Sunday, July 20, 2008

No Evidence that Drilling Will Help

In a recent oped piece for IBD, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne made the following statement: "Promises that more offshore drilling will magically bring down prices are not backed up by the evidence."

Twisted logic. First of all, there is no evidence available, because we can't drill for more offshore oil. Only if we were drilling for more oil would there be evidence one way or another. Second of all, the economic principles of supply and demand aren't "magic."

Next, he quotes Al "I invented the internet" Gore: "We have been drilling for more oil, and the prices have gone up," Gore said in the interview. "A lot more oil has been found, a lot more has been produced."

Typical of liberals, they forget the supply side of the equation. We could drill 10 times more oil, but if it didn't meet needs, the price would probably go up.

But more typical, Gore's statement is not true. Our domestic production of oil has fallen 12 percent over the last several years.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, between 2000 and 2007, drilling of exploratory wells increased 138% while domestic crude oil production fell 12.4% to its lowest level since 1947.

Besides just ignoring the facts, this liberal non-logic is the same as stating that drilling for more oil won't lower the price of gasoline, but syphoning off 70 million barrels or so of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve will. If you put 70 million barrels in the market all at once, this new supply would last no more than three days, based on our consumption of 20 million per day.

The liberal tactic here is to convince us they know best, though the proper use of correct logic would invalidate their premiss, and if that doesn't work, just make up some "facts" to validate their case.

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