Obama's Offshore Drilling Fantasy

For a few brief moments last night it looked like the president might actually do something right and authorize new offshore drilling to help with our energy needs. As I feared it was too good to be true:

The Obama administration’s plan adopts some drilling proposals floated by President George W. Bush near the end of his tenure, including opening much of the Atlantic and Arctic Coasts. Those proposals were challenged in court on environmental grounds and set aside by President Obama shortly after he took office.

[snip]

The first lease sale off the coast of Virginia could occur as early as next year in a triangular tract 50 miles off the coast that had already been approved for development but was held up by a court challenge and additional Interior Department review, officials said.

But as a result of the Obama decision, the Interior Department will spend several years conducting geologic and environmental studies along the rest of the southern and central Atlantic Seaboard. If a tract is deemed suitable for development, it is listed for sale in a competitive bidding system. The next lease sales — if any are authorized by the Interior Department — would not be held before 2012.

In other words, Obama wants to appear to be responding to America's energy needs without actually doing that. The enviros will get upset, and that plays well for Obama with most people, and others who aren't paying attention will think he's finally on the right track. And all the while nothing will actually get done.

It's pretty much the same as Obama's claims to want bipartisanship.

As knifework said on Twitter:

How broke do we have to be for Obama to even talk about offshore drilling?

Since we cannot take any of Obama's words as truth, we must assume that this fake new interest in offshore drilling is really an effort to buy GOP support for cap-and-tax. He doesn't have to pick off many RINOs to get such a bill passed.

Congressman Mike Pence agrees:

WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the American Energy Solutions Group, issued the following statement today regarding President Obama's announcement on oil and gas exploration:

"As usual, the devil is in the details. Only in Washington, D.C. can you ban more areas to oil and gas exploration than you open up, delay the date of your new leases and claim you're going to increase production.

"The President's announcement today is a smokescreen. It will almost certainly delay any new offshore exploration until at least 2012 and include only a fraction of the offshore resources that the previous Administration included in its plan.

"Unfortunately, this is yet another feeble attempt to gain votes for the President's national energy tax bill that is languishing in the Senate. At the end of the day this Administration's energy plan is simple: increase the cost of energy on every family in America and trade American jobs overseas at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work."