Offshore Drilling, A Questionable Reality, Even if Approved by Congress

The recent debate about offshore drilling has recently resurfaced due to high gas prices, those of us Mazda owners have definitely noticed. However, most over look the complexity of the issue. We at Sierra Mazda don’t like high gas prices either, however, we think the solutions should be multi-faceted…

Offshore Drilling the Answer?

States’ Rights

Offshore drilling isn’t just a federal issue, much of it hinges of course on the cooperation of the states in which said drilling is going to occur. Those who live in the interior who are suffering from higher gas prices, even with the recent downturn, might be all for more drilling and exploration, it’s the coastline states that have the final say in this recently pressing and political issue.

Meanwhile, Bush is pushing Congress hard for it, the Interior Secretary is prepping “just in case”, and John McCain is promoting drilling, they all seem to agree that it should be up to individual states to actually allow the drilling to begin.

Drilling Consensus

Recently, a Gallup poll has demonstrated that 57 percent of Americans would support drilling in the nation’s coastal and wilderness areas that are currently closed to oil exploration. However, support is based upon if the eventual drilling helped reduce gasoline prices and if the drilling were conducted under strict environmental safeguards. However, most do not realize that a good percentage of the oil will likely travel overseas and that most of us won’t see an actual reduction in gas prices for our cars for about another 18 years.

Those are two very huge ifs, and one that other, state-level politicians are going to pay attention to. That means that 43% of Americans are not in favour of offshore drilling even if it were to lower gas prices, and the other 57% want strict environmental controls (anyone else remember Paris Hilton’s comments?). And let’s not forget that the first state that has an environmental disaster will then very quickly have a politically wounded and finished governor.

Lower Gas Prices and State’s Interests

For states that have thriving tourism industries like California (North and South Carolina, Florida to name a few), the economic benefits that would accrue from having offshore drilling may not outweigh the political risks, economic risks and of course the potential costs.

Geography is Destiny

Which states are for drilling? Non-coastal states are potentially going to reap the economic rewards without the environmental costs, while the coastal states tend to be more environmentally aware. The political calculus in North Dakota is going to be very different than that in Oregon. Therein lies the political trade-off in the offshore drilling debate: will gaining votes in the mid-west outweigh the lost votes in California and other coastal states? Obviously McCain seems to thinks so, Barack Obama doesn’t.

Since the political consensus on the right seems to devolve down to the individual affected state’s decisions to drill, and Obama’s focus on alternatives to drilling, it looks like the actual decision as to whether or not to allow offshore drilling will fall to the next President. Looks like we’ll all be staring at the pump in disbelief for quite a while, even those of us who own Mazdas…

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