Bush Spins a Big Lie About Offshore Drilling

Posted by A Siegel, Get Energy Smart! NOW!!! at 10:56 AM on July 14, 2008.

The push is on, big time. The solution to all of America's problems, evidently, is to drill, drill, drill. This is now the Republican mantra as they seem to believe that they have found a winning political issue, no matter what the implications of this "win" might be for America's future.

Let us be clear. Efforts to increase (actually, struggle to maintain) America's oil production can be part of a holistic energy package. But, only part: far more critical is to use efficiency to produce negagallons to help provide some breathing space to move as much of America's transportation off oil. (To me, the most fruitful path for results by 2020 is mass electrification: rail and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles along with GEM-full flex-fuel for the liquid portion of the ground transportation system.) Even if transportation is 100% non-oil, we will still want oil for many industrial processes and to support manufacture of many products. But, efforts and discussion to explore additional oil production should be part of a larger discussion. And, they should be grounded in truth.

George W Bush, in Saturday's radio address, provided a clear example of how truthiness, rather than truth, reigns in the efforts to promote oil exploration and drilling in the outer continental shelf (OCS).

From that radio chat:

First, we should expand American oil production by increasing access to offshore exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf, or OCS. Experts believe that the OCS that is currently off-limits could produce enough oil to match America's current production for almost ten years.

A report last year by the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. --WashPost

George says that additional OCS drilling "could produce enough oil to match America's current production for almost ten years". He forgets to mention that that "could" is a "maybe, perhaps, best case" as to that amount of production (that all those birds in the bush will become birds in Bush's hands) and that this production would be over decades of time, even into the 22d century. At what point does truthiness and disingenuous arguments simply become lying?

Okay, who are you going to believe and place faith in? George's radio address or the detailed reporting from the Energy Information Administration?

Bush, in that radio address, also pushed hard for other failed or reckless policies. For example, he provided a strong push for Oil Shale development. Of course, no mention of the very serious water and Global Warming implications of pursuing this path forward.

Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell has been similarly disingenuous, stating with authority truthiness ungrounded in fact. From today's Washington Post:

"I think people are reassured that not a drop of oil was spilled during Katrina or Rita," McConnell said. "Those rigs in the Gulf, there was not a single incident of spillage that anyone reported."

the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department reported that there were five spills, each between 1,000 and 2,000 barrels. Altogether, 125 small spills totaled 16,302 barrels ...

I'll call for lifting the federal moratorium for states that choose to permit exploration. I think that this and perhaps providing additional incentives for states to permit exploration off their coasts would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis.

Tagged as: mccain, george w bush, drilling, outer continental shelf

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