National Journal, Poll Track, “Energy Consensus: ‘All of the Above’“:

Quinnipiac pollsters found that most Americans support nearly every measure that’s been put on the table to address the energy crisis. A majority of respondents support domestic drilling, whether it’s offshore or in Alaska’s national wildlife refuge (62 percent and 51 percent, respectively). On top of that, nearly 60 percent said they favor building new nuclear power plants, and an overwhelming 87 percent support government-funded programs to develop renewable energy. The only proposal that didn’t garner majority support was releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; still, 45 percent supported this measure as well.

WSJ editorial, “Democrats and Drilling“:

It took a few months, and more than a few polls, but Democrats have concluded that they’ve lost the debate against more oil-and-gas drilling. The surrender became official on Saturday, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that even she was ready to “consider opening portions” of the Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration.

That’s great news, assuming she and her fellow Democrats really mean it. It wasn’t too many days ago that the anticarbon Speaker lampooned drilling as “a hoax on the American people,” while Barack Obama called it “another Washington gimmick.” Now the Democratic Presidential candidate has also said he might be willing to change his mind and tolerate the exploitation of domestic energy resources. The good news for converts like Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Obama is that they have immediate opportunities to quiet Republicans and other skeptics and prove their new pro-drilling bona fides.

WSJ, Political Diary, “The Energy Policy End“:

Smart Republicans like Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Jeb Hensarling of Texas are starting to recognize their party holds the ultimate trump card in the current energy debate. In 41 days, the long-imposed moratorium on offshore oil drilling and domestic oil shale production is set to expire — gone. This happens automatically and can be stopped only if Congress votes to re-

More….

• President Bush’s remarks
• Video of the President’s remarks
• News release, Associated Builders & Contractors
• RTT News Story, Bush Urges Pelosi To Reconvene Congress For Energy Vote

The Washington Post assesses three of the arguments used by opponents of OCS oil and natural gas drilling in a good editorial today, “Snake Oil.” We especially appreciate the rebuttal to “use it or lose it,” the specious argument that oil companies are just sitting on vast lands for drilling and refusing to develop them because…well, there the argument falls short. The Post’s explanation is clear and persuasive:

The oil companies aren’t using the leases they already have. According to the MMS, there were 7,457 active leases as of June 8. Of those, only 1,877 were classified as “producing.” As we pointed out in a previous editorial, the five leases that have made up the Shell Perdido project off Galveston since 1996 are not classified as producing. Only when it starts pumping the equivalent of an estimated 130,000 barrels of oil a day at the end of the decade will it be deemed “active.” Since 1996, Shell has paid rent on the leases; filed and had approved numerous reports with the MMS, including an environmentally sensitive resource development plan and an oil spill recovery plan that is subject to unannounced practice runs by the MMS; drilled several wells to explore the area at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars; and started constructing the necessary infrastructure to bring the oil to market. The notion that oil companies are just sitting on oil leases is a myth. With oil prices still above $100 a barrel, that charge never made sense.

The Post does bow to the anti-energy shibboleth, ANWR, although it doesn’t really state an argument: “We agree that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with its varied and sensitive ecosystems, should be preserved. In the quest for new sources of energy, there are trade-offs. That pristine area must remain off-limits.” We hope the member of the editorial board who elicited that concession appreciates it.

Elsewhere…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on CNN’s Larry King: “So there are things that Congress can do and we have voted on this over and over again. But the Republicans and the president have resisted. Instead, they have this thing that says drill offshore in the protected areas. Well, we can do that. We can have a vote on that. But it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and not just a hoax on them.” Some see in those comments a softening in the Speaker’s until-now resolute opposition to offshore drilling of any sort. That would be great. But we see a flexibile definition of “hoax” that could be called on to prevent action. 

As for “immediate relief,” an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily points to a report by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. From “Don’t Ask, Don’t Drill“:

The Minerals Management Service estimates there are 10 billion barrels waiting off the California coast.

