How long does it take for oil to be made?

Is anyone else concerned about Obama's short term plan for oil?

• All information in statement sections ware cut and pasted directly from Obama’s official website. Obama’s short term relief plan part 1: Statement from website: Barack Obama will require oil companies to take a reasonable share of their record‐breaking windfall profits and use it to provide direct relief worth $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a married couple…. The rebates would be fully paid for with five years of a windfall profits tax on record oil company profits. My Analysis: Yippee $500 sounds wonderful but does this sound realistic? Are the oil companies just going to say ‘Here you go!’ and pay every taxpayer in America $500? This sounds like years in a courtroom to me? And do you want to live in a country where if the economy is not doing well the president picks an industry that is doing well and forces them to pay every individual in the country a set amount of money? This sounds like very communist thinking being justified by creating a new windfall profits tax. Now I am not defending the large amounts of money made by the oil companies but since when is the president allowed to distribute the profits of a private corporation freely. Obama’s short term relief plan part 2: Statement from website: The United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is there for a purpose: to help Americans in times of crisis. Barack Obama believes the doubling of oil prices in the past year is a crisis for millions of Americans…. With the goal of bringing down prices at the pump, he supports releasing light oil from the SPR now and replacing it later with heavier crude more suited to our long‐term needs. My Analysis: If oil prices go down this replacing this reserves later may be possible but what happens if prices double again in the next year? Then we have depleted our reserves, and with no reserves we are completely at the mercy of foreign oil producers. What is the backup plan if prices continue to go up? What happens then the speech saying ‘Sorry I screwed up unfortunately we are being gouged by foreign countries due to our lack of oil reserves maybe you should go buy a bike?’ This is not intended to boost McCain's plans for the oil industry I am just very concerned about the path that Obama's plan would take us down. How can Obama's short term plan be good for this country?

• Answer:

  There is no short-term solution to the oil crisis. But, it's also unfair to suggest that the Democrats are the only one who want to tax oil companies to raise revenue. Palin, the VP candidate and a Republican, also "pushed through a $1.5 billion tax increase on oil- company profits last year to help fund price relief for Alaskans." Translation, Palin did the same thing. At least Obama's long term plan calls for more government investment in alternative energy. Unfortunately, the Strategic Oil Reserve only has 33 days of reserve at our current rate of comsumption, so we are dependent on foreign oil production regardless of whether we tap the Strategic Oil Reserve or not.