Its symbolic, but unless congress wakes up, thats all its gonna be.
Now if we can get congree to repeal thier ban as well..... that'll be something.

Congress still has to approve this. They have the technology already to see underground and to know what is there and what isn't. Someone is not being truthful because if there were huge amounts of oil under the ocean in these locations then they would have already set up shop to extract it.

This all might be an effort to get more money out of the taxpayers. I would not be surprised if they subsidize this offshore drilling. People are forgetting their government is on a robbing spree at the moment.

Originally posted by cloakndagger
Congress still has to approve this. They have the technology already to see underground and to know what is there and what isn't. Someone is not being truthful because if there were huge amounts of oil under the ocean in these locations then they would have already set up shop to extract it.

This all might be an effort to get more money out of the taxpayers. I would not be surprised if they subsidize this offshore drilling. People are forgetting their government is on a robbing spree at the moment.

Actually, the fact that there is huge amounts of oil underthe ocean, and "Big Oil" still cant touch any of it, is kinda the whole reeason I dont buy the "bush oil empire" BS. The fact is every Oil exec has known that we in the US have more natural energy supllies than Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq, combined, but because of environmental concerns its untouchable. Btween coal, natural gas, crude oil, oil shale, etc. We have enough energy supplies to actually be "energy independant" in the sens that we could easily create mopre energy than we use.

Congress? We still have one?

Thanks for the head's up! Drilling offshore... sigh... if only we had an army of marine animals attack the bosses of those rigs. Great whites... giant squid...

Originally posted by vor78

The Congressional ban expires on September 30th of this year.

The congressional ban expires every year. And is renewed every year. Thats how the ban was designed.

This was done for one reason and one reason only: to help McCain and other Republican candidates this fall. Bush is forcing a major political fight on the issue in the last month of the campaign.

Its an issue which deserves to be fought for.

Originally posted by Krieger

Except... The Oil Companies refuse to drill. The Democrats are actually tying to force the Oil Companies to drill for oil but the Republicans are trying to block it. I kid you not, the Democrats are trying to FORCE OIL COMPANIES TO DRILL BUT THE REPUBLICANS ARE BLOCKING IT BECAUSE THE OIL COMPANIES REFUSE TO DRILL!

Not quite. That bill is actually designed to strip currently held leases away from oil companies.

You see your falling into the "lease = oil" fallacy.
The problem is once land has been leased then
1) there must be environmental, geologic and geographic studies done to determine if thier might be oil on it.
2) If condition indiate there should be oil and environmental studies show that a company can explore without undue environmental impact then
3) test wells have to be drilled, and if oil is shown to be economically recoverable, the oil companies must then get government approval actually begin large sacle drilling, including another environmental impact assesment.
4) then after oil wells have been erected,
5) oil companies must then get permission from the government to actually pump the oil out of the ground.

Even when all this has happened, even after spending millions on exploration, studies, test wells, etc, the federal government still refuses pumping permits for more than half of all applicants.

The idea that the oil companies are spending millions of dollars every year on leases in order to refuse to devlop them is simply stupid.