Case for, against offshore drilling

Re “Bush lifts offshore drill ban, urges Congress to follow suit,” July 15

We can’t drill our way off this sinking energy ship. Soaring oil prices are the inevitable result of a policy that creates a monopoly on energy for oil companies and ties consumers to a product with serious health and environmental consequences. Calls for more drilling provide no relief to Americans, but they further enrich oil companies and throw money at a broken policy.

It is time to ignite a clean energy economy that will release us from the grip of foreign oil, give Americans real fuel and transportation choices and cut the catastrophic effects of global warming. Until our leaders get serious about a clean energy lifeboat, we will continue to sink with the boat, oil spills and all.

Nathan Springer

Whittier

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I am very tired of hearing about the oil spill off Santa Barbara in 1969. Technology has improved in the last 40 years. There were catastrophic hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago -- Rita and Wilma -- and there were no oil spills from the platforms there. Yes, if drilling started today, gasoline from those operations would be years away from going to the market. But we’ve been talking about it for years; if instead of talking we had been drilling, we would have had the oil by now.

We need alternative energy sources, but in the meantime we need oil. Alternative energy sources are many more years away than the oil would be if drilling would start today.

Judy Herbst

Beverly Hills

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If our esteemed president were really worried about the amount of gas and oil available to U.S. markets, he would order an immediate lowering of the speed limit to 55 mph on freeways. Driving slower saves a lot of gas without having to buy a new car. One person told me that she was getting less than 20 miles per gallon with her older car but, when she started driving slower, she got 22 mpg.

Eleanor Palmer

Long Beach

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The Ocean Conservancy argument that allowing offshore drilling won’t help the energy supply/price problem for the long or short term is one of the feeblest arguments I’ve ever heard. Does that mean we should also stop developing solar, wind and biofuels because they won’t have any serious impact for 25 years? In California, we buy our umbrellas in July, when they’re cheap, because we know it will surely rain in December.

Richard J.

Stegemeier

Anaheim

The writer is a former chairman and chief executive of Unocal Corp.

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I oppose ending the ban on offshore oil drilling. I oppose private corporations padding their portfolios with public lands, leases and political promises for private profit. They already occupy thousands of acres of public lands with leases they do not use -- all in the attempt to control the resources. It is time to divest and stop this robber-baron society. Assess all of these oil corporations with windfall profit penalties and roll back pump prices to 2000 or before. At-the-pump gasoline is refined long before it is delivered to gas stations, so consumers are being fraudulently charged.

Kay Brown

South Pasadena