Great work Russell. We all ought to send this to everybody on our email list. And Russell please repost this at Daily Kos, My DD, Open Left and anywhere else you can and advise them to do the same.

Posted at July 4, 2008 9:36 AM in response to McCian's record-setting flip-flop record

Please send links on:
1. The thoery that gas prices now are due, primarily, to speculation. I think the rapid fall in the dollar may have had a larger impact, combined with surging demand in India and China (and many other countries).

http://dorgan.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=299624

“We are trading 20 times more oil than we take delivery of each day. The world uses about 86 million barrels of oil per day, yet trades approximately 1.5 billion barrels of oil per day,”

2. Amount of time to purchase oil rights, plan for exploitation, implement exploitation, refine, and sell. In effect: the time it takes to purchase drilling rights to the gas going in the tank.

You'll have to find the links yourself. It takes years to find, drill for and then process oil. Just because various studies say oil should be in a formation doesn't mean it's actually where they think it is. That's why there's a difference between "proven" reserves and what OPEC claims.

"3. Same goes for ANWR. Something tells me it'll take longer to go through this process in ANWR than off Florida, since ANWR has negligible infrastructure."

I don't think FL has much oil infrastructure either. Why should they? They have none on land and it's illegal to drill off their coast.

Posted at July 3, 2008 4:14 PM in response to Vulnerable GOP Senator Recites Bogus China-Cuba Oil Myth

Coleman said he heard we have 80 billion barrels of oil on the continental shelf. That will last 10 years if we burn it all up. Then we'll have no reserves left except what's in the salt domes. Then what do we do Norm? Convert to Islam? These guys can't see beyond tomorrow let alone long term.

Posted at July 3, 2008 3:56 PM in response to Vulnerable GOP Senator Recites Bogus China-Cuba Oil Myth

China has limited its drilling activity to Cuban shoreline areas, not in the deep sea.

You'll have to show me that article Eric. China has done some seismic tests ON LAND but not at sea.

Posted at July 3, 2008 3:51 PM in response to Vulnerable GOP Senator Recites Bogus China-Cuba Oil Myth

I just posted the following in the comments section under that article at the Mankato Free Press. Feel free to jump in folks. You're preaching to the choir here while assholes like Coleman are spreading a lie.

"It seems like a Republican a day keeps repeating the claim that the Chinese and/or Cubans are drilling for oil off the coast the Florida. Yesterday it was Rudy Guiliani. The day before John Sununu. Now we have Norm Coleman saying it. Republican house and senate candidates have repeated the mantra over and over again.

Well what's the truth? I did a little digging and here's what I found. In 2006 the NY Times and in 2007 the USA Today ran stories predicting the Chinese would be drilling for oil in Cuban waters by 2008. Their predictions were wrong. It hasn't happened.

In 2001 the Brazilian state oil company, Petrobras did spend $17 million looking for oil in Cuban waters and came up empty-handed. In 2004 Repsol YPF, the big Spanish oil and gas company, hired a Norwegian drilling platform, the Eirik Raude, at a cost around $200,000 a day to search for oil in Cuban waters, in a narrow sector of the Gulf of Mexico off the northwestern coast. The venture, established with Cubapetróleo, the government-owned oil company was about 18 miles off their coast about a mile down, 95 miles off the coast of Florida. Sadly for Cuba and Repsol YPF they didn't find any commercially viable deposits either. Canada's Sherritt OIl is the most active foreign company in Cuba with nine fields operating onshore and five exploration or appraisal blocs being drilled.

Daily output from the company's wells averages a modest 30,000 barrels a day (all onshore), down from about 43,000 in 2004.That's the extent of oil exploration in Cuba or off the coast of Florida so far as near as I can tell. Cuba has 59 or 60 lease blocks available in their waters and foreign oil companies have taken flyers on 16 but they aren't doing much is anything with them.

Cuba's landbased wells pump pretty heavy sour stuff. There's no reason to believe any oil offshore would be better quality and it's very expensive to find and pump.

Another minus is refining capacity. They have three old US refineries nationalized by Castro after the revolution and a Soviet one built in 1971. They can handle the little oil Cuba produces now but would have to expand to handle any new production. The closest other refineries are in St. Croix and Aruba. They are American owned and Cuban oil is off limits because of the embargo.

Cuba buys half it's oil from Venezuela and would really love to have American oil companies with the latest technology find oil for them so they could wean themselves off Chavez's. Again our embargo prevents that.

The US Geological Survey estimates that the energy field on Cuba's side of the coastal waters may have 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That amounts to about 230 days of US oil usage based on the US Energy Information Agency's US figure of 20,687,000 barrels/day in 2007.

On the US side of the coastal waters all I can find are experts who say there probably isn't any motherload off FL, any finds worth pumping are further west in the Gulf closer to the US and Mexico than Cuba. Those areas also aren't two miles down and the oil is probably a lighter sweeter crude.

4.6 billion barrels - if it's there - isn't a huge field. It'd handsomely take care of Cuba's needs for quite some time but they wouldn't be able to export much to China or anywhere else. Too far down, in a hurricane alley, poor quality sulphurus oil, and building the infrastructure to handle it would be too costly. One of the big reasons no one bothers much with looking for oil there is because of the scarcity and cost of deep sea exploratory rigs as it is. In short there's better places to look for oil than off the coast of FL or Cuba. Everybody who checks this out knows that except Republicans.

If you want more info I have the complete post with links to the sited articles here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/2/1543/23452/652/545495

Republicans please stop making stupid dishonest arguments. Our political discourse is dumb enough as it is.

Posted at July 3, 2008 3:34 PM in response to Vulnerable GOP Senator Recites Bogus China-Cuba Oil Myth

Yeah like the price of gas won't have any affect on the election freaktown. This is an important issue and Repubs are trying to dishonestly use it to bludgeon Dems. You may think it's more productive to ignore it but we'd be fools to let them get away with it.

Posted at July 3, 2008 2:03 PM in response to Rudy Pops Up, Recites China-Cuba Oil Myth

Other than being kept informed here, I haven't heard or seen reported any of these claims by the Rs of Chinese drilling for oil off of Cuba

You won't because it's not for your consumption, it's for those who pass on rumors that Obama is a muslim, etc. It's all under the radar so it doesn't get factchecked and debunked in the media.

Posted at July 3, 2008 12:56 PM in response to Rudy Pops Up, Recites China-Cuba Oil Myth

Are they just trying to gain support for US off shore drilling? Yes.

Posted at July 3, 2008 11:37 AM in response to Rudy Pops Up, Recites China-Cuba Oil Myth

A big Brazilian oil company spent $17 million in 2001 looking for oil in Cuban waters. A big Spanish oil company drilled a mile down 18 miles off the coast of Cuba in 2004. They didn't find anything worthwhile. USA Today in 2007 and the NY Times in 2006 had articles predicting China would be looking for oil this year in Cuban waters this year. It hasn't happened probably because deep seas rigs are expensive and hard to come by.

Fact is there's lots better places to look for oil than Cuba or off the FL coast. The Chinese aren't that dumb but Republicans are.

Posted at July 3, 2008 11:35 AM in response to Rudy Pops Up, Recites China-Cuba Oil Myth

Here's the facts:

Then who is drilling off the coast of Florida?

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/markg8/

Posted at July 3, 2008 11:28 AM in response to Rudy Pops Up, Recites China-Cuba Oil Myth