Drill Here. Drill Now. I Don't Care What We Pay.

I just took $60 to the gas station. That used to get me three tanks of gas. Today, it didn't even fill my tank. Does that seem right to you? It doesn't to almost a million Americans who have signed the Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less petition. Everybody is whining about the price of fuel and screaming about an energy crisis, politicians included. As you hopefully know, President Bush has beseeched Congress to not renew the annual ban on offshore drilling, ANWR, and oil shale. Congressional Democrats' response lacked enthusiasm to say the least. Their first reaction is that there are currently 68 million acres currently leased offshore that are undeveloped. That is a strange number since the Mineral Management Service, who issues the leases, says they only have a total of about 43 million acres currently leased. They also mention that these 43 million acres produced about 492 million barrels of oil and almost three trillion cubic feet of natural gas. There are a total of 1.76 billion acres on the Outer Contenintal Shelf. The MMS estimates 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of gas are waiting for us to pillage. See this map for areas where leases are allowed. Now, I know better than to use facts to argue with liberals. Let me take a more nonsensical approach. Let's say a lease for 1000 acres is granted to a company for drilling oil. Under that area is one large oil deposit. The company builds a drilling platform to extract the oil. This platfor covers about 1 acre. That means that we have 999 undeveloped acres in the leased area. Behold the wonderful world of liberal energy policy. Another common liberal talking point is that we can't drill our way out of this problem. Even with more drilling, they say we would drop the price of gasoline a mere two cents in the next ten years. Before I proceed, ignore the politics and think for yourself for just a second. Ask yourself one simple question: Does that seem right to you? The Outer Continental Shelf has an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil. ANWR has an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil. Total estimates of the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil. I'm bad at math, but that sounds like a lot of oil. Get your calculators out and tell me what that sum would be. Is it a lot? Does it sound like two cents worth of gas? The real bottom line of this post is that I don't care if we actually pay more for gas if we drill here and now. It's not the price at the pump that drives me to support domestic oil production. I support it because it's the right thing to do for our country, not because I want to save $50 per month on my fuel expenses. I am willing pay another $50 per month just so the gas I buy was pumped from American sources and refined in American refineries.