Putting Oil Wells In The Grand Canyon And Yellowstone

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 23, 4:42AM EDT

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Do fish, bears, eagles, and porcupines care about having oil rigs on the land where they roam? Probably not. They don’t know any better.

To relieve some of the supply pressure on oil prices, petrol companies and certain politicians see plenty of reasons to put oil wells in national parks and offshore areas previously restricted from drilling.

According to The Wall Street Journal "Increasing U.S. oil production would require overturning decades-old moratoriums that limit offshore drilling and accelerating leasing of federal lands."

Forest animals are not the only issue. Homeowners in Palm Beach and Malibu may not want to have their ocean views spoiled by floating derricks and greasy oil workers. But, those things may be part of what helps push the price of oil down.

Weighing the cost of progress may be difficult. Oil spills are rare now. The equipment and standards are better. The fines for trouble like the Exxon Valdez have jumped up.

Finding more oil in the US will not entirely solve the energy crisis, but it would send a signal to both speculators and OPEC. If the US is willing to break taboos about where oil can be taken, the psychological impact may surpass all the ethanol production in the world.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.