them..we don't have to worry about those lives
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NORTH SLOPE OIL SPILL
I'm suprised that Salon hasn't picked up on the North Slope oil spill which occured earlier this year. It was the largest in North Slope history. George and the Republicans want us to trust them and the oil companies with exploration and production in an untouched wilderness even after they spilled on the North Slope.
It doesn't make much sense to me but then again a lot of things that the Republicans have been doing the past few years don't make sense to me.
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Not quite the same...
As much as I'm against ANWR drilling and the war in Iraq, I think it's important to note a key distinction between Iraqi oil and ANWR oil. A million barrels of pre-war Iraqi oil would not go entirely to the US, whereas a million barrels of ANWR oil would.
Not that I disagree with the point that's being made, but that is an important distinction to concede.
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"American oil" vs. "Iraqi Oil"
That's a false comparison. All oil ends up on the world market, regardless of where it's drilled from. It's more convenient to keep the oil within our own borders after we purchase it from ourselves at $73 a barrel, but the oil companies who own it aren't going to give us a discount on it, just because we own the land that it came out of.
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ALAKSA OIL
Were you all aware that we export some of our Alaska oil to Japan? Yep. So Don't believe for one second that all the oil drilled in ANWR would go to Americans. That's naiive.
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Ok, but...
Tim, I'm generally in line with you. That being said, I think you're a little off base here. I don't support the Iraq war and never did (I was actually in living in France at the time of the invasion) but Iraq's oil production does not match up to local oil production does it?
I certainly think that it would be better for us and the world if those million barrels a day were coming from a local production facility than from an aggressive and oppositional dictatorship.
I am not taking into account the environmental costs in Alaska or the human costs in Iraq, but your cold calculations don't ring especially true here.
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Previous post
Please forgive the lousy spelling! I should be more careful in my haste to add my 2 cents worth....
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The comparison is valid...
...if only because nothing within the realm of the oil industry and its official business doctrine of distortion and obfuscation really allows for apples-to-apples correlation. They like it that way.
It's what enables them to blame foreign oil supplies for gas spikes instead of their own purposeful reduction in refining capacity.
It's what enables them to lobby IN FAVOR OF strict refining rules in California (as strategized in several memos that are now public) to keep competition out, and then blame environmentalists for demaining those unreasonable refining rules when people ask why the refining capacity is so inadequate.
It's what enables them to accept billions of tax dollars to address the "refining problem" that they themselves have created and perpetuate.
Trying to be fair in this comparison certainly has any oil company execs who might have read the War Room comments today (which is almost certainly 0) flat on their asses, laughing hysterically. Being fair doesn't mean squat in the battle of tragically uninformed public opinion...
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Re: Iraq, ANWR and the price of gas back home
"the total cost of the war, including the long-term care that will be required for its veterans, could reach a staggering $2 trillion.
Even at $3.29 a gallon, that would buy a lot of gasoline."
Yeah. That is enough to buy a million barrels of gas (not crude oil), at $3.29 per gallon, every day for thirty years. (ANWR's output was expected to fill U.S. demand for about six months.) Someone needs to talk to Mr. Bush about the cost/benefit side of his war.
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A long time ago ...
I know it was a long time ago, but wasn't one of the reasons we went to Iraq to secure the oil supply? Why don't we pass a law to open up Iraq to oil drilling. They could use the money to defend and rebuild Iraq. Does it occur to anyone that we are paying Haliburton billions of dollars to NOT pump oil in Iraq so the oil industry can rake in extra billions of dollars if profits? Was one of the reasons for having Haliburton shut down Iraqi oil production to force us to open up ANWR ?
Let's have a little accountability from the Bush administration.
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military uses 1-2million barrels in Iraq war
In addition to the higher oil output Iraq would have had if we didn't invade them, I believe I've also read that our military uses over 1 million barrels/day which must be imported into Iraq.
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Here's what you need to know about the ANWR
Get a good thematic map of the areas of the North Slope of Alaska that shows the geopolitical boundries of the ANWR and previously developed oil and gas plays like Prudhoe Bay. They are available on the web from several sources including the State of Alaska and the USGS. Google everything you can find with combinations of the keywords ANWR, Alyeska Pipeline, Prudhoe Bay etc.
I have done so. You may not reach the same conclusions I did, but here's some things the average American doesn't know or even care about. (According to me).
The existing Alyeska Pipeline is now 31 years old. According to the very complete Alyeska website, the pipe is running at 100 percent of capacity 24/7 except when they run a "pig" through the pipe to check for cracks, corrosion and other internal deterioration.
And there is deterioration. Crude oil, even the sweetest and purest in the world contains corrosive hydrogen sulfide. So like the blood vessels of an 89 year-old man, the walls of the 48" diameter Alyeska pipe are getting thinner each passing year, eaten away from inside by the corrosive HS, and by the shear scouring action of fluid erosion. The pipe is not straight. Every time the liquid meets an elbow in the pipe, the fluid goes from a laminar flow to a turbulent flow. This turbulence, this friction, is eating at every joint of the pipe for the 800 mile ride the crude oil takes from Prudhoe to Valdez.
What I'm saying folks, is that the Alyeska Pipeline is coming to the end of its life.
You never see anything about this on any television network or cable show dealing with our energy crisis. Not CNN, not Fox, Not even PBS. Nobody is talking about this.
They should.
Because the petroleum industry doesn't want to talk about this either. It complicates things for them. They are pushing to extract resources from the ANWR, but what they hate talking about is what's going to happen when the wells come on line.
First off, Pruhoe Bay is not done yet. After all the crude oil in the easy pay sands has been sucked out, they can go back for the next 30 years using an acid fracturing process and compressed steam to squeeze lots of oil out of those depleted fields. So the Alyeska pipe is going to be at 100 percent capcity until it finally hemmorages like that 89 year old man, and dies.
Another thing to contemplate is the fluid dynamics of liquids. I like to use the garden hose analogy. If you run water through a garden hose (Alyeska's garden hose) at 100 percent capacity, you cannot get any more volume to come out the end of the hose if you bring in a second line upstream (the additional input from a second pipe or pipes coming in from ANWR 200 miles east).
You know what this means? A NEW PIPELINE!!! Yep. Halliburton (Dick Cheney's boys) is already drawing up engineering plans for an Alyeska replacement pipe. Bigger, better, stronger, and able to transport not only crude oil, but the abundant natural gas byproducts that are now being flared off as waste at Prudhoe Bay, adding to the destruction of the ozone.
Now here's another conclusion that I draw: We owe the Chinese Communists about what? Two trillion? Who knows? The OMB won't give accurate figures. But anyway, the closest American refineries to the Port of Valdez are in California. They are running at 100 percent capacity also.
Where is all this oil and gas going to go when the ANWR comes on line in about 2012 or 2015? Why, it's going straight to the deep water ports of China, which are less distance than California from Valdez. America will pay off its huge debt to China using American oil and gas from Alaska and you will never ever run a drop of it through your car's engine!
So here's the conclusion. 1. New Halliburton ANWR super pipe. 2. American oil going to China. 3. At least 15 to 20 years before ANWR comes on line.
Any questions?