I just got turned onto the Townhall.com site and wanted to weigh-in with my two-cents worth. 

I worked in the oil and gas industry in the early 80s in the Gulf of Mexico, southwest Texas and central Oklahoma and have seen the industry close-up and personal. Even then it was one of the most-heavily regulated industries in the world and compliance, technology and techniques have only gotten better since. Drilling can be--and is--done in an environmentally sound manner and should be done at once in the oil sands of the Great Plains, the continental shelf and ANWR.  The same cannot be said for places elsewhere!

Here are the facts: The U.S. consumes roughly 8.6 billion of barrels of oil each year and 69% of that goes towards making gasoline, some 85 billion gallons annually. The remainder (31%) is devoted to producing diesel fuel, kerosene and other volatile compounds but which also drives the production of plastics, waxes, solvents and all manner of goods there are no substitutes for and upon which we depend. Ethanol, for example, will NEVER be a substitute for the source of these products.

The enviros talk about renewable energy like ethanol but not one of them, it seems, has bothered to do the math. Well, let me tell you...

Currently, there are 162 ethanol production facilities nationwide, 41 under construction and 7 plant expansions. Collectively, they will have a production capacity of 13.6 billion gallons of ethanol per-year or, about 13% of the total gasoline consumed each year. 

An ethanol plant producing 50 million gallons per year costs roughly $300 million. To produce enough ethanol to replace gasoline as a fuel source would require the construction of over 1,700 new ethanol production facilities at a cost of over half-a-TRILLION dollars! That does not include the cost of building pipelines to-and-from in order for it to be distributed.

More problematic is the source material: corn. The U.S. produces 42% of the world's corn crop or, some 11 billion bushels yearly, 20% of which is exported and which constitutes 68% of the world's yearly corn exports. Even if our entire corn crop was devoted to ethanol production it would only yield 24.8 billion gallons of potential fuel, less than 25% of our nation's yearly fuel needs (Remember: ethanol is only 70% as efficient as gasoline so you need more of it to be equivalent energy-wise).  Never mind the effect it would have on our grocery bills or the fact that millions of others throughout the world would have little else to eat!

Earlier I saw a post from someone in California, asking about why the oil companies aren't drilling on the leases they currently have, estimated at between 68-99 million acres.  (1)The drilling moratorium that's largely been in existence for 30+ years.  (2)I presume those leaseholds were acquired defensively, meaning that as extraction technologies become more-sophisticed and oil even more scarce, there is potential to drill and possibly extract oil/gas from those areas, and that assumes oil/gas are there, and (3) Until recently, the economics have not been justifiable. The reality, even in "proven areas" is that generally speaking, only 1-in-10 wells are economically viable, that is, produce enough oil and/or gas through which to recoup the drilling, exploration and developments costs of the other non-productive wells attempted.

As for Big Oil's so-called "windfall profits", here's something to consider. Using only Exxon-Mobil as an example, they EARNED $40.6 billion in global profits in 2007, about 9% of their total revenues. What is not usually talked about is that paid over $30 billion in income taxes to the federal, state and local governments as a result of fuel taxes/surcharges, collectively, about 43-cents per gallon. 

Of the $40+ billion, $25-$30 billion was re-invested into exploration, drilling and production just to keep pace with demand. The remainder, since it's a publicly-owned company, was paid-out as dividends to individual stock owners like State Teacher Retirement Pension funds, and literally hundreds of others.

On the other hand, add-in the income taxes paid by the likes of BP, Shell, Conoco-Phillips and the many other oil and gas companies, not to mention the taxes levied on diesel fuel, kerosene, heating oil, etc. and government rakes in severl hundred billion dollars each year AND THEY DON'T DO ANYTHING WHATSOEVER TO EARN IT! They don't refine a single gallon of gasoline, don't survey a single tract of land, don't invest in exploration or production, don't distribute fuel or drill a single well. 

Government, and particularly, the "greenies" have sold the American people a bill of goods the likes of which has never been seen before. No new drilling offshore, no nuclear facilities built, no new refineries constructed for the past 30-years and all the while world oil demand was increasing. To that I say....

DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW, PAY LESS!!!