Forget the price of oil, what happened was two things.  First, ex-President Clinton had a royalty reduction program to create an incentive for deepwater drilling ... not sure on the specifics but Big Oil loved it.  Unfortunately it had a major flaw in the wording and Big Oil took advantage of it to the fullest.

Next, MMS (the people who lease offshore oil & gas rigs) failed to account for what was in the law, however flawed, and let billions and billions of revenue go uncollected.  Several whistle-blowers were fired over this ... by managers close to President Bush who for once really like a Clinton policy.  

That is perhaps a slightly twisted version of the truth because it's so complicated it is hard to know what was really happening.  I am surprised that John McCain, who claims to want to clean up crazy laws that allow legalized corruption (such as in election donations), would not pursue a reasonable solution to this horrendous flaw that continues to this very day.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

The question to ask is: after 4 decades of funding "Green Technologies", why haven't they produced a single viable alternative fuel or technology?

Nice strawman, even better linked citations.

Sunsetbeachguy

Well the time has come. We can now put all the excuses to rest. As Americans it is time to cut off the Middle East from our open faucet money drain know as oil purchase. For less than $100 a barrel we can extract oil from coal. Something we have more of than the Middle East has oil reserve. I am sure it would hurt, cause panic (for about 15 minutes) but we need to STOP buying the oil. On the short term go ahead and start pumping in those "pristine areas". It is certainly better than letting a few oil soaked countries bring our economy down. Even though oil would probably spike at 4-5 dollars a gallon for a short time if we just cut off the Middle East oil (this is a price we are heading for anyway if we continue to ignore OPEC). Once people realize that gas would probably settle to just under 2 dollars a gallon (if we lean on the oil to just make exorbitant profits rather than obscene ones) for coal extracted oil rather than the permanent 4 dollar (at least) price we are headed for anyway. This will allow the oil companies to keep on running the country and not risk their being put lower on the gouging totem pole than outright efforts for alternative fuels would.

It is just stupid to ignore that the Middle East is ruining our country. Let them drink that oil for a while. For exported grain a bushel of grain should be tied to a barrel of oil. Do you really think that the gas stations in the Middle East are paying the same for a gallon of gas as the stations in the US? Let them make bread from the crud or pay 100 dollars a bushel for grain for a while.

Jim Palmiter

Macon GA

Sam,

I think some of the references here are to the 2005 tax reductions for fossil fuels and others.   That stuff with the very badly written loyalties laws and then non-collection by the US government is incompetence of our government (and maybe success of lobbyists who wrote the laws.)    The thing with these these tax breaks for fossil fuel companies was actual policy, however wrong or bad.  

Jabberllo:

If you were not so busy playing pattycake with your mouth-breathing Heartland/Cato Institute/ExxonMobil /RNC buddies you'd know that the anemic "research funding" in clean energy tech has produced several effective alternatives to your paymasters' products in spite of the obstructions of the fossil fuel industry and their lackeys (like you) in the RNC. Just look all over Europe and the rest of the world where your group has no political clout and you'd see the geothermal, wind and solar producing healthy megawatts of electricity.

Now I'm done suffering you and your ilk. Go away. You're wasting billable hours. Go jabber to Rush Limburger dittoheads who are susceptible to your drivel and lies.