Drill or not to Drill?

                                         The age old question!    

Will increased oil drilling help the US solve its energy crisis?

As we all know, crude oil is a fossil fuel that is found deep under the Earth's surface, trapped between the rock layers. It is formed from the remains of plants and animals in the seas, after being subjected to high temperature and pressure conditions.
We spend almost one billion dollars every day on foreign oil. Much of it is sent to regimes that are hostile to America. That is money we should be investing here. We need to do what we can to reduce the demand we have for foreign oil and increase the energy sources that we can find here at home.

After decades of dependence, it will not be easy to make the transition away from foreign oil...

If we are to have the resources we need to achieve energy independence, we simply must draw more American oil from American soil. We support accelerated exploration, drilling and development in America, from new oilfields off the nation’s coasts to onshore fields such as those in Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska. The Green River Basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming offers recoverable shale oil that is ready for development, and most of it is on federal lands.

It is estimated that there is enough oil and natural gas offshore and in non-wilderness and non-park lands in the United States - but currently ruled off-limits for production by the federal government - to fuel 50 million cars and heat nearly 100 million homes for the next 25 years…

Alaska comprises 378 million acres.  The Arctic National Wildlife Refuse consists of 19.5 million acres.  The area in question where the drilling would occur involves only 1.5 million acres and, of that, only about 2,000 acres would be utilized. ... The area designated for drilling is far from a "pristine" wonderland.  While there are parts of Alaska that are breathtakingly beautiful, ANWR is a perfect definition for "when Hell freezes over." Nobody lives there, nor would anyone want to.  Even the Russians didn't care too much for it, apparently, so they kept Siberia and sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. Underneath ANWR is a huge deposit of oil, and it would make much more sense to drill for oil there than to buy oil from OPEC.

There are different advantages and disadvantages of oil drilling in Alaska. This state and its surrounding area are rich with natural resources, such as gas and oil. In fact, it is one of the major industries of this state. Therefore drilling oil is a common business for Alaska.

The oil drilling of Alaska does not support only the state of Alaska, it provides immense amount of different kind of energies, such as hydroelectric, wind and geothermal energy for the whole of America. It can help to reduce the price of energies in America to a great extent. As Alaska has a huge amount of natural gas and oil resources, the only way to actually utilize them is to access them by drilling. Without drilling, these resources cannot be used.

There is no country in the world with richer or more varied energy resources than the United States.  Alas, there also is no country with more rigid and senseless environmental restrictions that prevent us from utilizing those resources.  If you can't drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an uninhabited, pestilence-ridden wasteland where the proposed drilling site comprises an area roughly the size of Boston Airport vis-à-vis the state of Massachusetts, where can you?

Now lets look at Texas. 
 

Since its discovery on October 5, 1930, some 30,340 wells have been drilled within its 140,000 acres to yield nearly 5.2 billion barrels of oil from a stratigraphic trap in the Eagle Ford-Woodbine group of the Cretaceous. The source of its primary recovery was a strong water drive. Because the field is so large geographically the first wells, located several miles apart, were originally regarded as discovery wells in separate fields. After the spaces between the first wells were drilled, it was revealed that all sectors drew oil from the same Woodbine sands. The giant field was named for its geographic region.  

 

At the end of 1990 the East Texas field completed its sixtieth year of operation and reported a yearly production of 35,559,769 barrels of oil. In January 1991, after a series of court hearings, the Railroad Commission calculated the East Texas field at 100 percent production factor. By January 1, 1993, cumulative production from East Texas field was reported as 5,145,562,000 barrels of oil.

Whether or not you believe we should be drilling or not, we can not dispute that we have the recourses available to us. We could stop relaying on foreign oil.

We all know that it would be better to find a renewable source that is better for the environment. I think the real question is can we afford it at this time. I believe that it will take another decade or so before it will become economical for the average person to be able to afford to buy solar panel and electric cars. We have to work on new ways to make them cheaper and reliable.

This blog could go on and on. We haven't talked about wind or water energy. 

Another question is, if it is so bad for us to be drilling, why is Obama giving money to Brazil to drill in our gulf and then offering to buy it? I can't see the reasoning. No jobs and again relaying on foreign oil.