Sen. John McCain visited an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana Tuesday, reiterating his call for more offshore drilling and bashing Barack Obama for not sharing his enthusiasm. “Sen. Obama opposes new drilling,” said McCain, who himself opposed new offshore drilling until this summer. Actually, to the chagrin of enviros, Obama said recently that he’d consider voting for offshore drilling within a larger package that included alternative-energy incentives. Though the McCain campaign has downplayed the environmental risks of offshore drilling, the rig the senator was stumping on had to be given Coast Guard protection in 2002 because of the “potential for loss of life and damage to the environment” if an accident were to occur there. We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again: even the American Petroleum Institute says it would take about a decade for new offshore drilling to affect gas prices — though McCain says he’s heard from oil execs that results could come much sooner.
