Debate Politics Forums - View Single Post

SouthernDemocrat · 07-08-08, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gill

In that case, I'll quote what another poster stated:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gill

Why would oil from one source be more expensive than oil from any other source. Oil is oil. The profit margin may be more on some sources than others, but the price of the finished product will be the same. Does Texas crude oil sell for less than Gulf of Mexico oil that was drilled 3 miles below the surface?

Don't forget another factor... it costs a lot of money to ship oil from the middle east to the US. Those big tankers use massive amounts of fuel.

The fact of the matter is though, if you mandate buying from domestic sources over buying from OPEC sources, then you are in effect creating a regional oil market. The problem is you are creating a market that depends upon an oil source that has an EROI that is a mere fraction of OPEC sources. Thus the costs at the pump go up considerably.

Right now, oil that costs a lot to produce is only produced when oil prices are high enough to make it competitive. If the government just up and mandated that we will exploit domestic oil shale to prevent having to import Mid East Oil, then we would be saying we are going to use this very costly oil regardless of what sweet crude is selling on the world market.

The fact of the matter is, we are never, baring some very unforeseen massive leap in technology, going to produce enough oil domestically to significantly offset foreign oil imports or reduce the price at the pump. If we want to use less foreign oil, the only tool we have at our disposal is to use less oil period.

As it is though, say we really ramp up domestic production. All OPEC would do in response is increase production on their end, swamp the market with oil, and all that expensive domestic shale and deep sea production would dry up in a heartbeat.