Mark Kirk Supports Environmentally Unfriendly Oil Company Future Profit Plan

This one from those wonderful folks at Progress Illinois surprises even me because Mark Kirk usually works to elevate his often low League of Conservation Voters rating for an upcoming election, but I guess the call of his bosses, Bush and John McW McCain, has been too strong of late, so he jumped on the offshore drilling bandwagon despite the environmental impact. To do his part for the oil company's cause, he's been spreading the lie about China drilling off of Cuba. In any event, since when has China become the international standard for conduct?

There are many articles to be found all over the internet and print media explaining why offshore drilling is no solution to the gas price problem, including the 7-10 years it would take to produce more oil and the limited supply increase that would result even if it was a good idea to begin with. The problem is, it isn't a good idea to begin with because there is already plenty of unused drilling land and coast the oil industry simply choses not to tap and its history proves that giving the oil companies more drilling potential has never resulted in lower prices for consumers.

To begin this discussion, we have to be careful with language because there is no real "ban" on offshore drilling. There is a geographically limited moratorium. According to the World Wildlife Fund, "Within areas not covered by the restrictions the oil industry had access to more than 80 percent of the known potential reserves of oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf." Today, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-WV), responded to Bush's and McCain's call to open more coastline to drilling:

Yet, we have found that the oil industry is sitting on 68 million acres of federal oil and gas leases, the size of Colorado. They are stockpiling them. Opening up even more areas only gives them an opportunity to speculate even further. It is like your children trying to eat their dessert before the main course. The oil industry needs to drill what they have now, drill in those areas available to them, and then we will talk about giving them dessert.

Rahall's committee has published a short factsheet called Drilling Facts that includes information on the "68 million acres of leased but stockpiled federal oil and gas lands could produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day." There is more information here in the committee's Special Report: The Truth About America’s Energy: Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits including this finding:

Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%, yet gasoline prices have also risen dramatically (Figure 1) contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices. There is simply no correlation between the two.

So, why does the oil industry fail to use so much of the unrestricted lands and coast? One possibility is that offshore drilling is expensive and dangerous. Then, if they already have so much untapped drillable land and offshore drilling is so difficult, why do the oil companies want more coastline? Most likely they simply want to hold onto this area until oil becomes even more scarce and expensive so they can make a real killing when they begin drilling.

Another question comes to mind. Why is Kirk jumping on the bandwagon and hurting his chances of running on his carefully timed pre-election higher LCV rating? In reality, he probably won't have to deal with it before the election. Most political pundits feel this proposal will go nowhere in the current Congress. It's just a political game to give the McCain campaign something to say about the cost of gas and avoid the real issues of oil company windfall profits and the Enron loophole which allows unregulated oil speculation on the commodities market.

Finally, even if Bush, McCain and Kirk are genuine in their belief that opening up the rest of our coasts to offshore drilling is the solution to high gas prices, the whole thing strikes me as a very old fashioned solution to a problem requiring a post-modern, high tech solution. They propose no requirement that the oil companies use profits from more offshore drilling for alternate energy research and development. We all know oil is not our ultimate future because of the limited supply and its adverse affect on our planet, and yet, Bush, McCain and Kirk don't want to act to make the US a leader in our energy future. I guess we cannot expect more from a lame duck, an aging curmudgeon and a visionless partisan political hack, but we shouldn't let their short term vision, supporting only their personal political goals, put the US behind in energy innovation.