offshore drilling? Options

[brooklyneast05]

offshore oil drilling is the hot topic at the moment it seems. are you in support of it or are you against it? why or why not? is offshore drilling the answer to our energy crisis?






i'm not really in favor of lifting the ban on it because i don't think it's the answer. i don't think it's going to help that much. i think we need to move away from not only foreign oil dependency, but oil dependency in general. i know a ton of people are in support of it, but i really only think they are because they somehow believe that this going to make their gas cheaper. i don't think this will significantly decrease gas prices.

[Reidar]

The point about the physical commodity reaching consumers is moot when the main reason driving the case is for the anticipation of future supply to drive up investments, thereby stimulating the market. Moreover, the oil companies having leases to drill doesn't mean that they will, if the chance of the outcome is worth less than the means it takes to incorporate millions of dollars into a site that will produce mediocre results. This is why there's an incentive to obtain the ability to explore more proficient areas.

Also, this is a deceptively-phrased point:

In time and theory, having proper air tire pressure will save more money and gas than offshore drilling.

"In time and theory" is not amenable. If it took a thousand years for the amount saved on inflating your tires to equal the net gain of drilling, you'd still be able to omit the fact that it would be an unrealistic, inapplicable span of "time", as long as it fits within whatever constitutes "time and theory". It would be the same as saying that you could get the same amount of petroleum as an oil well by just using a spoon.

I actually favor Obama over McCain (although I'm extremely discontent with both candidates), but he never actually defends the portion, "But we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling...". Like your assertion, this could technically be true, just across an absurd amount of years. That would be an obvious trick of semantics, so rather than fall back on that as a crutch in defense against GOP ridicule, he commits a straw man by extrapolating merely on how tire maintenance would conserve gas mileage, period, as if anybody ever denied that.