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Drill Here, Drill Now - Sign Up Here

6-18 drill here now

For decades, Congress has had a stranglehold on domestic oil production. Antiquated regulation enacted when oil was $40 a barrell has prevented us from developing and refining our own oil supplies. These policies have made us increasingly reliant on the unstable Middle East and a cartel of nations that supply us with what today has become one of the most valuable commodities on earth.

While we sit on undeveloped resources greater than the total reserves of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq and Venezuela combined, congress has seen fit to put our national security and our financial well-being as a nation into the hands of some of the most volatile and unstable regions of the world.

This lunacy has to stop. In addition to concentrating on developing alternative energy resources for tomorrow, we must meet the needs of OUR citizens today. Our food supply, our housing industry and our job market are all heavily and deleteriously impacted by the skyrocketing energy costs - and proposals to further tax windfall profits of our domestic producers, who supply a pittance of our overall oil, are simply asinine and made for grabbing headlines rather than addressing the real problem.

I urge all members of ActiveRain to join me and over 1,000,000 other Americans who are fed up with politics as usual and are not going to continue to bear the brunt of Congressional inactivity and counter-productivity. Please log onto either or both of the website links below to sign petitions and email your congressional representatives regarding this issue. It's an election year - the will of the people will be heard and it starts with YOU.

Posted by Gene Wunderlich - Realtor®, Government Affairs Director on 06/19/2008 05:09 PM

Comments (13)

drill here, drill now, oil

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13 Comments on Drill Here, Drill Now - Sign Up Here

JUN

2008

The only problem is even if we start drilling today - it will take 2 years before it affects prices.

Thanks for taking the lead on this Gene. I will follow your advice.

Congratulations this post is now featured in Silent Majority Group of Active Rain.

We should have been pushing for alternative fuels years ago. Now are backs are to the wall. I live on the coast of California. I've seen what oil spills can do to the ocean, it's sickening, yet we may not have an alternative.

Drilling in the Ocean or the Arctic may be a necessary solution, but it's not one I favor.

The United States is home to some of the most creative minds in the world. The government needs to get more involved in providing incentives to companies that pursue promising alternatives to petroleum. I would not rule out mandates.

We will run out of oil, it's a point of contention of when, but there is little doubt that the day will come.

Why not error on the side of caution, and crank up the search for PRACTICAL alternative solutions now.

I saw a program where Brazil uses Sugar Cane for 1/2 of their fuel consumption. Brazil!

The U.S. Can't that?

Why not become the inventor of a new fuel then do what we do so well, SELL IT to the rest of the world!

Drill in the Ocean? I'm staying neutral on that one, but something must be done, and quickly!

Thanks for posting, I applaud your vigor.

Gene - I think I was one of the first 100,000 to sign and I saw the e-mail today. Well done on the post.

Adam - Clinton said that ten years ago. Imagine if he hadn't?

Paul - those things are going on. Search "JC BELL" and you will find blogs on it. In the meantime, we need to drill everything we have.

I, too was one of the first to sign it and have helped get a great many others to sign as well.

We need to do it but we need a full and Comprehensive Energy Plan.

Adam: The actual oil supply won't make it to use for at least a couple of years, yes.. but just the signed piece of bi-partisan comprehensive energy plan legislation would scare the @#%T out of the speculators and they would short sell and get out of the oil futures that they are right now long on.

That in and of itself would likely drop oil prices by what I'm reading between 15-20%. That's the way to get some movement on the immediate side.

Gene, You have got to be kidding. Do you really think this would help? We have China, India, etc,,,,. It does not matter where the oil is. All the companies that are involved are global companies. The only way this would matter is if their a company that only stays within the USA. Than yes you are right. But lets face facts it will never happen. Exxon Mobil, Shell are reporting record profits worldwide. Do you honestly or are you that naive to believe they would actually pass the savings on to us? Your theory is sound but the world has gotten alot smaller.

