by Mark Silva

With President Bush traveling to Florida today to raise money for Cuban American congressmen in South Florida (see the Swamp below), the Bush family is getting its off-shore oil-drilling rigs in a row.

The president called on Congress this week to lift a longstanding moratorium on oil drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, in a bid to eventually ease pressure on gas prices - though the administration's own Energy Department has reported that new drilling probably couldn't get underway before 2017 and even by 2030 the potential product of this drilling stands to have little impact on the world supply or price of oil.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, like most politicians in Florida, has long opposed off-shore drilling. But this week, Florida's Republican governor, Charlie Crist, joined the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, in voicing support for new drilling - the day before the president made a public show of the issue in the Rose Garden.

Now Jeb Bush is falling into line. The former governor, hosting a two-day summit on education reform near Orlando that today will draw New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the podium, spoke about the issue with reporters Thursday. The L.A. Times' Peter Wallsten, a veteran of Florida political reporting, was on the phone. The Times' Top of the Ticket reports the former governor's comments:

"You can protect the natural resources and the coastline of the state and also be part of national effort to deal with a national security crisis that our country faces right now," Jeb Bush said. "It's a huge economic problem for a lot of Americans, which is four-plus dollars a gallon gasoline. It's a burden that was never anticipated when we were discussing drilling policy 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago.

"So I think you've got to give people in public life a little bit of room when the context changes for them to also adjust their views."

No word from Dad yet: The former president Bush imposed an executive ban on offshore drilling in 1991. His son has said he is willing to lift that prohibtion, if Congress will lift its own moratorium enacted in 1981.

In this 2006 file photo, the Discoverer Deep Seas drillship sits on station off the coast of Louisiana as Chevron drills for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

by Mark Silva

It appears that Western oil companies will be getting their hands on Iraqi oil a lot sooner than they will ever see whatever reserves are held within off-limit reaches of the American Outer Continental Shelf.

With news that four oil companies are near agreement with Iraq for "service'' contracts to help Iraq extract its oil and significantly boost production, these companies stand to gain a foothold in an expanding supply of oil for the world market. What makes us doubt that any of that will result in lower gas prices here at home?

President Bush is calling on Congress to lift a moratorium on drilling in most of the Outer Continental Shelf, suggesting that these long off-limit tracts of off-shore oil-rich earth may hold as much as 18 billion barrels of oil, nearly three decades of oil coming from Saudi Arabia, the world's largest producer.

This offers no immediate relief for gas prices, the president acknowledges, but in the long run could boost the world supply and ease prices. Congress, however, is unlikely to go along with the president's proposal.

The Bush administration's own Energy Department has reported that it could take so long to first lease and then explore and then produce anything in these regions that its impact on both supply and price is questionable - with production "unlikely before 2017.''

The Energy Department's own 2008 Annual Outlook reports that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.

The potential estimated annual production from the Outer Continental Shelf in the lower 48 states is projected, in 2030, at 2.4 million barrels a day. The world's oil producers put out nearly 90 million barrels a day today.

The added oil production from the region would offer a modest increase, the Energy Department report concludes, noting that "because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.''

(Transocean drill ship, Discoverer Enterprise, the world's largest. Photo: Company handout/AFP/Getty Images)

by Frank James

One of most relevant news stories in the last 24 hours was in the New York Times. With all the talk about whether to drill for oil offshore or not, there's just this one not so little sticking point that many people probably didn't realize: There's aren't enough ocean-drilling ships to meet today's demand, let alone any signicant new demand.

As President Bush calls for repealing a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States, a shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration and supply.

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Houston-based Transocean is the largest provider of such ships to the oil industry and sees the logjam in orders lasting for years.

Transocean believes the deepwater market will continue to be constrained until at least 2012. Over three-quarters of the drill-ships currently under construction have already been contracted to oil companies eager to benefit from triple-digit oil prices, Mr. Long said.

(Charles Riede, AP File Photo)

by Frank James

When Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat, broached the idea for the nationalization of the nation's oil refineries at a Capitol Hill press conference yesterday, it was a safe bet that congressional Republicans would seize on a patently controversial idea to paint House Democrats in toto as extreme.