“California could actually start producing new oil within a year,” the Bernstein report said, because the oil is in shallow water, and drilling platforms have been there since before the moratoria.

Immediate enough?

From today’s Washington Post, an editorial, “No Drilling, No Vote“:

WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There’s a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won’t be hearing it in the House of Representatives — certainly, you won’t find lawmakers voting on it — anytime soon.

The editorial chides Speaker Pelosi for blocking votes, quoting a very confused rationale that fails to justify the political machinations in the House.

The Post also makes an obvious observation that still triggered a thought: “There are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact of such drilling — environmental concerns that, we would note, exist in other regions whose oil Americans are perfectly happy to consume. But have technological improvements made such drilling less risky? Why not have that debate?”

Here’s a piece of a map from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.

Of course, unlike the Americans, the Norwegians don’t care about protecting their coastal beauty.

This week’s debates notwithstanding….

From Ed Frank, Americans for Prosperity:

President Bush’s lifting of the executive ban on offshore drilling this week is more than a symbolic gesture. It means the only thing preventing expanded offshore oil-and-gas development is a temporary, one-year congressional ban set to expire on September 30. While Congress has a habit of re-imposing this ban each year, it has never gotten around to writing it into permanent law. This creates a key opportunity for supporters of domestic energy production, including the president, to force a showdown.

And from Larry Kudlow:

The congressional ban on offshore drilling expires September 30, so that becomes a key date. A new report from Wall Street research house Sanford C. Bernstein says that California actually could start producing new oil within one year if the moratorium were lifted. The California oil is under shallow water and already has been explored. Drilling platforms have been in place since before the moratorium. They’re talking about 10 billion barrels worth off the coast of California.

And the Wall Street Journal:

With gas prices rising, California residents are softening their long-held opposition to offshore drilling, a new opinion poll suggests.

The shift comes as Congress and the Bush administration are escalating a battle over whether to end a two-decade federal ban on drilling off the coasts of California, Florida and the Eastern seaboard.

The White House has announced that President Bush will make a statement at 1:30 today in the Rose Garden. The news is big and welcome: He will announce that his is lifting the executive order that prohibits drilling on the Outer Contintental Shelf.

The AP has a story: The executive order was signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.

The New York Times covered the first President Bush’s prohibition — then only for 10 years — on OCS drilling in this story, June 27th, 1990, “Bush Cuts Back Areas off Coasts Open for Drilling.” The Times quotes a statement from the American Petroleum Institute:

The American Petroleum Institute, a trade group of major oil companies, estimated that as a result of the policy the country will lose about two million barrels of oil a day, about a fourth of current domestic production.

In a statement made public today, the institute complained: ”These decisions on offshore oil and natural gas leasing are harmful to our country and economy. They will lead to decreased domestic production, more imports , more dependency on OPEC, more tanker traffic, and the export of jobs and investment overseas.”

”Locking up these energy-rich lands at a time when our dependency on foreign energy is escalating,” the statement said, ”is a serious mistake.”

API was right, wasn’t it?

UPDATE (11:48 a.m.): In this June 18 news release, the National Association of Manufacturers called on President Bush to lift the executive moratorium.

Larry Kudlow interviewed James Hackett, president & CEO of Anadarko Petroleum, on energy issues last night. As to the benefits of drilling offshore, Hackett explained:

[We’ve] got a world class project that is the deepest producing well in the history of the world. It’s providing clean, natural gas to America, about 1.5 percent of all of our gas supply. Everyday it’s being provided from a football field and a half sized environmental footprint, a two-hour flight away from the shoreline. So it’s not in any visual contact with any human being. These platforms have gone through 200-year hurricanes, back in 2005, without any environmental consequences. It’s a bit of a fiction hoisted on us by people who don’t know better.

