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Wednesday, Democrats tried grilling oil executives on the high price of oil. Instead, oil executives turned the heat up on Democrats, with a bit of help from Republican senators like Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch. Here's a noteable quote from John Lowe, executive vice president of ConocoPhillips:
John Lowe, executive vice president of ConocoPhillips, said Congress should enact a balanced energy policy. In addition to lifting the drilling ban, such a policy could include measures to encourage alternative energy sources, remove the ethanol tariff, promote energy conservation, cut regulations around refining.
"We must work together to find a real solution," said Lowe. " U.S. oil companies should be viewed not as scapegoats, but as assets."
Peter Robinson, vice chairman of Chevron, had this to say:
"Americans need companies that can effectively compete for access to new resources. Punitive measures that weakened us in the face of international competition are the wrong measures."
The most devastating testimony, in my opinion, was given by John Hofmeister. Here's part of what he said:
"If the nation set a goal of increasing domestic production by 2 (million) to 3 million barrels a day by opening up new sources of exploration and production, we could demonstrate to the world that we are in control of our own destiny," Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister told a Senate panel today.
Granting greater accesss, Hofmeister argued, coupled with Congress' previous actions to increase use of renewable fuels and to raise fuel mileage requirements, could help avoid awkward scenarios in which U.S. leaders ask producing nations to produce more and get "an unresponsive reply."
Here's more of what he said:
While all oil-importing nations buy oil at global prices, some, notably India and China, subsidize the cost of oil products to their nation's consumers, feeding the demand for more oil despite record prices. They do this to speed economic growth and to ensure a competitive advantage relative to other nations.
Meanwhile, in the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people.
Senator Sessions, I agree, it is not a free market.
According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay or restrict natural gas projects. I urge you to review it. It is a long list. If I may, I offer it today if you would like to include it in the record.
When many of these policies were implemented, oil was selling in the single digits, not the triple digits we see now. The cumulative effect of these policies has been to discourage U.S. investment and send U.S. companies outside the United States to produce new supplies.
As a result, U.S. production has declined so much that nearly 60 percent of daily consumption comes from foreign sources.
The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it. Congress could have chosen to lift some or all of the current restrictions on exportation and production of oil and gas. Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development.
Yet Democrats refuse to believe that limiting access to oil reserves has any effect on the prices consumers pay:
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, accused the corporate executives of ignoring the plight of people suffering because of high energy prices. "Where is your corporate conscience?" he asked them.
"The issue is simple," said Leahy. "People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting."
I guess I shouldn't expect a bunch of socialists to understand principles like supply and demand. Your average high schooler probably understands those principles far better than these socialist idiots.
I'd further argue that Durbin's and Leahy's statements are designed to scapegoat the oil companies so that people won't notice that the Senate Democrats are responsible for this disaster. If they wouldn't have put so many of the oil reserves off-limits over the last 12+ years, we'd be flush for the next generation. If they didn't filibuster the drilling in ANWR; if they hadn't put the shale oil reserves of the Rockies off-limits; if they hadn't banned the building of new refineries, if they hadn't let oil companies replace wells when other wells dried up, we wouldn't be facing the problems that we're currently facing.
If you want the Democrats' Energy Bill in summary, it's this simple: they want to limit supply while taxing the oil companies. When prices spike, then Democrats act like they aren't responsible. If these dipshits don't figure supply and demand pretty soon, Democrats will be responsible for the pain we feel at the pumps. If that happens, rest assured that voters will take their anger out on them at the polls.
It's a fate they richly deserve.
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