When your liberal friends start complaining about the high price of energy but can offer no solutions other than “drive less” and “don’t expect to keep your thermostat at a comfortable setting”, share these talking points with them….
 
 

When your liberal friends say…	Your response should be….
Drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) will DESTROY the wilderness!	Visualize ANWR being the size of a football field.  Visualize putting a postage stamp (i.e., the amount of space needed for drilling) on one of the goal lines.  Would anyone notice the postage stamp?
Nuclear energy is too dangerous (impractical).	99.8% of France’s electricity comes from its 59 nuclear power plants.  France exports 18% of it’s production to countries like Italy, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.  France’s electricity cost is the lowest in Europe.
Oil companies currently have 68 million acres of leased public lands that contain large amounts of economically recoverable oil available.	Much of the land leased to oil companies has already been explored and determined not to carry enough recoverable oil to justify drilling.
Drilling will not provide any short-term relief in the price of oil because it will take many years before new drilling will lead to new supplies.	Opening up new oil fields in the U.S., even if new supplies won’t actually reach our gas tank for several years*, would immediately impact the amount of upward speculation on long-term commodity investment in oil. (*A recent  third-party survey of the six largest oil drilling companies revealed that some new fields could be producing oil in one-two years and, in any case,  it would not take longer than six years.)
All you guys ever think about is drilling for oil!	Nobody is suggesting that our nation’s energy strategy should be solely dependent on domestic production of oil. We all recognize that alternative energy sources – such as wind and solar - need to be developed. But more American oil must be a part of an American energy solution.
The U.S. only has a small percentage (from 2-6%) of the world’s oil supplies, and since oil is a global commodity, our increased production won’t affect prices much if at all.	In oil shale alone, found in the Green River Formation in parts of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, the U.S. has approximately 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil, or over three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Drilling for unconventional sources, such as tar sands or shale oil, is too costly and creates a large carbon footprint, among other environmental problems.	The environmental footprint argument would make more sense if not for recent innovations by companies like Shell Oil, which has developed a method for extracting shale oil that does not involve making craters on wide portions of land. Instead, heating rods are stuck into the earth that heat the shale and then oil falls into a pool below to be collected.  Early research suggests this method could be competitive even if oil was as cheap as $25 per barrel.
Drilling offshore will lead to ocean spillage, damaging wildlife and beaches.	Virtually all of the pollution and “spillage” comes from large tankers transporting oil from other countries and natural seepages.  Thus, drilling for our American oil would actually reduce the risk of oil pollution by reducing the number of international oil tankers entering our ports.
We simply cannot allow any oil drilling off our shores!	China, with a dismal environmental record, has partnered with Cuba and is drilling in the Gulf of Mexico—right off our shores!!   China is sucking out OUR OIL!

 
 
 

On July 17, 2008, Congressional Candidate, Dean Andal  issued a press release urging his opponent, Congressman McNerney, to stop fighting new drilling!  
 
STOCKTON -  As part of a comprehensive plan to provide working men and women much-needed relief at the gas pump, Congressional candidate Dean Andal (R-CA 11) is urging the President to commit 50 percent of the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserves to address our immediate oil needs, and to increase domestic drilling and exploration on new lands, as well as those already under lease, to ensure continuous, long-term domestic supplies and he’s calling on Congressman Jerry McNerney to join him in these efforts.
 
Click here to read the press release.