Will we find the oil we need offshore?

Houston - There's something about the heavy air here that puts visions of drilling in the mind. On Tuesday, John McCain, who came to pander to the local oil industry, called for a reversal of the 27 year ban on offshore drilling. (President Bushechoed it today), and threw in a plea to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for good measures). After two days here, chatting with people in the oil industry, and with the many locals who benefit from it, I was ready to wade into the waters off of Boca Raton, Florida, and start prospecting for black gold.


Partisans of more drilling frame their arguments as a simple declarative statement. If we just open up the coastal shelves and ANWR for drilling today, the very prospect of marginal additions to global supply (current usage is about 87 million barrels per day in the world) at some point in the middle of the next decade will magically cause prices of crude-and hence gasoline-to fall immediately. Of course, gas at $4 a gallon inspires a lot of similarly addled thinking. The canard that China is drilling near Florida's coast recently traveled a direct route from a George Will column to a Dick Cheney speech. One of my luncheon companions here asserted confidently that Russia was already drilling offshore. I nodded, and just barely avoided choking on my crawfish taquitos.