Dems offer crude plans

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: September 15, 2008

Proving that both the gods and Congress are against us, Democrats step forward this week in the wake of Ike’s battering of Texas with proposals to lift offshore drilling bans while leaving the shackles in place. Job might recognize the mix of politics, economy and ill fortune. Oil prices tumble, then a hurricane shutters 20 percent of American refining capacity. Finally, the call to drill is heeded, but drifting into the ears of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the open tundra in between, words turn to distortions in the steamy Beltway air.
Having endured the withering criticism of Republicans and constituents of both party persuasions, Pelosi last week proposed to permit drilling 100 miles off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Governors and legislatures could move the boundary to within 50 miles. A ban on drilling off Florida’s Gulf Coast would remain in effect.
Drawing a line in the waters 50 miles offshore would mean that current bans remain substantively in effect. Federal studies show that more than 80 percent of known oil reserves are within the 50-mile barrier. If it is the thought that counts, what does this indicate in Pelosi’s thinking and her regard for the public’s capacity to recognize a ruse? There are, naturally, additional catches. States would not get a share of royalties, and taxes on oil companies would increase, with all of the money going to alternative energy.
A Senate bill backed by 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans similarly would set a 100-mile boundary and give states the authority to move it to within 50 miles. The ban off Florida’s Gulf Coast would be lifted, but drilling in the Atlantic would be permitted only off the shores of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. A ban in the Pacific would remain. Both proposals produce similar effects: Uncle Jed Clampett, fictional patriarch of “Beverly Hillbillies” fame, aiming at food, would stand a better chance of discovering significant veins of crude than oil companies relegated to plunging ocean depths to search for black gold where little of it appears to exist.
But thanks anyway.
Oil producers covet the eastern Gulf off Florida’s western coast, where Texas Tea is thought to pulse. But Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., staunchly opposes drilling off Florida, pointing to the impact on tourism and military test sites. “If they want to get something done,” Nelson told the Washington Post, “they have to deal with me.”
Democrats wanting to block drilling must get something done in the way of compromise or risk annual bans expiring at month’s end. To ensure success of a political sort, Democrats could add one of their dry-hole drilling proposals to spending legislation to cover most of government operations next year, raising the specter of a shutdown in the event of a Bush veto. Nudging Republicans into an ostensible position of responsibility for a shutdown is a tested Democratic formula, and a testament to partisan priorities.
Pelosi and her cohorts have heard the public’s chants to drill now, but remain deaf to Americans’ seriousness about that call. Expect them to couch resistance to their proposals as a Republican effort to shield big oil from increased taxes and to block advancement of alternative energy initiatives. The Pelosi and Senate bills should be exposed for what they are: mere political artifices meticulously designed to chink partisan opposition while denying what Americans repeatedly have said they want, to tap deeper the country’s own supply of oil.
If Republicans acquiesce, Democrats later can be counted upon to point to the deficient quantities of oil produced in places where both sides know there is little to be found. Democrats pose not compromise but a sham. Republicans should allow neither themselves nor the American people to be suckered.