EDITORIALS
Drilling bill lacks substance
Democrats’ proposal doesn’t do much beyond election-year look of concern
Updated: 09/22/08 6:44 AM
Drill, baby, drill. At least for votes.
Democrats in the House of Representatives passed their version of an offshore oil exploration bill, one that is unlikely to produce much in the way of fossil fuel but might help the ruling congressional party produce gains in the November elections.
With gasoline prices still hovering around $4 a gallon, and the fever to drill for more oil a major factor in the current campaigns, many Democrats have backed away from their line-in-the-ocean opposition to any more drilling on the U. S. continental shelf.
When elections aren’t looming, and the price of gas isn’t staggering, continuing the 26-year ban on drilling might have been the principled thing to do — especially considering that any real production from opened sea beds would take years and provide only a comparative trickle of what Americans now burn. But when elections are, and gas price is, principle takes a back seat to political appearances.
And appearances are about all that are likely to come of the Democratic bill.
The measure won almost no Republican support, and President Bush is likely to veto it in the unlikely event it gets through the Senate, because it restricts new drilling to a band between 50 miles and 100 miles from the shoreline. Critics charge that by keeping a 50-mile no-drill buffer in place, the bill opens the way to only about 20 percent of the oil that is thought to lie under the sea.
The bill also would give each coastal state a veto over drilling off its shores, but would not offer those states any share in the revenue created, further decreasing the chances that the drilling Democrats may claim to be allowing by this vote will ever really happen.
This way, Democrats can claim to be opening the way to offshore drilling, if that’s what Americans want, but are unlikely to be blamed for any big spills or explosions because, under the restrictions included in the bill, no real drilling is likely to happen.
There were some good things in the Democrats’ bill, things that could be part of a real national energy policy if we ever were able to draft one. They include a shift of tax breaks away from oil companies and toward sustainable sources of energy such as solar and wind, a requirement that power utilities generate 15 percent of their electricity from such alternative sources and a crackdown on gifts to federal officials charged with overseeing royalty payments paid by companies that drill on public lands.
But for any bill to have a hope of, or a reason for, becoming law, it should offer some real hope of new offshore drilling, with firm expectations that claims of new, environmentally safe methods be put in place. That should be balanced with the push toward alternative energy sources that Democrats rightly favor. And the question of whether nuclear energy should be in that mix unavoidably deserves a full debate.
It does appear, though, that any energy plan drilled in an election year is likely to be a dry hole.
