The Bush-McCain offshore oil drilling proposal is taking more hits. This time from Republicans. According to the Miami Herald, Republican Florida state legislator Marc Rubio described the Bush-McCain claim that new offshore drilling would lower gas prices as "disingenuous."
"For anyone to represent that someone drilling off the coast in Florida is going to lower gas prices here or anywhere in this country is disingenuous and a flawed argument,'' Rubio, the speaker of the Florida state house, was quoted as saying. "Oil drilling could take 10 years before any oil is pulled out of the ground, and there are a large number of leases held by oil companies that are not being exploited now. We can't say we need more until we've exploited those.''
Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who has endorsed John McCain, said yesterday that "we must continue to protect and preserve our economic interests by safeguarding against near-shore drilling."
"Our energy policy should not completely disregard the importance of protecting our natural resources and environment," she told the Miami Herald.
Additionally, Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan said, "expanded drilling would threaten our natural resources, which are vital to our tourism-based economy and quality of life."
Comments by these Republican critics of the Bush-McCain plan concur with points made by three current and former East Coast governors, who, in a teleconference June 18, denounced the Bush-McCain offshore drilling plan as dishonest and risky.
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) pointed out that hydrogen fuel cell technology, plug-in hybrid vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and alternative fuels would be available "before you get the first drop of oil" from John McCain's plan. Conservation and efficiency are the best short-term solutions, he said.
"[The Bush-McCain] policy does not help working families at all. Any drilling would be ten years away." Easely argued. "The insignificant amount that we in the United States would ever be able to control of the world's oil market is such a small percentage that we would never be able to affect the price."
"[The Bush-McCain plan] has nothing to do with the price of gas today, next month, next year, or even five years from now," stated New Jersey Gov. John Corzine (D).
In a joint statement released yesterday, Florida's Democratic congressional delegation also rejected the Bush-McCain offshore drilling plan. "There is an inherent fallacy in the argument that offshore drilling would significantly lower gas prices," the Democratic members said.
Opening new offshore areas to drlling is unnecessary, the statement read. "68 million acres of leased federal lands and waters are currently open to drilling but are not being tapped. Over 80% of offshore oil and gas reserves are already available."
Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor pointed out in a separate statement the environmental dangers of offshore drilling. "How can you ignore the fact that over 3 million gallons of oil spilled from OCS oil and gas operations in 73 incidents between 1980 and 1999?" she asked.
"Storms along the Gulf Coast in 2005 caused 124 oil spills in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. During Hurricane Katrina alone 233,000 gallons of oil were spilled," she continued. "There were 508,000 gallons spilled during Hurricane Rita. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that 7 million gallons of oil and petroleum product was released into the Gulf by damaged infrastructure of one kind or another."
"Current cleanup methods are incapable of removing more than a small fraction of the oil spilled in marine waters," she noted.
But many of these critics of the Bush-McCain offshore drilling plan agreed with John McCain himself just three weeks ago when he stated that searching for and exploiting new oil resources offshore "would take years to develop."
They even agreed with Republican Florida Gov. Charles Crist who opposed offshore drilling just one week ago. When questioned by reporters if he planned to drop his opposition to offshore drilling, Crist said, "I am not" and "No, I don't like it." Now, however, as Crist is a contender for McCain's VP slot, and his potential future boss has flip-flopped on the drilling issue, so has Crist.
On the issue of whether or not new offshore drilling would impact the price of gas, these critics also generally agreed with a report authored by the Bush administration in 2007. According to a Department of Energy report, "The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030... Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant." [emphasis added]
Basically, what happened is that John McCain needed financial backing from the Big Oil donors who backed Bush but did not support McCain in the 2008 primaries. In order to get that support, McCain dropped his opposition to new offshore drilling and is backing the Bush plan.
Some political strategists are suggesting that McCain's shifting position on this matter and his close identification with Bush could cause him to lose Florida in the general election.