The office of Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House Minority Leader, didn't disappoint. Last night, they put up a press release that started this way:

Bombshell: House Democrats Call for Government Takeover of Oil Refineries

Should the Federal Government Run the Entire Oil Industry? Senior Dem Says: "To Me, That Sounds Like a Very Good Idea"

It continued to strike this note:

In front of a sea of news cameras at a press conference earlier today, when senior House Democrats discussed the ongoing energy crisis that has spun out of control on their watch, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) dropped this bombshell as he stood next to House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL): He proposed a Washington takeover of the entire oil industry!...

by Frank James

House Democrats responded to President Bush's proposal to end the moratorium on drilling for oil offshore as well as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by telling the president to drop dead, although they used a lot more words to make the same point.

The Democrats' main argument was that the oil industry is already in possession of 68 million acres of oil leases and that Big Oil should drill away on those before they come around asking the federal government for any more land or ocean floor.

At a Capitol Hill press conference following Bush's White House Rose Garden appearance, Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts ridiculed the president as essentially a mouthpiece for the oil and gas industry.

Then he urged Bush to support legislation that would charge oil companies fees that would increase the longer the companies hold onto the leases without producing oil on them:

And you know, today is an historic day. The president has decided to take out some of the oldest ideas which the oil and gas industry have had for destroying the most pristine wilderness and shoreline that we have in the United States. After eight years, President Bush and Dick Cheney have turned the GOP into the "Gas and Oil Party." That's the legacy that they are going to leave.

And what we're going to do, Mr. (Rahm) Emanuel, Mr. (Nick) Rahall, Mr. (Maurice) Hinchey and the Democratic Party is going to do, is we're going to give them a chance in the White House to put their money where their mouth is. We're going to give them a chance to impose fees on the oil industry on the public lands where they do not drill, where the American people have already given them an opportunity to drill. And we will increase the fees as the years go by, because otherwise, they will have wound up warehousing where the oil is in the United States that the American people, the Democratic Party, everyone wants them to drill, but they're refusing to drill, and at the same time, they're insisting that we should go to places that should be preserved forever.

by Mark Silva

President Bush, attempting to put political pressure on the Democratic-run Congress in an election year plagued by soaring gasoline prices, today called for a lifting of federal bans against off-shore oil drilling and other measures to boost oil production.

"For many Americans, there is no more pressing concern than the price of gasoline,'' the president said in a Rose Garden appearance this morning. "Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response.''

The president, who faces opposition in Congress for his proposals to drill off-shore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as well as to the leasing of Western federal lands for extraction of oil from shale, is attempting to leverage the rising price of gas - which has now surpassed $4 a gallon - in a bid to get Congress to budge before Election Day, if not sooner.

"There is no excuse for delay,'' Bush said, acknowledging that it will take years for any of his proposals to pump new oil into the American economy. "It's time to move swiftly.''

If Congress leaves for its July Fourth recess without action, the Republican president suggested, "they will have to explain why $4 a gallon gas is not enough of a reason to act.''

by Frank James

Has the U.S. passed the point where it can enjoy the luxury of restricting drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf and even the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

That is clearly the decision that's been made by Sen. John McCain, the all-but-official Republican presidential nominee, who now supports drilling off the U.S. coast, though he's still hanging on, for now, to his opposition to drilling in Alaska. Florida politicians and fellow Republicans like Gov. Charlie Crist and Sen. Mel Martinez have followed suit.

President Bush has long supported drilling in Alaska but is now calling for lifting the federal ban on off-shore drilling.

Democrats, at least to this point, are showing no such change of heart. Indeed, it will be harder for Democrats to make a similar shift because the party has an environmental constituency that would make such a move painful for any Democratic politician who dares suggest that such drilling bans be lifted.

Many Democrats and environmentalists argue the nation can't "drill it's way out of the problem," that any effort to increase the domestic production of oil just continues the nation's addition to that energy source by postponing the needed transition to alternative and renewable fuel sources and increased conservation.

by Frank James

Well, so much for Saudi Arabia's plan to lower world oil prices by promising to produce more oil.

Crude oil futures rose to nearly $140-a-barrel before deciding that it had scared the bejesus out of everyone and settling at closer to $137 in trading today.

