Professor Juan Cole on offshore drilling

From "John McCain's Oil Scam," in Informed Comment :

The world uses on the order of 86 million barrels a day of petroleum. That figure is expected to veer sharply upward as China and India go in for automobiles and trucking in a big way.

The United States uses nearly 21 million barrels a day of petroleum and liquified hydrocarbon fuel, or nearly 25% of everything the world produces daily. The US has 5% of the world's population.

The US produces about 5 million barrels a day of petroleum and another 3 million barrels a day of liquefied fuel. That 8 million barrels a day is only about a third of what we use, so we import the rest. The lower 48 states produced about 4.4 million barrels of petroleum a day in 2006.

If all the known offshore fields were drilled and panned out, the lower 48's oil production would be increased by 7%. That would be 300,000 barrels a day.


Millions of barrels of oil a day produced by US and by world, with McCain's proposed increase through offshore drilling.

0.3 million barrels a day would make very little difference whatsoever to current oil prices even if it could be brought online right now. It would be a matter of a few pennies. And, in fact, if there were to be any impact of all of offshore drilling on prices, it would not come until 2020 or even 2030.

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I might be okay with allowing for more drilling offshore, etc., if it came with conditions:

1. Reorienting federal transportation policy to "transit first" comparable to what is done in San Francisco;
2. Permanent significant increase in federal gasoline excise taxes;
3. Permanent significant increase in federal funding available for transit expansion;
4. Creation of National Land Use Planning Guidance system (comparable to what is done in the UK) linking transportation and land use planning through accessibility planning;
5. National limitations on free parking for shopping (remember how the federal government got speeds on highways lowered by tying this to federal highway monies provided to the states);
6. Revival of the passenger railroad system nationally;
7. Creation of a high-speed passenger railroad system.

(Spain will have 6,200 miles of high-speed rail service by 2020, according to "Spanish High-Speed Rail" from Mass Transit Magazine. And as Laurence Aurbach wrote in an email on the urbanists e-list, Saudi Arabia's big plans for railroad expansion communicate strongly what they think about the future of the world's oil supply and how to best use scarce oil resources for transportation. See the website Saudi Railways Expansion Program.)

According to "Most Americans see $5 a gallon gasoline," in the Washington Times:

More than 70 percent of Americans say they expect gasoline prices to top $5 a gallon by the end of the summer, and a majority say they are driving less because of higher fuel costs, according to a Fox 5/The Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports survey.

The previously unthinkable $5 price seems "very likely" to 42 percent and "somewhat likely" to 29 percent of those polled, suggesting that soaring gasoline costs have penetrated budgets and that consumers are pessimistic about relief.

In "McCain seeks to void ban on offshore drilling" the Washington Times reports that:

The Fox 5/The Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports survey found that 53 percent of voters think the United States should start drilling for oil in nature preserves such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to reduce dependence on foreign crude.

About a third of Americans opposed the idea and 14 percent said they are not sure, according to the telephone survey conducted last week. ...

With voters feeling the pinch at the pump and energy prices expected to keep rising this year, drilling in protected nature settings won support from 72 percent of Republican voters, 36 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of voters not affiliated with a major party, according to the poll. ...

The poll showed that 27 percent of Americans are ready to park their cars and use mass transit on a regular basis if gasoline costs rise to $5 a gallon.

An additional 15 percent would opt for bus or train at $8 a gallon and a further 10 percent at $10 a gallon or higher. About 16 percent said they already regularly use mass transit, according to the survey.