In an article released by the Associate Press today it was publicized that there has been a huge oil field discovered under western North Dakota and parts of Montana and Canada. It’s almost half the size of the oil reserve under the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, estimated at 4.3 billion barrels of oil.
Initial response? Awesome! Let’s start sticking it to OPEC by drilling our own oil.
But then I think back to something I read once. There is apparently a large amount of oil under Nevada also. And the government has already leased out like, 75% of the land there for drilling. But not one drop of oil comes out of that entire state.
Turns out that Big Oil feels it would be too expensive to start up all the processing facilities necessary for us to provide our own oil. In other words, it would effect their profit margins too much.
I don’t believe for a second anymore that the reason we aren’t drilling for oil in Alaska is because of the animals that are up there in the wildlife preserve. There are technologies that would allow us to get that oil out without greatly disturbing the habitat. (I know, the page that links to is totally biased but it was the best I could find on short notice and it does talk about the technologies I was thinking of.)
No, I think the reason that we aren’t drilling up there, and we aren’t drilling in Nevada, and we won’t be drilling in North Dakota, is because it would crimp the take home cash of the rich oil execs.
Screw the little guy. Buy from OPEC until they run out, then we can really gouge the little guy even more when we are forced to open up our own plants.
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