Offshore drilling

President Obama is supposed to announce today that he is approving the opening of the waters off of much of the East Coast and Alaska to offshore oil and gas drilling. This move is treated by the media as a very big deal and a wise decision. What a joke! In 2008, when the price of oil was soaring, then President Bush proposed opening coastal waters to drilling. Indeed, the first area to be opened was the acreage off Virginia which is now the first area that Obama is approving. Obama said that he was against off shore drilling in specific areas and was vague in general about it. Still, in 2008, Congress let the ban on offshore drilling expire and Bush set things in motion for drilling to proceed.

One of the first acts by Obama after he took office was to freeze off shore drilling. That was a year and a half ago. Now, Obama is opening up the same areas that bush did with the minor exception of a small area in Alaska. Of course, no Alaskan area will be the site of drilling for many years. The feds are first going to open Virginia and then move on to other areas. In other words, if the Alaskan area was so important, Obama and his flunkies could have determined this while the Virginia drilling went ahead. So the USA just lost a year and half of oil drilling, production and JOBS simply because Obama had to undo what Bush had done only to realize that Bush was right.

I think a more appropriate headline for this news should have been: "Obama realizes his mistake and tries to correct it, albeit belatedly". Good luck ever seeing that in print.

I do want to add that I am glad that this decision has been forthcoming finally. Obama does deserve credit for making the correct call. I do wonder, however, whether this is another Obama election year special which will be undone just after November. We will see then.