Reply #1: The oil companies aren't sinking any new wells with the leases we've given them already,

[billyoc]

and they won't sink any new wells with additional leases. The only reason that they want these leases is to use them as collateral to restructure their own corporate debt. Now, why would companies that are recording record profits need public lands given to them for free to restructure their corporate debt, you ask? The answer is quite simply that they don't. They don't need any help from the taxpayer, but they've spent all of their record profits buying back their own stock, because this raises the price of the stock. Coincidentally, most oil executives are paid exclusively in stock! So the only option they have left for debt restructuring is to launch their public relations blitz to remind the taxpayer that the reason gas prices are so high is because the taxpayers haven't given enough money(land) to the oil companies. Since even this short paragraph is too long to be used in sloganeering, ala "cut and run" and "up or down vote", it seems to have been deemed beyond the ken of the ordinary citizen. Perhaps "No free land for Exxon", although that may even be too many syllables.

:hi: