see "Major Alaskan oil field shutting down" (AP via Yahoo, 8/6/06)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060807/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_field_shutdown

On Sunday, BP announced that they are temporarily shutting down operations at an Alaskan oil field which produced half of the oil from Alaska's North Slope and 8 percent of domestic US production.

The shutdown was imposed because the company found "anomalies" in an oil pipeline combined with finding a small oil spill of about 200 gallons of oil. This follows the discovery of a fairly large spill in March.

While some will praise BP for being proactive in this process, the loudest noises will certainly be heard, and soon, from environmentalists who oppose any increase in domestic drilling, either offshore or onshore.

The timing of this problem is bad news for those who want to increase America's domestic supply of energy.

The House and Senate have recently each passed offshore drilling bills which need to be reconciled in conference.

There is a lot of politics around increasing allowable drilling, and Sunday's report from BP will push the outcome away from adding as much production capacity as we could or should.

BP's report is not just a bad news for Alaska. By giving ammunition to anti-capitalist environmentalists, it's bad for the country. In the short term, watch for oil prices to be up tomorrow. In the long term, watch for Al Gore and his enviro-wacko friends to use today's problems to claim once again that the sky is falling, that we should all stop driving our cars. and that we should never allow more domestic drilling.