Takes someone like T. Boone Pickens to figure it out. He's not very complimentary about our smarts: "This generation could go down as the dumbest crowd that ever came down the street! "
Except maybe a very smart Obama doing an end run around the Republicans? Read on.
NPR: This week Mr. Obama ended the ban on oil and gas drilling on some parts of the Atlantic coast and Alaska. The president's decision has staggered some of his own environmental supporters. But others say the decision is necessary to help decrease US dependence on foreign oil or win bipartisan support for an energy and climate change bill. We're joined now by T. Boone Pickens. He's chairman and CEO of BP Capital which runs related commodity and equity funds. Of course, he's earned billions in investing in oil and natural gas and has pushed for more investment in alternative energy sources. ... Mr. Pickens, thanks so much for being with us. ... There seems to be some skepticism over the past couple of days that there's a whole lot of oil to be found out there in those fields off the Atlantic coast and northern Alaska. How do you feel about that?
Pickens: Well, people would like to think that off the East coast of the US we might have another Gulf of Mexico. That's not even prospective. Geologically it doesn't have that kind of opportunity at all. I heard some guy on TV say, "It accesses you to 14 billion barrels immediately." [laughs] What's he talking about! There's not 14 billion barrels there to be accessed to [sic]. I would say that the East coast, ANWAR, and eastern Gulf of Mexico all added up ... I'd be surprised if you could get one to two million barrels a day.
NPR: Why do it, if the yield is that low?
Pickens: That would be my thought. But I don't want to shut down any drilling. You know, let's drill if that's what they want to do. That creates jobs and money spent. There'll be some oil and gas found. But you're not gonna... we're importing daily 14 million barrels of oil and we're producing 7 in the US. So we're importing two thirds of what we use. There's 85 million barrels a day produced in the world every day. We're using 21 million barrels of that. So we're using 25% of all the oil with 4% of the population. I don't think that's sustainable.
NPR: But it's interesting, Mr. Pickens. I would hazard a guess that the president and his administration are grateful to have your verbal support. But I must say, the arguments you're citing to explain your support might not give them much comfort at all.
Pickens: Well, if they're counting on solving imports... The president, he clearly said that no oil would be imported from the mid-east in 10 years. So he's very clear and he knows what he's saying. But I have not seen a plan yet that's going to solve the problem.NPR: Let me ask you also, as someone who has invested in the future of wind energies, does a decision like this -- given the scale of commitment it represents -- detract or distract from investing in alternative energies like wind?
Pickens: I don't think he said anything that hurt wind energy. You're going to have to pass some legislation to get wind and solar kicked off. It's moving slowly but there will be, I think, legislation passed this year. In the legislation I think you'll have a renewable energy standard and with that the requirement that utilities in the US have alternative supplies of power. And that would come from wind and solar. So I think that's going to move along fine. I'm not concerned about that. But if you want to reduce the 5 million barrels that we import from OPEC -- and I consider that oil to be... in some cases you're actually buying oil from the enemy. I think you're probably paying for both sides of a war. I don't think that's smart for us to do that! We do have a resource in America that we could use. If we don't get on our own resources when we have the opportunity to do it, this generation could go down as the dumbest crowd that ever came down the street!
So there you have it. We may be dumb, but we may also have the smartest and most politically fine-tuned president since... ? After all, he's taken "drill, baby, drill" away from his very determined, very vicious opposition. He's got a guarantee of oil production jobs. Those jobs would be paid for by oil exploration companies, not the gubment, so the right can't scream and yell about deficits. He's got back-up guarantees coming along on the development of alternative energy sources. All of this is moving into place six months before mid-terms.
And there's no guarantee that drilling will actually take place.
Now, if we could just quit funding the other side through our oil imports, we might also get out of the exhausting warrior pose the Republicans love so much and which has killed so many innocents.
