According to the Consumer Alliance for Energy Security, in 2000 it was estimated that there were over 160 billion barrels of undiscovered but conventionally recoverable oil in US territory. And that didn’t even include Utah, in which a billion barrels of oil were discovered by a wildcat company last year.

With prices hovering around $70 a barrel, that means that our elected servants are keeping U.S. companies from developing over eleven trillion dollars worth of resources. That’s 11 trillion of income that won’t get taxed, billions of hours of jobs for everything from roughnecks to accountants, not to mention ancillary industries that do everything from making drill bits to supplying paper forms to ferrying workers to and from remote sites.

Eleven trillion dollars that won’t feed our economy. Eleven trillion dollars that will probably go even higher as China feeds its voracious appetite for oil, reducing supply and driving prices ever upward.

Eleven trillion dollars that we won’t exploit because we don’t trust home industries with our environment, even though Mexico, Cuba and even China is drilling off our coasts.

Truth is, spills occur during transport: tankers go aground or pipelines burst. Oil is rarely spilled during exploration and production and when it is, usually less than one barrel is lost.

And remember that not one drop of oil was spilled during the devastation of Katrina, even with incidents like a sunk platform and an oil rig that was ripped from its moorings and thrown downriver to be smashed against a suspension rig.

So the next time a tree-hugging hippie tells you that they are against drilling in America because they want to protect the environment, ask them to tell you the last time that drilling caused an environmental problem. And the next time a politician tells you that we need to protect our coasts from American oil, you can can him a liar.

Oh yeah, and what about natural gas? Over 275 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered reserves at over $6/MMBtu (because the price has dropped), comes out to another 1.6 trillion dollars. And a whole lot of energy.

Technorati Tags:
Energy,
Energy Policy,
Gas Prices,
Crude Oil Prices,
Taxes,
Environment,
Environment Protection Agency,
EPA,
Partisan Politics,
Oil & Gas Industry,
John+Kerry,
Drilling for Oil,
Gulf Drilling,
Gulf of Mexico,
Oil Platforms,
Hippies Suck.