Drill For Oil: It's The "Environmentally Friendly" Thing To Solve Our Energy Crisis

You have got to love the President unscripted when he has to answer questions that the public doesn't usually get to put before them and rely on the seasoned press pool to do. When he's answering questions, you find out what he really thinks and means. For example, he thinks drilling for oil in the ANWR is "environmentally friendly:

And we'll look at any idea in terms of energy, except I will tell you this, that if Congress is truly interested in solving the problem, they can send the right signal by saying we're going to explore for oil and gas in the U.S. territories, starting with ANWR. We can do so in an environmentally friendly way. They ought to say, why don't we -- I proposed, you might remember, taking some abandoned military bases and providing regulatory relief so we can build new refineries.

Last I checked, drilling and exploring for oil is about raping the land, not saving the land. But really, I seem to remember another president fixing the challenging oil prices by opening up the strategic reserve and that helped more then some tax rebate. This was suggested by congress, but just as typical SOP for GWB, he's only interested if Congress puts forward ideas he likes, not solid ideas that may actually work.

Q Was that a "yes" on the moratorium?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I'm going to look at everything they propose.

Just the ideas I stuff down their throats that benefit my pals in big oil. He keeps on pushing the opening of ANWR:

Somehow if you mention ANWR it means you don't care about the environment. Well, I'm hoping now people, when they say "ANWR," means you don't care about the gasoline prices that people are paying.

Really, when you suggest that we have...:

New technologies enables for -- to be able to drill like we've never been able to do so before -- slant hole technologies and the capacity to use a drill site, a single drill site, to be able to explore a field in a way that doesn't damage the environment.

The person doesn't realize that drilling the hole is damaging the environment from the very definition. Why doesn't he go gang busters for alternatives beyond biofuels which inflate the cost of food stores?

But I digress what about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Q Fourteen senators, including your own Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas, are calling on you to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. You've been asked that several times over the past few years. I know what your answer has been. But do you think now, with the rising prices, the record high oil prices, it's time to change course?

THE PRESIDENT: In this case, I have analyzed the issue, and I don't think it would affect price, for this reason: We're buying, at the moment, about 67,000 to 68,000 barrels of oil per day, fulfilling statutory obligations to fill up the SPR. World demand is 85 million barrels a day. So the purchases for SPR account for one-tenth of one percent of global demand. And I don't think that's going to affect price when you affect one-tenth of one percent, and I do believe it is in our national interests to get the SPR filled in case there's a major disruption of crude oil around the world.

Really, but we are talking about offsetting the cost of oil here in America, not the whole globe. You wouldn't leak the reserve to China would you? Or do we have to pay down our debt to them for their help financing the Iraq mess you got us into?

Well...shit. Go ahead. Drill the Alaska Wilderness if it saves me ten cents a gallon. What the hell do I care if it contributes to global warming and I now have beach front property in Vegas.