Drill Baby Drill

Pres. Obama surprised a lot of supporters last week when he hopped on the “Drill, Baby Drill” bandwagon, most famously enunciated by Sarah Palin. Many on the left were up in arms, ‘think of the (insert favorite marine creature here). The Irritable Liberal is a lot less concerned, partly because I did a little research and found that there are huge swathes of existing offshore leases sitting idle: to be exact 68 million acres of them.

The oil companies get fat tax credits for leases they own but lose the credits if they start to drill. It’s like paying farmers not to grow a certain crop - corporate welfare at its finest.

The ‘Drill Baby Drill’ faction believe we need to drill everywhere to establish American energy independence. That will never happen with oil. All the offshore reserves, leased or not leased, can supply a maximum of half a million barrels of oil a day, far short of the 20 million a day we burn through, or a whole 2.5% of our daily needs.

The oil industry is quite content to sit on their lucrative non-utilized offshore leases and pump enough oil to keep everyone grumbling about the cost of gas but not too high to force people to consider alternative modes of transport, or heaven forbid, to use public transport.

In this context, Obama’s announcement is more like the first act in what will be a long drawn out battle over energy. The Republicans managed to paint themselves into a corner on health care and it looks like he might be setting up the same on energy. The energy bill is sure to contain some ‘cap and trade’ items as well as other climate change actions. If recent past GOP behavior is anything to go by, they will oppose any bill that has Obama’a stamp on it. What better way, than to get the Republicans to reflexively come out with a new slogan, “Don’t Drill, Baby.”