Today's new record, coming as it did after the Saudis vowed, late last week, to pump more oil in an effort to send oil prices lower, showed that even the nation with the world's largest known oil reserves has limited marketplace power.

As the Associated Press reported, oil futures surged because of the weaker dollar.

Many investors buy commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation when the dollar falls. Also, a weaker dollar makes oil less expensive to investors dealing in other currencies. Many analysts believe the dollar's protracted decline is a major factor behind oil's doubling in price over the past year.

"We have a weaker U.S. dollar, and the buyers are out in force right now," said James Cordier, president of Tampa, Fla.-based trading firms Liberty Trading Group and OptionSellers.com.

Cheney speaks in April at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Washington. (AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

by Frank James

You might think Vice President Cheney, after getting so badly burned by bad intelligence and his own faulty assumptions before the Iraq War would be a lot more careful about his use of "facts."

No such luck. The vice president, arguing for oil and gas drilling off the Florida coast on Wednesday tried to justify such drilling by saying that the Cubans were allowing the Chinese to drill in the ocean waters just 60 miles from the Florida at a time when Congress refused to permit U.S. companies to drill as close as that to the coast.

But the Chinese aren't drilling in Cuban waters 60 miles off Florida's coast.

According to the Associated Press:

Vice President Dick Cheney's office acknowledged on Thursday that he was mistaken when he asserted that China, at Cuba's behest, is drilling for oil in waters 60 miles from the Florida coast.

"It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida, which is closer than American firms are allowed to operate in that area, no Chinese firm is drilling there," according to the statement.

by Frank James

In this time of high-gas prices, here's a Web site to bookmark in case you haven't done so already: www.fueleconomy.gov.

Maintained by the Energy Department, the site tells us what we already know - that our big vehicles use a lot more gas than small vehicles. But it's sobering to see it in black and white, especially when you can make comparisons between vehicles and see the results in graphic form.

For instance, my family owns three cars, a 2002 Honda Odyssey minivan, a 1998 Ford Explorer and a 1991 Honda Civic with relatively low mileage which we've kept primarily out of inertia but also for moments like these when gas prices soar.

According to fueleconomy.gov, the Odyssey gets an average of 19 miles a gallon in city-highway driving, the Explorer 15 miles and the Civic 29 miles.

The cost to drive 25 miles in the Explorer, $6.57; the Odyssey, $5,18, and the Civic, $3.40. The annual costs? $3,942 for the Explorer; $3,109 for the Odyssey and $2,039 for the Civic.

Cooling towers needed to dissipate heat from supercomputers at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. (Energy Dept. photo)

by Frank James

This just in from the wow-that's-really-cool department. The Energy Department tells us that its newest supercomputer has broken an important speed barrier, making it the fastest such technology in the world.

(It's safe to say it's not running Microsoft's Vista operating system.)

In words that would thrill only computer scientists, the department says:

... the new Roadrunner supercomputer is the first to achieve a petaflop of sustained performance.

Uhh, OK. The press release's author saw that reaction coming. So he/she has provided the following useful thought experiment:

A "flop" is an acronym meaning floating-point operations per second. One petaflop is 1,000 trillion operations per second. To put this into perspective, if each of the 6 billion people on earth had a hand calculator and worked together on a calculation 24 hours per day, 365 days a year, it would take 46 years to do what Roadrunner would do in one day.

Now that's impressive. Given that kind of computing power, it makes the supercomputer's $133 million price tag definitely seem worth it. That's about two cents per each of the 6 billion people with their hand calculators.

The new computer's job will be to simulate nuclear explosions to ascertain the effectiveness of weapons in the nation's nuclear armament stockpile. That's needed because the U.S. hasn't conducted underground explosions of such weapons since the Cold War ended.

Motorists on beltway outside Washington, D.C., May 23, 2008 (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

by Frank James

I've seen the future and it's in Connecticut, at least when it comes to gas prices approaching $5 a gallon.

The family left the DC area and traveled to to the Nutmeg State over the holiday weekend. The higher gas prices certainly appeared to us to have had a depressing effect on traffic on one of the busiest routers along the eastern seaboard, I-95.

