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What your basicly looking at is hospice care for the economy.
Having a petrochemical based economy was something that we knew couldn't last due to the limited ammount of petrochemicals in existance.
The petrochemical based economy is dieing and there is very little that can be done except try and ease the pain of the patient.
So why not drill everywhere and anywhere, it's not going to change the final diagnosis, but it might make the patient fell better on the way to their final destination.
The real question is, do we want the patient to live, or do we want the patient just to die with dignity. If we want the patient to live, we really should try to get it off of petrochemcials and into a more stable energy lifestyle.
In that case we probably don't want more oil until it's really really necessary (like when we realize it's going to take more energy to get us to a point where we need less energy). At the moment, a temporary speculative boom, or a current capacity use of oil, is not a cause for more drilling.
We'll probably need that oil a lot more later, and will be glad we saved it for a rainy day. And if we do find a way out of our petrochemical based economy earlier than we thought, well then at least we didn't ruin the coast line with a bunch of oil rigs.
