
Here is a blatant cut and paste because I couldn’t possibly say this stuff better myself ! First is a really great article on Obstructionist Nancy Pelosi and then some supporting documenatiom from Fact Check.org. These 2 cut and pastes show that the Democrats are actually working against the people that they “care about and represent.” No to Drilling and Oil. Lies about the 68 Millions acres of land available to oil companies. All Lies !!! The only place these Rats care to drill is in our pockets. Just think, it’s their policies over the last 2 years that have put a drain on our pockets, not Dick Cheney and Carl Rove. Imagine if you had a job for 2 years, did nothing and blamed the president of the company. You’d be gone ! Read on…
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Pelosi Blocks Gas Price Relief
By Henry Lamb
July 29, 2008
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN that she would block any vote to allow offshore drilling. This remarkable stance comes in the face of the latest poll that says 73 percent of Americans favor offshore drilling, while only 27 percent oppose it. Nancy Pelosi again displays her contempt for her employer, the American people. Her arrogance and wrong-headed philosophy have led Congress to an approval rating of a staggering 14 percent, the lowest ever.
The arguments she advances in defense of her position are, at best, silly, and at worst, devious. She says she will not allow additional reserves to be drilled because oil companies already hold leases on 68 million acres of federal land that are not being drilled. She ignores the testimony of oil company representatives who tell her that had they found oil under these lands, they would be pumping it. The oil companies need to drill where the oil is.
There is plenty of oil to drill. Known reserves offshore, in Alaska, the Bakken fields of North Dakota and Montana, and elsewhere, can meet the energy demand for at least 100 years. But Pelosi and her colleagues don’t want this oil produced. Pelosi says that it will take 10 years for this new oil supply to reach the pump, and then, it would reduce the price by only two-cents per gallon. This price projection is pure fiction.
As an alternative, she says the president should release 70 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserves, which would provide immediate price relief. Is this silly, stupid, or just more of Pelosi’s political doublespeak? This alternative would supply less than four days of the U.S. demand, which would not likely even be noticed at the pump. It would do nothing to solve the underlying problem of too little supply.
Pelosi, like Al Gore, wants to end America’s reliance on oil, and switch to new, exotic, yet-to-be-developed energy sources such as wind, solar, hydrogen, and in particular, electric cars. America has been investing heavily in research in all these areas for years. Some significant progress has been made. No one in their right mind — which includes Al Gore — can think this new technology can be available within the next ten years, with enough distribution to make hydrogen filling stations and recharging for electric cars viable options. It is certain, however, that by developing known oil reserves, the U.S. energy demand can be met in 10 years, or less.
There is a big disconnect between the rush to convert automobiles to batteries, and the reality that the electricity to recharge those batteries would require a massive new generating capacity. The same flawed excuse of “protecting the environment,” has also blocked the expansion of electricity generating capacity. If the self-appointed gods of environmental protection won’t allow the expansion of electricity generation, how are the batteries of all these new electric vehicles going to be recharged every night?
Another major disconnect between the rush to replace oil with renewable sources such as wind and solar is the negative environmental impact of these renewable technologies. For example, to replace a single 50-megawatt coal-fired generating plant, which may occupy as much as 20 acres of land, approximately 3,000 acres of land would have to be occupied by wind turbines. To produce 50-megawatts of electricity from solar panels would virtually cover even more land. How can these protectors of the environment justify blanketing the land with whirling bird-killers and solar panels that block the sun from all forms of life beneath them?
Some environmental purists genuinely want America and the world to return to the stone-age. Nancy Pelosi is no environmental purist. She is a political creature, which is a person so intoxicated by power that the instinct to retain and expand it overwhelms common sense, logic, ethics, morality, or anything else that might get in the way.
By her refusal to even allow debate on proposals to expand oil development — where oil is known to exist — she stands like a barricade between thirsty consumers and a new mountain stream. She apparently sees herself as a self-appointed savior; she is, in truth, acting as judge and jury, condemning a nation desperate for more energy to spiraling energy costs for possibly another generation.
