One of the major points of conflict between our two current presidential candidates is whether or not to drill for oil within the borders of the United States. McCain has gone on the record as being for local drilling and has recently said that Obama’s opposition to local drilling is the reason gas prices are so high.
Is local drilling a good idea? Would the oil tycoons go for it? One has to wonder where the big guys at the oil companies sit. If they were truly behind local drilling, wouldn’t a bill have been passed allowing it by now? Think about it. How many tax breaks do the local oil barrons get by using foreign oil? How much are foreign oil workers paid?
Let’s look at some of the other industries that have gone overseas: telecommunication companies have outsourced their call centers to foreign countries because the labor there is cheaper and they get tax breaks. Sure it’s annoying to call customer service and be greeted by “Hello! You are how today!” in a thick foreign accent, but if all of those jobs were reinstated here, the price of phone service would skyrocket.
The same stands to be true for oil produced locally. The wages for local oil workers will be phenomenally higher than the wages being paid overseas. Not only that, but the cost of insurance these companies would have to pay would be astronomical and the oil has to be put somewhere. Where are the containers going to come from? Who is going to build them? Bringing oil production to the United States isn’t going to make gas prices cheaper. If anything, it will raise them. That’s the beauty of trickle down economics. The benefits and cost are always passed right on down to the consumer.
I disagree. Oil prices were already down just on the lifting of the executive ban. My family is in the industry (not tycoons, just roughnecks, engineers, and builders) and this would be tremendous job security for them, as well as impacting the economies of several communities in a good way.
If we produce oil here, in our country, the profits, taxes, and $ all stay here – in this country. What I would like to see, though, is a law stating that domestic oil production should only be sold and used in America.