McCain has flip-flopped his position on offshore drilling, pandered to the oil companies, and embraced the exact same strategy endorsed by the man McCain is trying so hard to run away from -- President Bush. He must have a damn good policy reason:
"Tomorrow I'll call for lifting the federal moratorium for states that choose to permit exploration," McCain said. "I think that this and perhaps providing additional incentives for states to permit exploration off their coasts would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis."
Short-term? If only the facts supported that position. If only the man who wants to be the next president bothered to check the analysis by the current president's own energy analysts.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling for their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, "Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)." The sobering conclusion:
The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.
And the impact of the projected 7 percent (!) increase in lower-48 oil production that might result in 2030 thanks to opening the OCS is ... wait for it ... "any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."
Yes, the man who would be president has sold out his principles to garner support from the oil industry while achieving no benefit to the American gasoline-consuming public whatsoever even a quarter century from now!
To paraphrase Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons:
"It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for ExxonMobil!"
So what price is McCain getting for auctioning off his principles?
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments View as Flat
BlackBear Posted 10:58 pm
18 Jun 2008
Amazing
And I wonder why Americans are dropping out of politics? Hmm? Could it be that even the new heights of cynicism our youth are achieving today aren't enough to cope with "business as usual?"
Even the politicians I like make me physically ill every now and then. I can't say how much I'd love to see real campaign finance reform and more effective term limits implemented, but I imagine that there would be actual dancing in the streets involved.
Vote for short term corporate profits! Vote for a politician!
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wiscidea Posted 11:19 pm
18 Jun 2008
It's probably old news, but...
Hello Mr. Romm
I just heard a report that oil companies already have access to 68 million acres of Federal land that they are not extracting oil from. They have the leases and are free to explore and drill to their heart's -- or whatever functions as a heart -- content.
Is this true?
If so, why are they demanding access to additional areas? Or is it just the politicians demanding access? Are oil companies even interested in drilling for oil in the ANWR or coastal areas currently closed? What's going on? Why isn't McCain calling on oil companies, in the interest of national security, to start extracting oil where they are already permitted to?
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Russ Posted 5:00 am
19 Jun 2008
wiscidea,
I don't know the exact acreage offhand, but they have long held a large # of leases that they do not and cannot currently drill (they lack the machinery and engineers to do so).
The main reasons they're still in such a hyper scavenger hunt to hoard ever more leases, and why the Bush admin is so eager to enable them, are:
1.Many of these lands were under consideration for Wilderness designation. Leasing them for drilling prevents this, perhaps permanently, even if no wells are drilled.
2.Since North American natural gas has peaked, they have an incentive to monopolize the leases but not drill them, to ensure lower supply.
3.I've read that stockpiled leases can be used in various accounting tricks, letting them count speculative alleged future profits as real assets, which boosts their projected earnings.
4.For the Bush admin, simply alienating public property at fire sale prices is in itself a value. Even if no drilling takes place, this de facto privatization is still considered ideologically worth doing.
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