And to the assertion that new energy supplies from offshore or Alaska won’t have any immediate effect on prices, Hackett remarks:

Well I think that the price would adjust actually as soon as you started drilling it. There’s a psychology with regard to speculative elements in any commodity market, whether it’s grains, or metals, or oil and gas. If the world really felt that there were plenty of places to go look for oil and gas, the markets would start trading as if that were a reality. Today it’s quite the opposite reality, especially with the geopolitical elements overlaying that. So, every time we say to the world, ‘We want energy security, but we want you to produce it, and we’re not going to do anything,’ the elements in the trading community say, ‘well that means that access is getting tougher.’

The inset photo is of the Blind Faith platform, a Chevron-Anadarko project which will begin producing oil and natural gas in the Gulf this year. USA Today took a look at the promise and challenges of deep-sea production last week in a good story, “Deepwater oil fields are a final frontier,” which notes, “By 2015, Chevron expects deepwater wells to account for one-quarter of offshore oil production vs. 9% today.”

Anadarko summarized its capital projects for the year in a February news release. Wow. Good thing oil companies make money.

From The Corner:

 From Missouri:

I would be more than happy to examine it again,” McCain said.

For years, McCain has opposed drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

But McCain said he’d be willing to reconsider that stance as well.

Hat tip: The Sean Hannity Show

Go to ANWR, Senator, see how small the development site would be, how limited the harm to this ”pristine” bog/tundra.  August is an inviting month there, notwithstanding the midges, mites and mosquitoes.

 UPDATE (9:15 a.m.): Charles Krauthammer, “McCain’s Oil Epiphany.” Halfway there, Senator:

His fastidiousness on [ANWR] is inexplicable. “I believe that ANWR is a pristine area,” he explains. Is it more pristine than the ocean, where he now wants to drill? More pristine than the Arabian Desert from which we daily beg the Saudi princes to pump more oil?

The entire Arctic refuge is one-third the size of the United Kingdom (which includes Scotland and Wales). The drilling site would be one-seventh the size of Manhattan Island. The footprint is tiny. Moreover, forbidding drilling there does not prevent despoliation. It merely exports it. The crude oil we’re not getting from the Arctic we import instead from places like the Niger Delta, where millions live and where the resulting pollution and oil spillages poison the lives of many of the world’s most wretchedly poor.

Meanwhile, Rep. Maurice Hinchley (D-NY) has another approach: ““We [the government] should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”

Frank Wagner is a Virginia state Senator from Virginia Beach, co-owner and executive vice president of
Davis Boat Works, Inc., and an NAM board member. And a visionary when it comes to energy development and the state’s economic future:

Wagner introduced a bill for next week’s transportation special session that would allocate 40 percent of any oil and gas royalties from drilling off Virginia’s coast to transportation needs. He said experts estimate those royalties would be worth $200 million a year, so his plan would devote $80 million a year to transportation.

Meanwhile, Delegate Chris Saxman has proposed allocating the entire revenue stream to transportation.  

Allocation of revenues is a matter best left to the state legislators and voters, of course, but the entire nation needs the energy.

Energy has also emerged as a top issue in the U.S. Senate race in Virginia between two former Governors, Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Jim Gilmore. Warner wants to crack down on speculators, and Gilmore wants to increase supply.

From the White House, the President’s statement.

• Fact Sheet: Reducing Gas Prices and Foreign Oil Dependence 
• In Focus: Energy

Very good statement, reminding Congress of the law of supply and demand. The discussion of oil shale was also on target, as were the remarks on refineries.

Still, what’s the rationale on the timing here?

Republicans in Congress have proposed several promising bills that would lift the legislative ban on oil exploration in the OCS. I call on the House and the Senate to pass good legislation as soon as possible. This legislation should give the states the option of opening up OCS resources off their shores, provide a way for the federal government and states to share new leasing revenues, and ensure that our environment is protected. There’s also an executive prohibition on exploration in the OCS. When Congress lifts the legislative ban, I will lift the executive prohibition.