President Bush announced today in a Rose Garden press conference that he was revoking the presidential moratorium on offshore drilling.The moratorium, originally enacted by his father, is not the only ban on offshore drilling. A congressional ban is also in place. Lifting the ban is largely a political move to place pressure on Democrats and presumably an intended boon to Sen. McCain, a new proponent of offshore drilling.
So what will the removal do? In short, nothing. Democrats won't lift the ban, despite record gas prices. And even if a bipartisan coalition did manage to allow new drilling, the oil would not hit the market for at least 5 years - little consolation to the present crisis.
Increases in oil production (whether from tar sands in Canada, protected land in ANWR, or increased Saudi output) will do nothing, regardless of how big the finds are, until new refineries are built. Oil producing states such as Nigeria, Iran, and soon Iraq are forced to export their crude to refineries to make gasoline. The world's top five refineries are in Venezuela, South Korea, Singapore, and India.
The removal of the ban, like McCain's plan to subsidize nuclear energy, is fiscally irresponsible and short-sighted. Increased drilling does nothing without more refineries but the plants take too long, are too expensive, and face far too much public opposition to relieve any current pressures on oil production and prices. Do we really want or need energy policy that will tie us to oil for another 15 years?
2 comments:
What's wrong with nuclear power? Not arguing . . . just asking.
I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with nuclear energy just the way candidates are proposing to support it. Large government subsidies will probably stifle competition and lend themselves to lax regulation for nuclear companies since clean-up and containment are expensive and long processes.
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