Today’s Republi-tard myth: Drilling for oil will save us!

My god! Drilling won’t fix ANYTHING, and these facts are readily available, but the money-hungry GOP is pushing this on the American people right now because Americans just aren’t that smart, and because it’s pretty much all the Republicans have right now, and…grrrr…John Cole, rant for me:

The thing is, though, if we start offshore drilling immediately, and I will throw in drilling in ANWR and anywhere else you want to drill, the price of gas is not going to drop to $2.00 a gallon. It just isn’t- oil is a fungible commodity, is restricted by our refining capacity, and so on (take note of the fact that the production of gas-guzzling SUV’s is tapering off- think there is a connection to oil prices? ). Not to mention the overseas demand in places like China and India and whatnot are going to double over the next ten years. So $2.00 gasoline is just a pipe dream, most certainly will not happen in the long term, and definitely not in the short term.

This is not to say that I am fundamentally opposed to offshore drilling- I have repeatedly stated that any rational energy policy needs to look at every available possibility, to include drilling, increased refining, higher CAFE standards (not the weak increases that just passed that will not take place until 2020), targeted tax cuts aimed at spurring technological advances in green technologies, nuclear power, and so forth, but the notion we can drill our way out of our current problem is absurd. As such, it should surprise approximately NO ONE that this will become a key plank in the 2008 Republican election gambit.

I was talking to a friend the other night, who is usually very intelligent, and her response was “Drill, dammit!” I was about to explain how that won’t fucking fix anything, but it’s just so frustrating and complex and…grrr…and my poor mother even mentions it every time we talk about politics, because this stupid GOP oil company LIE is so pervasive, and has been for so long, and Americans are stupid and unwilling to educate themselves…if only there was a way for Americans to learn about these things…what say you, John Cole?

…[B]ut what would be awesome is if there was some way, some form of giant medium where the sort of information discussed above could get out to the general public. Some system by which allegedly informed individuals could spread this message to large numbers of people, and when politicians claim that offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR will magically return us to $2.00 gasoline, these allegedly informed people could call “bullshit!” and let the public know the pols are full of it. Maybe even a system in which things are “broadcast” into people’s homes on a box-like apparatus with pictures and sound. Maybe they could even use high-speed cables and satellite to beam that information to consumers. That would be awesome, but it would probably require that the people sending the message be smarter than a stump.

Yeah.

Liberal media, my ass. If the media were truly “liberal,” it would actually be informative, since it’s been proven, in this country anyway, that facts do indeed have a liberal bias.

Know what else has a liberal bias? Math. So here are some fun facts about drilling in ANWR and offshore, using math and figures from the Bush Energy Department. Follow the pinko communist liberal calculator with me:

1. There are about 10 billion barrels of oil in ANWR.
2. Drilling for them would reduce the price of a barrel (not of a gallon, of a barrel) around 75 cents, 17 years from now..
3. Over the past seven years (coincidentally, the Bush administration), the price of a barrel has gone up over a hundred dollars!

So let’s compare those real quick: ANWR will save 75 cents per barrel in 2025, and the last seven years have cost us over a hundred dollars per barrel. Okay. Got it. Now let’s look at the offshore drilling, the places where the GOP wants to lift the moratorium:

1. There are either 18 billion or 19 billion barrels in the moratorium areas.
2. Liberal calculator says that’s about twice what’s in ANWR.
3. Double the oil, double the impact: It would knock around $1.50 off the price of a BARREL, not of a gallon, a barrel, in 2025 or so.
4. Combine ANWR & offshore and you get $2.25 off a barrel in the year 2025. Again, it’s gone up over a HUNDRED DOLLARS under Bush.

As Bill Scher concludes, these drilling options would bring “little to no impact on the price at the pump, today or tomorrow. Not pragmatic. Not short-term. There is simply not enough oil.“

Bill Scher truly drives the point home in his update:

Just to put a fine point on it, lowering the price of crude oil per barrel by $1 is roughly equal to a reduction in price at the pump of 2.5 cents per gallon. So lifting all of the above moratoriums, lowering the price of crude by $2.25 per barrel, would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents by 2025.

Meaningless, after prices have skyrocketed more than $3 a gallon between Dec. 2001 and today.

Damn! Tell everybody you know, please.