Posted: 05/19/2006
Off Shore Drilling Defeated, Oil Addiction Continues
NCPA scholar calls on President to veto bill
DALLAS (May 19, 2006) - The House defeated a proposal yesterday to allow off-shore drilling in U.S. coastal waters. National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett responded to the news by suggesting the president should send Congress back to the drawing board.
"If I were president, I would veto any interior funding bill that does not put America on a path to greater energy security by ending the moratorium on off-shore oil and gas production and allow drilling in ANWR," said Burnett. "We have billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas going untapped, while Americans are suffering from the highest oil and gas prices in history."
The Interior Department estimates that the Outer Continental Shelf has more than 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas available for extraction. That would satisfy the nation's oil needs for about 16 years and its natural gas needs for about 25 years at current levels of consumption.
"We are the only industrialized nation on earth that is not actively seeking new oil and gas reserves off of its shores," said Burnett. "Even Cuba is drilling offshore."
Cuba and Canada both currently run drill operations adjacent to U.S. territorial waters. As a result, those countries are tapping those reserves instead of the United States.
"This is an irresponsible move to curry favor with environmental lobbyists and the travel industry in California and Florida," Burnett concluded.