By John Rossomando
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
Republicans say the Obama administration's policies are contributing to skyrocketing gasoline prices – now at more than $4 per gallon throughout much of the country – and they have introduced legislation to reopen the nation's coasts to drilling.
This year will be the first year since 1958 that the federal government will not have sold a lease for offshore drilling, and Republicans say this is fueling skyrocketing prices at the pump.
Congress opened the nation's coasts to drilling when gas hit $4 per gallon in 2008, but the Obama administration effectively reinstated the ban last year by placing the Alaskan, Atlantic and Pacific coasts off-limits to drilling, as well as Florida's west coast.
"We need to look at the actions of this administration, which are leading to more of a domestic shortage of energy production in this country – whether you are looking at the outer continental shelf or whether you are looking at offshore lease sales," said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash.
The chairman told WND that comments made by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar make it seem the administration has a political agenda behind its unwillingness to expand domestic oil drilling.
More than 12,000 jobs in the oil drilling sector have been lost as a direct result of the drilling moratorium the Obama administration imposed last May in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Despite the administration's announcement last October that it was lifting its drilling moratorium, little progress has been made in reopening the Gulf to drilling. Only 10 permits have been granted, while 40 projects remain stalled due to the administration's inaction. And since July 2010 only 49 shallow-water permits have been issued at an average of 4.9 permits per month, which lags far behind the historical average of 7.1 permits per month.
The administration needs to act in a timely manner to address the drilling permits that were in play when it imposed the moratorium to increase oil and gas supplies and reduce prices, Hastings said.
"We're going to try to change that through our committee and with Doc Hastings over at natural resources," House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton told WND. "We know it is a supply problem, and we cannot continue to say no to domestic production because only one thing happens – the prices are going to go up."
The oil industry today produces 100,000 barrels less per day than the Department of Energy predicted, and the department expects production in the Gulf of Mexico to drop by 240,000 barrels per day this year and by 200,000 per day in 2012.
"We've got to say stop it; stop these regulations and putting the U.S. off-limits," Upton said. "We're going to do our best to pursue legislation to change that. If you are going to impose restrictions on the domestic oil and gas industries, guess what, they're going to go ahead and drill someplace else."
That seems to have already started. So far, 12 oil rigs have departed the Gulf since the moratorium was imposed for destinations such as Nigeria, Egypt and Brazil, potentially costing thousands of jobs, according to the House Natural Resources Committee.
Upton's committee currently is considering legislation being proposed by Colorado Rep. Cory Gardner that would eliminate permitting delays that have been imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency on drilling projects off the Alaskan coast.
The House Natural Resources Committee passed three bills last week that would force the administration to reopen the nation's coasts to oil drilling. The first bill would require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct oil and natural gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Virginia coast for offshore parcels that have either been canceled or delayed by the administration.
The legislation would require lease sales to be held no later than June 1, 2012. Hastings' second bill would require that each five-year offshore leasing plan crafted by the Department of the Interior include lease sales in areas with the largest known oil and natural gas reserves.
A third bill would require the Secretary of the Interior to act on a permit within 30 days of receiving an application and prevent the Obama administration from imposing a drilling moratorium through inaction. It would also beef up oil rig safety standards to ensure an accident of the kind that happened last year is never repeated.
Hastings anticipates the full House will bring his legislation to the floor for a vote before Memorial Day, but its fate in the Senate is uncertain.
"People in the Senate and in the administration definitely are not going to be looking kindly on my legislation," Hastings said. "But with gas prices a little over $4 per gallon now in some parts of the country, with some saying it could go over $5 a gallon, then I think there is going to be political pressure put on the Senate to act on something."
The chairman said Senate Democrats should pass legislation of their own and work out a compromise proposal with him if they have a different view from his, so the nation can become less dependent on foreign sources and create jobs.
Salazar struck at Hastings' legislation last week by accusing the chairman of "amnesia" about the Deepwater Horizon accident and the subsequent oil spill.
"I don't have amnesia, and neither does the president," Politico reported Salazar as having said last week. "And much of the legislation that I have seen being bandied around, especially with the House Republicans, is almost as if the Deepwater Horizon Macondo well incident never happened."
Michael Conathan, director of ocean policy with the Center for American Progress, echoed Salazar's comments by calling the Republican approach "simplistic" because it allegedly ignores how globalization has impacted the oil market.
"We have 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we use 25 percent of the world's oil reserves," Conathan said. "That's a huge gap that we're not going to make up even if we drilled every drop out of everywhere that we have access to.
"I think particularly today [near] the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill, the worst environmental disaster in American history, this is definitely the wrong time to be reopening any area for oil exploration."
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