[holden]

Let me preface this by saying i don't consider a word of Sarah Palin to be genuine or useful. Do not agree with her.

But as for "domestic" exploration:

Ok, so I work for a Large Oil Company. Not BP, mind you, but on that level.
Back in the 1980's, we drilled offshore Alaska. Then things got tough and we sold the leases, but we bought 'em back and for the last several years have been making every effort, i assure you, to be technically and environmentally sound and respectful of the wishes of the locals, native peoples and industries while drilling.I mean everybody. It gets to the point if you drop a tablespoon of oil off the deck, you'll need to report and pay the fine. That's how a responsible company should treat it. Unfortunately, in the arctic waters, you can only drill for a few months per year, else the sea is frozen solid and nary a ship can pass, so if you're going to drill, time is of the essence.

After having all of the legal and environmental docs in place, we were still injuncted by courts and non-gov't parties, despite being previously approved and having most all of the stakeholders in agreement (after all, exploration operations generally mean good things for local employment and economy), so no drilling yet.
We were hoping for this year. But i do believe that the BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico will tighten federal regulations against all oil companies, and shut drilling down again.
Maybe that's a good thing in some environmentally sensitive settings. A deep offshore well near a habitated place is much more sensitive that Ma and Pa's oil well in Nowheresville, Texas where there's nobody and almost no living thing around for miles.

Now, yes, there are plenty of valid reasons why people disagree with drilling, especially domestically. it's the old "not in my backyard" argument. But guess what? If you've filled your car up with petrol or natural gas lately, if you've purchased a cosmetic or plastic product, if you've kept the heat on in your house, you've likely supported the industry that employs hundred of thousands, if not millions of people. Is it better if we drill in Oman or Saudi Arabia instead to get our oil? Here's another fun fact - oil from overseas and oil from the US of A gets treated at the same refineries and sold at the same pumps. It's just as positive for their countries or detrimental to their environments, depending on your perspective, so the whole argument against domestic drilling eats it, since all hydrocarbons are domestic to someone.

Yeah, we need alternative, sustainable energies. And we're working on it. But we're not at a stage where it is conducive to mass distribution (e.g. people like a solar powered house, but won't pay for the supplies; no infrastructure exists to harness and deliver solar or wind power), and demand for fossil fuels could not be higher.

It's a horrible disaster what has happened with BP. But there are literally millions of wells that have been drilled, completed, and produced without incident for the last hundred+ years. It's the fact that we've exhausted the "easy targets" that we are looking deeper offshore, further into remote lands and employing novel technologies to find the remaining hydrocarbons. Peak oil has been a speculation for decades...are we there yet? Not if you keep driving your 12 mpg SUV, nope.