To Drill or Not to Drill

Here's an interesting editorial that suggests that the Congress should pass a bill permitting an expansion of offshore drilling along the Gulf of Mexico.

The Senate bill — whose principal architect is Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat — would open up 8.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to new oil and gas development. Half the royalties would go to the federal treasury, 37.5 percent would go to the four coastal states, and the rest would go into a fund to help other states purchase open space.

Our support for this bill should not be taken as a blanket endorsement of offshore drilling — nor as an endorsement of a mischievous bill sponsored by Representative Richard Pombo, Republican of California, and passed by the House last summer. The Pombo bill would end a longstanding federal moratorium on oil and gas drilling on the entire American coastline. The Landrieu bill would simply enlarge the drilling area in the gulf, where oil and gas exploration has been broadly accepted for years.

Mr. Pombo is hoping that the Senate will agree to a conference committee in which the two bills can be married. But his bill is so poorly thought out as to be unacceptable, even as a starting point for compromise. A conference committee would also leave the protection of America’s coastal waters to the mercy of closed-door horse trading.

This (H.Res. 5429) appears to be the Pombo bill in question, but appears only to relate to oil and gas drilling along the Alaskan coastal areas. It would be nice if the paper included links to the legislation that it talks about online, but that might spur folks to question the facts and logic of the editorials.

I am glad that the Times recognizes that oil and gas exploration is a crucial and necessary step to take to improve US national security, though it appears reluctant to open up other offshore areas to potential development, despite the fact that discoveries in those new areas might further improve US national petroleum stockpiles and reduce reliance on foreign sources, bolster domestic supply and spread the risk of loss as a result of storms.

And since we're on the subject of oil and gas exploration, perhaps the Times should also come out in favor of building new refineries so that the oil and gas discovered and pumped from those fields can be refined into the gas and oil used by the US. You see, the US hasn't built new refineries in decades, and the infrastructure is badly in need of new capacity - and not just on the Gulf Coast. Again, to prevent against risk of loss, such facilities should be spread around the country to minimize disruptions due to storm, natural disaster, or terrorist incident.