Did Oil Just Become Too Expensive?
 

I was reading about the mess in the Gulf today and the rising costs to clean it up. Can we afford to risk building more oil wells that drill this deeply? Can we afford to skimp on safeguards in an effort to make the well profitable? Or to ask that another way, can oil companies afford to reduce profitability in order to ensure every reasonable safeguard?

Taken as a whole, I wonder if oil has reached the point where it's becoming too expensive?

Now's a good time for alternative fuels to develop.

very highly doubtful, you wouldn't be able to be posting here without oil products (well you could but would have other major problems)

crude oil is more than just car lube and fuel.

We wouldn't need to even try deep water drilling if they would allow drilling in the Alaskan preserve. I've been told/or read that there is enough barrels there to sustain North America for over 150 years.
If that's the case then you can thank the tree huggers for this mess!

Jim

Drilling deep doesn't seem to matter in terms of risk of what's happening in the gulf. This same **** happened in '79 near mexico and that well was around 160ft deep, yet it took them 9 months to plug up the well.. hmmm..

I agree. Crude oil is more that just fuel. Its the plastic that makes your computer, the dashboard in your car, and the bottle that contains a cool, refreshing beverage on a hot summer day.

yea so i love all these people boycotting BP to "stick it to em" but in reality gasoline is a small chunk of change to them so even if you and 200 of your friends boycott it it aint gonna scratch thier profits.

yea we do need to allow drilling on the alaskin preserve, somehow the animals wont know what to do and be scared of the machenery, well uhh durr hate to break it to ya but animals adapt and last i checked buildings, cars, roads, pipes, antennas, people, etc came WAY after animals and thier still here today!!! (maybe not all but natural selection at its best)

I heard it was ten years.
Either way, it is actually to valuable to burn. Better to save the reserve in Alaska for plastics and other chemicals when oil becomes truly hard(expensive) to get than to sell it off to China now.

Crude oil is the most convenient way to make plastics and other chemicals but it's not the only way. As with fuel, it's far less expensive than the alternatives.

agreed on the price and convenience of oil--also the comment about environmentalists. as for struggling economies, right now is no time for cap and tax type of legislation.

i really starting to believe that the prez and congress would rather put the US in a depression than fail to pass political agenda. this tragedy has given a great opportunity to do so.

I'm amazed no one bothers to educate themselves on the facts. The USA consumes 20.7 million bbls/day of oil. ANWR contains between 5.7 and 16 billion bbls of oil. At best, ANWR can only supply our needs (if it were our sole source of oil) for ~750 days, barely longer than 2 years. When you exclude Native American and non-federal land, the drillable ANWR oil resource is at best 11.8 billion bbls, 500 days of US oil consumption, not even a year and a half supply.

I fail to see how any logical person can blame environmentalists for this. Blame your neighborhood soccer moms with their 12 mpg SUVs, and don't wish a BP or Exxon Valdez spill on ANWR, too!

As for oil industry jobs, my analogy is a child molester moving into your block. Do you prefer to keep your kids safe at home, or do you send them over to his home to play?