Drilling announcement mostly symbolic

I'll give Barack Obama a certain amount of credit for announcing that certain tracts on the Outer Continental Shelf could be opened to oil and gas seismic exploration and drilling. Although there's little chance any drilling will actually occur there anytime soon, he certainly has taken heat fro0m much of his base, and he had to know it was coming. It took me a while today, with help from Jerry Taylor of Cato, just what the legal status of his announcement is. As I understand it, it's an amendment to the moratorium he reinstated when he became president (see here for more of the history). It's more politically than geophysically calculated (of course), slated off the shores of states where it's likely to be popular and not off California, where it's not so likely. Jerry Taylor thinks it's his way of saying "I care" as gasoline prices rise this summer. He's probably right.

Drill -- and everything else

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the possibility that the House just might take a vote on opening up more areas to offshore drilling, or at least letting state governments decide. It acknowledges that drilling is far from a panacea, and that it will take a while to see any oil even if drilling starts now. But since current willingness to put supply on the market and current prices reflect the anticipation of future prices, it would put downward pressure on prices immediately, as I noted in a previous post.

I say try everything else also, but not in the same way many do. Most politicians want to use various government incentives like tax credits to encourage wind energy, ethanol, other biofuels, solar and the like. That distorts the market and makes it more difficult to know what kinds of alternative energy is truly economical and competitive.

We got a call from a very angry old man today who said this editorial was "wrong on everything" and that it reflected the left-wing bias of the nasty media. He said he was canceling his subscription, but he didn't want to talk to the writer, because it was just plain wrong. You put your work out there and you just don't know what people are going to think. I love it.