This is not a new posture for Democrat leadership. Democrats in the House, the Senate, and the White House have blocked expansion of oil supplies for more than a decade. Had Bill Clinton not vetoed the bill that would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge more than a decade ago, gas prices would not be as high as they are today. Millions of jobs would have been created, and every American could have saved the money needlessly paid to foreign sources for oil, simply because one man played God and defied the express will of the people.
Nancy Pelosi is now playing God, standing where Bill Clinton stood more than a decade ago, defying the expressed will of the people by blocking access to the known oil reserves that are so desperately needed by the entire nation.
Henry Lamb is the Chairman of Sovereignty International , and founder of the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO).

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/are_the_democrats_correct_in_stating_that.html
Q: Are the Democrats correct in stating that oil companies are leasing 68 million acres in the U.S. that are not being used?
A: Not exactly. More than 4,700 new holes are being drilled on current onshore leases.
Republicans, including presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain, have been arguing that the federal ban on drilling for oil on certain offshore lands should be lifted. President Bush, in fact, repealed the presidential ban on such drilling on July 14; Congress would still need to remove its restrictions before the land would be available for exploration. Many Democrats disagree with such plans, and they have been saying that the oil companies already have more land than they know what to do with.
On June 24, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama used this argument in a speech in Nevada:
Obama (June 24): The oil companies already own drilling rights to 68 million acres of federal lands, onshore and offshore, that they haven’t touched. 68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America’s total oil production.
The charge has been repeatedby Nancy Pelosi and others in his party.
Unused Acres?
According to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service, there are nearly 68 million acres of federal lands (onshore and off) that are part of non-producingleases as of fiscal year 2007. This is in contrast to 25.7 million acres of leased lands that are producing oil. So, there are 68 million acres of leased land on which companies aren’t extracting oil, but Obama went too far when he said oil companies “haven’t touched” them. As Bureau of Land Management Petroleum Engineer Bill Gewecke, who manages the onshore sites, told us, he “wouldn’t say untouched, [I] would say undeveloped.”
That’s because these leased lands that don’t contain productive drilling operations likely are not lying idle as Obama implies. There are a lot of steps and procedures involved in setting up a productive oil well on leased land, both onshore and off. The Bureau of Land Management’s Web site lists the regulatory hurdles that need to be cleared as part of the larger five-step life cycle of a well. The path to setting up an offshore drilling operation is even longer, as shown in a large flow chart developed by the MMS.
And there is a lot of activity occurring on leased lands that does not qualify as “production.” For 2006, the BLM reported that there were 77,257 productive holes onshore in the U.S. Beyond that, there were 6,738 applications for drilling permits, 4,708 holes in which companies had begun drilling and 3,693 where drilling had ended among onshore lands. That’s a total of more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished that do not count as “productive” holes. And that doesn’t even include holes that might have been continually drilled throughout the year for exploratory reasons.
It’s not known how much of that drilling is taking place on leases currently classified as “non-producing” and how much is taking place on leases that are already producing oil. BLM’s Gewecke told usthat the agency does not track acreage that is being developed or explored. And Andy Radford, an analyst with the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade association, told us that the oil companies are “very secretive about announcing where they are testing, exploring and thinking of drilling because the industry is very competitive.”
- Justin Bank
Sources
Majority Staff, “The Truth About America’s Energy:Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits,” House Committe on Natural Resources. June 2008.
“Total Producing and Non-Producing Leases: Fiscal Year 2007,” Mineral Management Service. Accessed 2 July 2008.
Van Wagener, Dana, “Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf,” Energy Information Administration. Accessed 2 July 2008.
“Inventory of Onshore Federal Oil and Natural Gas Resources and Restrictions to Their Development,” U.S. Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and Energy. 2008.
NEPAConservative says: Liberals can lie but they can’t hide from the truth !!!