Obama spin on deep water drilling for oil

NY Times:

...

After a yearlong drilling moratorium, BP and other oil companies are intensifying their exploration and production in the gulf, which will soon surpass the levels attained before the accident. Drilling in the area is about to be expanded into Mexican and Cuban waters, beyond most American controls, even though any accident would almost inevitably affect the United States shoreline. Oil companies are also moving into new areas off the coast of East Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

The reason for the resumption of such drilling, analysts say, is continuing high demand for energy worldwide.

...

Domestic oil exploration and gasoline prices are emerging as important issues in the presidential campaign. While candidates have sparred over the reasons for rising prices, there is little disagreement over the call for more drilling, onshore and offshore.

“The price of gasoline is becoming a genuine crisis for many American families,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a candidate for the Republican nomination, appearing on CNN Sunday morning. “If it continues to go higher, it will crater the economy by August.”

President Obama, while in New Hampshire last Thursday, countered Republican charges that he was to blame for the rising pain at the pump. “We’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and approved more than 400 drilling permits since we put in place new safety standards in the wake of the gulf oil spill,” Mr. Obama said.

Gas prices are averaging $3.76 a gallon, while crude oil futures settled at $106.70 a barrel on Friday.

... The Energy Department recently projected that gulf oil production would expand from its 2011 level of 1.3 million barrels a day, still nearly a quarter of total domestic production, to two million barrels a day by 2020. 

Last December, the Obama administration held its first offshore auction since the BP spill, granting leases for more than 20 million acres of federal waters — bigger than West Virginia. The leases are worth $330 million to the federal government and have the potential to produce 400 million barrels of oil....
“The political discourse about energy has really changed over the last two years,” said Daniel Yergin, the oil historian and author of “The Quest,” a book about energy security. Despite the BP accident, he added, “there’s a new focus on how U.S. oil production should increase both onshore and offshore.” 

If there has been any disagreement, it has been over how fast to expand the drilling....Yet Republicans argue, loudly, that Mr. Obama is not doing nearly enough to expand drilling. The Republican majority in the House has passed legislation to speed lease sales on public lands while pressing to open the Atlantic and Pacific coasts — which have been largely politically untouchable since the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 — to extensive oil and gas development....

We are still well behind where we should be on drilling because of the policy of the Obama administration to strangle domestic production in the areas they control.  On federal controlled sites we are well behind where we were under the Bush administration and most of the new production of oil and gas has been on privately owned lands where they have no direct control.  But they are threatening indirect control through the EPA and the Endangered "Feces" Act.  Not mentioned in the story is the continued moratorium on drilling in ANWR.  This is a nonsensical restriction that the Democrats have been blocking for decades by arguing that it would take a decade to produce the oil.

The only real hope of energy security is to defeat Democrats who give a head fake toward more drilling every four years before reverting to form and resuming the strangulation policies of the past.