Owen & Simon - absolutely right. Even the threat of us developing our nown resources will be enough to bring market prices down. But the needs of China and India are just beginning to be felt and will expand exponentially for years to come. Do you think they're as concerned about the environment as some of our lib's are? Will it stop China from slant drilling off the coast of Cuba to tap into the reserves under the Florida Strait?

I'm all for sugar cane, wind, solar, whatever can be done efficiently and economically but you only have to look as far as the ethanol debacle to see what happens when knee-jerkpolicy is dictated without studying the long term ramifications. Nuclear is a great way to go with small 'peeker' plants supplying communities - but everybody still sounds the boogeyman of Chernobyl - hardly an apples to appley comparison of old shoddy Soviet technology to modern efficiant plants - but we're still haunted by it.

It's equally silly to expect the oil companies to take the lead in developing alternative technologies - they are in the OIL business. Incent them to make their own product available cheaper and do what they do best and encourage others to develop alternatives to oil. I'm no brain surgeon by any stretch but why would oil companies bust their hump and spend their stockholders profits to develop their own competition?

We definitely need to do something. If drilling for oil will lower fuel prices, I am all for it. In the long-term though we need to focus on cleaner and cheaper alternative fuels.

JUN

2008

I am pushing everyone that I know to sign up this week. We have to do this ASAP.

JUN

2008

Gene- Good for you to bring this point up,. Congress needs to feel the pressure of the people. They are SO out of touch with realty. They rarely fill up their own cars and in DC they don't all have to drive either. They serve their own interests not the will of the people. We do need to drill, but I am more for drilling for the Shale that we have in Colorado and Utah that is enough oil to supply trillions and trillions of barrels of oil, enough that the other countries would come begging us for the oil. We could become our own Opec! I am signing the petition because we have to send Congress a clear signal that we want them to do something and that something better be effective and for the people. Like Glen Beck says, the pitchforks are going to surge upon Congress soon if they don't get their act together. Of course, we will need legislation that this oil we drill stays here and that we can sell it to other countries to make money, but that the states will also share in the profits. Gene, personal question, how do you survive in California as a conservative? I could never live there again:)

The area of California I live in has many advantages. When we first moved here the area was very small and new - only about 20,000 residents. Today our city and the neighboring one are both 100,000+. I've been very involved in chamber, association, city and county politics so I have been part of the process - which has been fun. Not to mention profitable as a Realtor. Our area is also pretty conservative. Our local assemblyman and Senator are both conservative Republicans and good friends and our Federal Representative is Mary Bono - also a conservative Republican.

The difficulty, of course, comes at the state level where the legislative majority are a bunch of very liberal whack-jobs. There are times when it is very frustrating to work with them because it's hard to even get a frame of reference with people who have never held a job or run a company, never been responsible for meeting a payroll, never been off the public dole since they graduated from Berkely. One positive is that the California Association of Realtors is a very polished advocacy group with great lobbyists and a pretty active grassroots. We just got a very onerous point-of-sale bill ammended by the author, who is also the ultra-liberal speaker of the assembly, so we do have some clout on behalf of Realtors. It's a daily ongoing battle - but it does have it's moments.

Hey Gene:

I hope that Mary Bono is much more of a conservative Republican than her new husband who is my congressman. Connie Mack claims to be conservative and I live in a very conservative driven Southwest Florida.

He seems to be spending more time out there with you guy's than supporting the folks here in Southwest Florida who elected him. We can't really get him to budge on the exploration off the Gulf of Mexico. He's out of touch with that and much else.

I hope she serves you much better!

JUN

2008

Mary seems to be doing a pretty good job for us. I had an opportunity to talk with her Saturday evening and am always impressed by her straightforward and humble manner. Don't know her husband and haven't seen him out here yet. Maybe he's one of those Arnold Republicans - hard to tell which part is Republican because the decisions don't seem to bear it out.

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