An offshore oil rig conducts well testing by flaring excess gas while discharging crude oil to a barge. In 2006, President Bush said that the United States was "addicted to oil." But in a speech yesterday, he echoed an old line when he called for Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, allow access to oil shale, increase refinery capacity, and allow offshore oil drilling in areas that have been off-limits since 1982.
There are many reasons that offshore drilling in sensitive coastal areas is a bad idea. These 10 are only the beginning:
1. We can't drill our way out of the energy crisis.
According to a report by the House Committee on Natural Resources Majority Staff:
"Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361 percent, yet gasoline prices have also risen dramatically, contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices. There is simply no correlation between the two."
2. We don't have enough oil to meet our demand.
The U.S. oil supply-demand balance is insurmountable. We have less than 2 percent of the world's known reserves, yet use 25 percent of its oil. Even if we drilled off of every beach, and inside every national park, refuge, and forest, we could not produce enough oil to offset our growing demand.
3. Oil companies have not utilized the leases they have now.
Why open up new areas to drilling when oil companies hold over 4,000 undeveloped leases in the western Gulf of Mexico? What's more, the government already leases 44 million acres offshore, of which only 10.5 million—or one quarter—are producing oil or gas.
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