Necessary Roughness

Executives from BP, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil testified before Congress yesterday. PowerLine does a great job of gleaning the testimony, but check out these quotes.

Exec. VP for Chevron John Lowe:

We can only compete directly for 7 percent of the world’s available reserves while about 75 percent is completely controlled by national oil companies and is not accessible.

Senior VP for Exxon Stephen Simon:

Of the 2 million barrels per day Exxon Mobil refined in 2007 here in the United States, 90 percent were purchased from others.

Finally, this from Shell President John Hofmeister:

According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.

This is a mess of our making. We can undo it, but Congressional Democrats are not the answer to this question.