During some holiday weekends, because of traffic volume, it's taken us eight hours or more to make the 250 mile or so trip from the DC suburbs to New York City.

But the lighter than normal traffic allowed us to make the journey to and from the metropolitan New York City area in little more than five hours.

That was the upside of raging energy prices; many people apparently decided to stay closer to home for the Memorial Day weekend.

by Mark Silva

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt - A rebuffed President Bush complained today that "those who are screaming the loudest'' about Saudi Arabia stepping up oil production are the same people opposing his efforts to expand domestic oil drilling.

People equals Democrats in this equation, and expansion equals ANWR.

The president, who failed this week to convince Saudi leaders to significantly boost oil production to help alleviate pressure on prices, said today that Americans will have to step up to the oil drilling platform as well.

The United States cannot keep blaming others for failing to provide enough petroleum, the president said, while the U.S. itself is unwilling to explore new oil fields. In particular, Bush wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling - which environmentalists and Democratic leaders adamantly oppose.

"Our problem in America gets solved when we aggressively go for domestic exploration,'' Bush told reporters here today. "Our problem in America gets solved if we expand our refining capacity, promote nuclear energy, and continue our strategy for the advancement of alternative energies, as well as conservation.

"And one of the interesting things about American politics these days is those who are screaming the loudest for increased production from Saudi Arabia are the very same people who are fighting the fiercest against domestic exploration, against the development of nuclear power, and against expanding refining capacity,'' he said.

"We've got to do more at home,'' the president said. "And we need a Congress who will be responsive to those requests.''

by Matthew Hay Brown

The Senate voted overwhelmingly today to suspend shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and the House is expected to follow suit momentarily. House Republican leaders say the move, intended to reduce prices at the pump by easing demand on the global market, should be only the beginning.

In a letter today, Minority Leader John A. Boehner and Minority Whip Roy Blunt call on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to couple the suspension with drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the development of offshore oil resources, and/or the removal of restrictions on commercial oil shale leases on federal land.

"Over the long term the introduction of new supplies will certainly reduce prices," Boehner and Blunt write.

"By how much? Well, calling upon the logic you employed to derive the price reduction from redirecting 70,000 barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, it stands to reason that bringing online the one million barrels a day the Interior Department says is available in ANWR would reduce gasoline prices by 14 times the price reduction achieved by redirecting oil from the SPR. And though estimates of recoverable deepwater resources along our Outer Continental Shelf are notoriously outmoded, the 80 billion barrels of oil we believe is there right now would constitute a price reduction several times larger than redirecting oil from the SPR."

Republicans in the Senate made a similar proposal today in the form of an amendment to the bill to suspend shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The amendment failed, 42-56, before the bill passed, 97-1.

The League of Conservation Voters offered backhanded praise for the amendment, which was supported by Sens. Mitch McConnell and Pete Domenici.

"The Republican Leadership who sponsored this amendment did something of a public service today: they compiled a list of some of the worst ideas to deal with America's energy future, our economy and the environment and put them all in one place for the Senate to reject by a significant margin," League legislative director Tiernan Sittenfield said.

The House Republicans' letter follows.

Undated government photo of U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve's Big Hill site near Beaumont, Texas. (Source: Department of Energy/ via Bloomberg News)

by Frank James

How concerned are lawmakers during this election year about a voter backlash against Congress because of high gas prices?

Well, the Senate voted 97 to 1 to temporarily suspend the federal government's pumping of crude oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with Republicans voting with Democrats despite President Bush's veto threat. So they're pretty worried.

Bush has insisted that it's necessary to fill the reserve so that the nation will be better able to withstand an unforeseen emergency, like a disruption in global oil supplies. Evidently the only senator who voted the way the president wanted the Senate to was Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican who, co-incidentally, isn't running for re-election.

But many lawmakers and some energy-industry experts have questioned the wisdom of pumping oil back into the ground when people are paying almost $4 a gallon for gas and oil topping $120 a barrel. (The reserves being put in underground caverns in Louisiana and Texas.)

The oil being pumped into the SPR is sweet crude, the low-sulfur good stuff that can be readily made into gas and diesel fuel.

Here's a snippet of