The following is a little dose of reality; like it or not, it is true

(excerpt from Bob Herbert NYT 8-11-08)

it would be nearly 10 years before any oil at all would be realized from new offshore leases. So your adorable 7- or 8-year-old would be just about 17 and clamoring for a license when this new oil started coming online.

Maximum capacity from these new leases wouldn’t be reached until 2030, when that 7- or 8-year-old is approaching 30, finished with college and graduate school, and very likely married with children.

And even then — after more than two decades and who knows how many graduations, weddings, funerals and family cars — even then, the amount of oil expected to come from these leases would have little or no effect on the price of gasoline at the pump.

Assuming that everything over all those years goes all right, it is estimated that an additional 200,000 barrels of oil a day would come from the additional offshore drilling. That’s a tiny share of the world’s daily output of 85 million or so barrels.

Here’s what the Energy Information Administration, the statistical agency that provides official data for the federal government, had to say about the anticipated additional output from offshore drilling:

“Because oil prices are determined on the international market ... any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.”

I am not a tree hugger. I love the idea of new Nuke plants making elect' for us all. Wind and solar energy is cool, someday it might pay. I hope that the people working on the technology are millionaires and very successful.

 Meanwhile, back at the ranch. We, as a country consume over 20% of the world production of oil. We have maybe 2% of the world population? Is that right 2%.

Dude, we are addicted, and the way to cure an addiction is not to lower the price of the drugs.

we taught the world how to consume and make a profit at it. well with china our country is in a decline and probably will not change much.

why is there so many used boom pumps, would lowering the price on them be good to put the average guy into this business. why so many manufactours they use the same parts. do we need larger booms on trucks that will not run with the high tech controls.

when the mexicans start learning chinese i would be getting a clue ha ha

When we were giving that lesson we were also a manufacturing economy which is no longer the case. The few jobs in manufacturing, good paying typically union jobs that were left after we sold the technology and manufacturing rights are being lost to second/third source outsourcing. We as a country would have all been better off had we paid attention to that totally strange Ros Perot when he spoke of

That Sucking Sound. He was right; things sure suck now!!!

For the last twenty or so years we (usa)have been getting cheap products from abroad (china,india).We (usa)in essence are the ones who have built (exploded )these foreign economies,the rest is simple economics.Cheap goods the last twenty years = now we pay the price.At 35 years old, I remember out of high school in the early ninties, the whole Buy American push,Too Bad We Did'nt Listen. Correct me if I'm wrong ,but was'nt walmarts claim to fame Made In America? What Happened?