Drill where the oil is!

The American public is finally demanding that the restrictions on drilling for our own oil be lifted. This demand is being ignored by some politicians. They argue that the oil companies have thousands of acres under lease on which they are not drilling. Why lease them more?

This argument shows that the politician is either ignorant ... or he/she thinks we are. For a quick analogy, let's say that a family member needs a kidney transplant. Your kidneys have been found to be compatible and you have decided to give up one for a transplant. The doctor performing the transplant needs your whole body on the operating table. But there is only one of two places on your body where he will be able to locate and remove a kidney.

Oil is found in pools. These pools get trapped within specific geological structures under ground. Over the years, oil companies have developed ways to identify the most likely places to find oil. When they lease land for exploration, it is for the purpose of trying to find geological formations which are most likely to have trapped oil. These formations normally represent a very small percentage of the total land mass of the lease. Once potential sites are located, the oil company must determine that the oil, if present, can be economically removed. There are many oil deposits that are known but are too expensive to recover.

The oil fields off the continental shelves and in the Arctic (which are currently the center of debate) are much more likely to produce large quantities of oil, and can be drilled for substantially lower cost than much of the land currently under lease. The bottom line is this - oil prices will come down as we produce more from our domestic supply. The cheapest and fastest way to achieve this result is to allow oil companies to drill where the oil is .. not where it is not! Any politician that tells you the oil companies have enough leases is just trying to get you to jump thru hoops!

Did the Israelites really walk through the Red Sea?

A recent show, airing on the History Channel, had experts taking exception to the Bible's miraculous account of the Red Sea crossing. These so called experts stated that the word translated Red was actually Reed. The Reed Sea, according to their research, was a shallow salt water marsh east of the Nile which dried up when the wind blew the water out into the Mediterranean. The Israelites were able to cross the dried up marsh before a change in the wind permitted the water to come back in. The incoming water, according to these experts, saturated the ground so quickly that the Egyptian war chariots got stuck in the mud of the marsh. By the time the chariots were able to clear the marsh, the Israelites had been able to get away.



Since the Reed Sea was so shallow, the elimination of the entire Egyptian army was simply not possible. These experts claimed that the time it took the Egyptians to get unstuck was sufficient for the Israelites to lose themselves in the country side. It was the arny's inability to locate them that led to the survival of the Jewish nation.

This argument does not stand up to the smell test!

Let's apply a little bit of mental gymnastics and see if this presentation is really more believeable than the Biblical account. The nation of Isreal was between 1.2 and 2 million people. That is approximately the number of people living in Nashville, Tennessee and its five surrounding counties. These people included young and old, mostly traveling on foot. These people also had large flocks of sheep and goats, herds of cattle and donkeys, camels and wagons. Stop and think for a moment. Trained soldiers would have been able to follow the trail with their eyes closed!! Just the animal droppings would have been sufficient to follow the nation of Israel. Chariots would have closed the gap rapidly, and the distruction of the Israelites would have been assured. In fact, the only way to save the nation of Israel was accurately recorded in the Bible.



How 'bout that hoop?

Why should negative home equity be a surprise?

Recently, a cable news network channel led a feature with the information that the percentage of American homes with negative equity (a home for which more money is owed than the property is worth) is the highest it has been in more than 50 years. The statement was made in an effort to lead the viewer into assuming that the national economy was in a melt down.

What piece of information was left out of this statistic?

A thoughtful viewer would have realized that we have just come through a period of time never before seen our economic history. For more than 10 years, home buyers have been able to purchase homes for no money down. In some cases, lenders have written mortgages for 125% of the value of the house. The proliferation of HEL(L) or Home Equity Loans and the number of programs encouraging home owners to unlock the hidden equity in their home have created an environment where having equity in a home is considered an unsound use of your capital. No wonder we have the highest level of negative equity in the home real estate sector.

The reporter tried to use the statistic to demonstrate the poor condition of the national economy. Anyone exercising their brain would realize that the statistic is more a reflection of many in our economy who can't or won't say no to buying what they can not afford.

How 'bout that hoop?