Research

In a bid to win support in the Senate for his unpopular cap-and-trade bill, President Obama announced his administration’s plans for an “expansion” of offshore drilling.  However, the truth of the matter is that Obama’s new plan will actually reduce and delay the production of domestic energy allowed by President Bush’s decision to end the decades long moratorium on offshore drilling in 2008.  That decision would have created jobs and reduced our reliance on foreign oil by freeing up millions of acres to domestic energy exploration.  These areas are shown below, in green, by House Natural Resources Committee.

Unfortunately, President Obama’s “expansion” of domestic exploration merely continues the offshore drilling moratorium of previously approved domestic energy sites in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and across the West Coast and delays possible development across the southern and central Atlantic seaboards.  With yesterday’s announcement, President Obama closed off a far greater area than he opened up.

Instead of increasing national security and creating badly needed jobs for the American economy by expanding domestic energy production, President Obama made a decision “driven largely by the politics of his agenda on energy and climate change -- not by hopes of changing the nation's energy supply.”  And as we pointed out in a research briefing yesterday, President Obama’s announcement of his new offshore drilling plan appears to be more of a smokescreen for his job-killing national energy tax and regulations.