This idea was started by Jessi at Wake Up America. It will appear here every Tuesday (whether I’m here or not; the only difference is I won’t be able to update the current gas price while on vacation) until Congress wakes up and allows a lot more domestic drilling (I’m not talking about just ANWR, or just off the Florida coast where Cuba, Red China and Brazil are preparing to drink our milkshake, or just the shale fields in the Rockies).
My Gas Price (south suburban Milwaukee County, Wisconsin): $4.199/gallon
I would have taken the tack of previous Drill Here, Drill Now Tuesdays, but there’s a few fresh developments:
– Doubleplusundead is reporting that The Gang of 10 16 that want to drill just in the hurricane-prone portions of the eastern Gulf and southeast Altantic is now the Gang of 20. That, combined with the rest of the ‘Rats opposed to plentiful energy independence, is enough to shove through a horrid “compromise”.
In case you haven’t noticed, even as the price of crude has fallen, the price of gasoline has exploded because almost all of the production is concentrated in a hurricane-prone area. To allow drilling only in an area that suffers from the same deficiency, sometimes at the same time, as the western Gulf of Mexico is beyond idiotic.
– The House of Representatives is working on a bill that is even worse than the Gang of 10 16 20. I missed most of the “debate”, but Shoebox e-mailed me with news that, despite earlier claims that the ‘Rat House leadership would allow an introduction of a serious drilling alternative, they rammed their no-drill plan through with no allowed changes.
The Institute for Energy Research (with a hat-tip to the gang at National Review Online) outlines just how bad this is: a permanent ban on drilling out to 50 miles including a fresh ban off of Alaska’s coast (which locks up most of the known reserves), no drilling at all in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (after all, the ‘Rats have to continue to allow their Communist allies to drink our Florida milkshake), a state right of refusal out to 100 miles with no revenue sharing that might sway a state to allow drilling at that distance, and a further socialistic meddling in the energy market. In exchange, it allows drilling beyond 100 miles, where there is no existing infrastructure (after all, the ‘Rats have to keep their promise of no relief for 10 years) and somewhere between 2 billion and 4 billion barrels of recoverable oil (when a full lifting of the offshore ban would bring 18 billion barrels of recoverable oil to market).
Given that, if nothing is done in the next 15 days, the entirety of the offshore drilling ban expires, it is time to urge the Senate to do nothing with regards to drilling. That’s right; I want gridlock. Tell your Senators and Congressmen, GRIDLOCK!
Revisions/extensions (3:56 pm 9/16/2008) – Corrected the current status of the House No-Drill bill.
