I wanted to weigh in on the topic of expanded domestic Oil & gas exploration as a Petroleum Exploration Geologist with 25 years of industry experience...

EXPANDED DOMESTIC OIL & GAS EXPLORATION MEANS AMERICAN JOBS...

The upside to increasing domestic oil & gas drilling now that NO ONE has even been talking about is... JOBS...

Total oil & gas exploration jobs in the industry rose 256 percent by 491,000 jobs from 1973 to 1981. Many of these gains were erased, however, after the oil bubble burst in 1981. Within six years, 374,000 jobs had disappeared.

Most people don't even realize the hit our domestic oil & gas exploration industry took during the mid 1980s...

However, now with our nation finally waking up to the need to become energy independent, there is an additional upside to expanded domestic oil & gas exploration that no one seems to be focusing on..
That is good, high paying  AMERICAN JOBS ! ! !

There is the good paying drilling, industrial manufacturing jobs in steel & tubing/casing & pipeline production, rig construction & well equipment as well as heavy oil field tools & equipment & support industries as well.... 

Liberals continue to complain about the flow of American jobs out of our country overseas.

BUT, with expanded drilling in ANWR & off our coast, along with the support industry to do so, we have the opportunity to replace those 374,000 HIGH PAYING AMERICAN JOBS.

Again, we continued to be BLOCKED by liberals, who will not allow the drilling, nor the replacement of those 374,000 oil and gas exploration & support industry jobs that were lost in the 1980s. also BLOCKING AMERICAN economic growth & energy security & energy independence...

It is strange to me how the liberals want to blame Republicans and conservatives for the LACK of oil and a comprehensive domestic oil & gas exploration policy as part of an over all comprehensive energy plan. 

If the liberals would have set aside their party poltics for the greater good & needs for national energy security in 2000 or 2004, or even in 2006 when 3 times President Bush tried to get drilling restriction lifted, we would have NOW much more domestic oil & gas available now, and prices would never had gotten this high, and we would be much closer to energy security & independence...

Only 2500-4500 surface acre impact of a total of 19 million acres in ANWR will be needed to drill for our oil & gas there.

That is less than 0.02% of all of ANWR.

Also at this time 2/3 of all publicly and government owned lands & 3/4 of all offshore leases are off limits to exploration & drilling because of the liberals continued efforts to block domestic drilling...

Liberals in Congress continue to block drilling as well as  AMERICAN JOBS and our own national energy independence by NOT letting us drill here offshore, in ANWR,  and on currently restricted publicly owned lands.

Liberasl will NOT let us drill here & they do not want us to drill here NOW blocking American jobs & energy security for America...

We here in America need to be drilling NOW...

IF we have a crash expanded domestic drilling, program & policy which includes new refinery capacity and energy infrasturcture and support industries, coupled with bio-fuels from non-food stock plants & crops like wood-chip ethanol, & Jatropha,( a plant that is highly drought resistant, and can yield up to 10 times more biofuel than feed-corn, soy or sugar cane,), we could be well on our way as a nation within 5-6 years to becoming energy independent, becoming an energy exporter within 10 years...

And we can do this while also creating hundreds of thousands of high paying AMERICAN JOBS ! ! !

Thanks & hoping you & yours had a great INDEPENDENCE DAY !

GOD BLESS AMERICA !