Drilling for Votes

It was the best of announcements; it was the worst of announcements. It was the summer of our future; it was the winter of our distant past.

The President announced this week that he is opening 167 million acres of previously restricted offshore areas for oil exploration. The general understanding is that this was a necessity to bring conservative Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans on board with climate change legislation now being pushed through committee in the Senate. Thus it is the first step into a future where the right to disgorge exhaust into the air actually costs something. But it also harks back to the 60s when oil was the nation's future, and drilling anywhere and everywhere was simply accepted as the march of progress. So this action places us with one foot (tentatively) in the future, and one foot (firmly) in the past.

There's no question that any attempt to drill our way to energy security is futile. The Energy Information Agency estimated that full production from these fields would occur around 2030, and that new leases would produce 100,000 barrels per day (vs. the 100,000,000 barrels per day that the world currently produces.) Even the EIA says that the impact on prices will be "insignificant." And the President himself said as much in his announcement.

Adding to the sense of futility are the oil companies themselves. As Dave Roberts over at Grist reported, "Oil companies aren't even drilling in most of the offshore areas they already have leased — some 34 billion barrels worth of leases are going unexploited, mainly because the cost of offshore drilling is prohibitive at today's oil prices." So it is clear that the oil companies aren't trying to keep prices down. They are merely positioning themselves for windfalls when the prices rise.

So this was essentially a political move, and that is confirmed by looking at a map. There are no leases planned offshore from the politically progressive Northeast or West Coast. The areas opened up bracket the conservative "Blue Dog" states in the Southeast and Gulf Coast who will view this positively as economic opportunity.

So is this political gambit worth it? Well, first of all might it work? I feel doubtful about that. I have heard opinions that this is a positive announcement if for no other reason than because it finally gets the topic of domestic drilling out of the way, and enables us to have a national discussion about the real issue, which is the end of cheap oil on a global scale. I wish I could, but I just don't see this happening. The Republicans are already painting this as "not enough," or "too little, too late." And the inevitable rise in gasoline prices as economies recover and global supplies are once again squeezed, will seem to confirm their judgment.

And even if it did work, it sends a very wrong message about where we are right now. At the very least, opening these areas to oil exploration should have been the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. It should have been used to lift the tax breaks for oil exploration and production. Or the leases should be taxed to build a nation-spanning smart grid. It should have been used to somehow help build the path into the future.

Winston Churchill once said, "America will always do the right thing, after all other possible alternatives have been exhausted." We seem to be stuck exhausting alternatives again. The problem is that we've only got one planet.

Paul Birkeland lives in Seattle, WA, US, and develops Strategic Energy Management Systems for government, commercial, and industrial organizations through Integrated Renewable Energy.