Day two of the Congress beating up on the oil execs… too bad we don’t get enough good reporting of the execs calling out those bozos for the “obscene regulations” they’ve imposed. From Power Line, this transcript of Shell exec Hofmeister answering back
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.
And instead, we get Democrat promises to bring a “plan” to Washington in 2006 that was going to fix the energy problem. What did we get? Nothing. Oh, wait, we got $132 a barrel oil in just under three years. Good job Dems. And you Republicans aren’t any better. You’ve done nothing either. Gutless, pork addicted Congress. And I want someone to try to tell me again why John McCain is the right choice here. What does he offer me? Does he point out that government makes three time more from a gallon of gas than the oil companies do, and he’s going to fix that? Nope. What does he offer me? More of the same “windfall profits tax” bullcrap, and complaining about companies “distorting the market”. Is that leadership? Is that government enabling free markets and capitalism? Is that conservative? Give me a break.
John McCain is no better than Leahy. Senator Leahy accuses Bush and his buddies in the oil industry of the 400% runup in oil prices. The man is a complete tinfoil hatted lunatic, if he really believes that. George Bush doesn’t have that kind of power. Neither do the group of oil execs the Judiciary Committee is pounding on right now. Maybe 40 or 50 years ago that was true, when American international oil companies controlled the industry, but it is no longer the case. Foreign countries own and control their own oil, a fact these Senators don’t seem to understand. Nor do they seem to understand that regulating and taxing the oil companies in America into submission is NOT going to solve the world energy crisis.
We need calm, intelligent reasoning on this issue, because it might be the biggest threat to our economy that we face. It is something that will not be solved by partisanship, environuttery, or political grandstanding. It isn’t going to be solved by socialist style regulation and control of an industry and a resource, as proposed by the Democrats and way too many Republicans. And it certainly isn’t going to be solved by browbeating a couple of oil execs on the tv during an election year. Been there, done that. That isn’t leadership.
But then, there are no leaders. Whiners and finger pointers, pork specialists and empty suits. No leaders… just a pack of losers, hell bent on failing.
And the people are too busy watching dancing and idols, and being fooled by a candidate who needs a free rock concert to draw a big crowd.
We are so screwed.
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