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Don't Be Fooled By Drilling Scam

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By Carl Hiaasen McClatchy Newspapers

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 24, 2008

Raise your hand if you actually believe that offshore oil drilling will bring down gasoline prices at the pump.

Raise your other hand if you believe in Peter Pan, unicorns and variable-rate mortgages.

Last week, President Bush strode into the White House Rose Garden and announced he was nullifying the moratorium on offshore oil drilling that his father initiated 18 years ago following the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

"The time for action is now," proclaimed the younger Bush, though of course the gesture was largely symbolic. The moratorium stays in place until Congress decides not to renew it.

And Congress, declared our fearless leader, is "the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources."

Wow. And we thought the gas crisis was more complicated. Apparently it's the fault of those knuckleheads on Capitol Hill who continue to persecute the poor energy companies.

Those companies, by the way, currently lease more than 90 million acres of public land for exploration. According to a House report, only about one-quarter of that leased acreage is being used.

Naturally, some "obstructionist" Democrats want the oil companies to explain why they aren't drilling in all these other places before they start drilling off the coasts of Florida, California and along the Eastern Seaboard.

It seems like a good question, but the president had nothing to say on the subject.

Listening to Bush and now John McCain, you'd almost forget that the oil companies already do lots of offshore drilling. In fact, they currently have access to more than 71 billion untapped barrels of recoverable oil believed to lie beneath coastal waters.

That means four-fifths of all known offshore deposits are available to industry exploration efforts, according to the federal Mineral Management Service.

So why aren't they concentrating on the oil leases that they already control? Another good question, and one for which the explanations are typically murky.

Politically, what's happening is simple. The energy companies want to score big before their two guardian angels, Bush and Dick Cheney, leave power. With the public pounded by gas prices surpassing $4 a gallon, industry lobbyists see a golden opportunity to dismantle the offshore moratorium.

Florida, with its dangerously narrow economic base, can't afford a major spill. One Valdez-type of accident in the Gulf of Mexico could foul miles of beachfront with tarry gobs; the news video alone would cost the state millions in hotel bookings.

And then there's the incalculable long-term damage to the real-estate market and commercial fisheries.

Energy companies say the technology of extraction has improved substantially, making unlikely the chances of a serious mishap. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California is unpersuaded, and remains outspokenly opposed to drilling there.

Yet in Florida, fellow green Republican Charlie Crist, a longtime foe of offshore drilling, recently announced that he - like McCain - has had a change of heart.

"Floridians are suffering," Charlie said, as if oil companies will kind-heartedly deflate gas prices once their derricks rise off Destin and Tampa.

The United States owns only about 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet it guzzles 25 percent of global production. Every day Americans burn up 20 million barrels of oil, which is what keeps us slaves to OPEC.

Undoubtedly it's possible to safely extract more oil from beneath our oceans, but there's not enough down there to free the United States from its crippling dependence on Mideast reserves.

Drilling in the Alaskan wilderness won't save us, nor will drilling off the beaches of Florida and California. The main result would be a temporary boost in domestic product, which the oil companies will eagerly sell us at whatever price the market will bear.

Only a sucker would believe otherwise.

Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

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