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Posted
Thursday, June 19, 2008 5:22 PM
| By
Christopher Beam
John McCain is taking heat right now for reversing his
position on the federal ban on coastal oil drilling, as if flip-flopping itself
were the cardinal sin here. But the biggest problem is the notion that lifting
the ban will affect gas and oil prices in the short term.
With gas prices topping four dollars a gallon, McCain
explains his switch as an attempt to give Americans relief at the pump. Florida
Gov. Charlie Crist justified
his late conversion in similar terms: “Floridians are suffering.” A Rasmussen
poll released today showed
that 61 percent of Florida
voters agree drilling would bring down the cost of oil and gas.
The problem is, it won’t—at least not
for the next seven years. Here’s the reason, per the Wall Street Journal:
With the disputed areas long off-limits even to exploration,
neither government nor industry experts know exactly how much oil and gas is
there, how best to get at it, or even where it is. And although the industry's
environmental record is much improved since headline-grabbing oil spills of
earlier eras, risks remain, and addressing those risks could delay production
for years.
So the notion that it’s going to affect oil prices in the next
few months is pretty outlandish.
But even long-term, drilling doesn’t fix much. America’s
coastal regions have an estimated 19 billion barrels’ worth of oil. The biggest
prize—California’s
southern coast, with an estimated 5.6 billion barrels of oil—has been declared
off-limits by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The next-biggest score, in the Gulf of Mexico, is estimated at 3.7 billion barrels. The United States
consumes 20
million barrels of petroleum a day, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Which means even the maximum amount of drillable oil would only get the U.S.
about two and a half years’ worth of fuel. Realistically, we’d get a lot less.
Even Karl Rove has dissed
McCain for spouting "economic nonsense." (Rove goes after Obama, too.) McCain’s
rationale for drilling doesn't inspire either.
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