Why should Barack Obama insist that the removing the offshore ban should be part of a comprehensive energy ban? Why should it be a bargaining chip.
Lifting the offshore oil drilling ban is the right and appropriate thing to do and should not have been used as a Democratic leadership fillibuster or extorsion tool to extract concessions on other issues. The current gas lines and closed gas stations with no gas in the Southeast including Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina are just a prelude of what we can expect under Barack Obama and Joe Biden energy policies of limited offshore exploration and no new refineries.
Although these gas lines are an immediate result of the recent hurricane Ike that hit Galveston and the Gulf coast, they are indicative of the tenuous nature of our refinery capacity and existing supplies of petroleum. Our refineries have been stretched to their limits for decades. Do you think, oil companies are going to invest in the future in new refineries in the United States given the tepid Democratic Party leadership support of the oil industry and their insistence on mandates for alternative energy sources. Oil companies would have to be crazy to invest even a nickel in new refineries or even do basic repairs to existing refineries. It is also a shame that the gas lines and empty gas stations are mainly in the Southeast which will become Redstates for McCain/Palin next month. It would be more poetic justice that the blue states of the northeast should suffer from the gas shortages caused by their Democratic leadership. The Northeast has been lockstep in their opposition to offshore oil drilling, nuclear power, clean coal, and even wind energy in the Massachusetts Bay area.









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