The easiest point to make about John McCain's recently declared support for offshore drilling

[ElsewheresDaughter]

is that it is a HUGE FLIP FLOP!


When McCain ran for president in 1999, he supported the current moratorium on offshore drilling, slated to last until 2012. But speaking in the Washington area on Monday, McCain said, "There are areas off our coasts that should be open to exploration and exploitation, and I hope we can take the first step by lifting the moratoria." McCain added that drilling "would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis."

It's hard to blame anyone for changing his or her positions on energy issues over the past eight years — markets have changed, America's energy needs have changed, and prices have certainly changed. Even many Democrats have altered their positions on energy; most are much more supportive of climate change legislation than they once were.

You can blame McCain, however, for switching to the wrong position. Controversy over offshore drilling originated in the United States in 1969, when a cracked sea floor created a huge oil spill near Santa Barbara, California. The danger of a reoccurrence still exists, as do risks associated with having oil tankers routinely servicing offshore rigs. More important, offshore drilling is a band-aid. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, lifting the offshore drilling moratorium would have a minor impact on production and prices:

Mean estimates from the indicate that technically recoverable resources currently off limits in the lower 48 OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) total 18 billion barrels of crude oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas....

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. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/06/8708_mccain_on_off_s.html

[BridgeTheGap]

1. I'm fairly certain that we have no Oil Companies based in the U.S. that

aren't multinationals. In any case, if oil is going for $130 on the world market, what would compel a multinational to sell it to the U.S. for a substantially lower price?