Bush lifts excutive order that bans offshore drilling

President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling today. Citing high gas prices and rising demand for oil, he says America needs to tap the offshore resource. However, this gesture is somewhat only symbolic as long as the federal law banning offshore drilling is still in place. Congress needs to repeal the law before drilling can happen. Bush says that is the only obstacle left. In a time of dropping approval ratings, this is a good move. Instead of people blaming Bush for high oil prices, they can now blame congress. The drilling won’t immediately lower gas prices as it takes years to do offshore exploration for oil but could produce billions of barrels in the long run.

Congress estimates that there are almost 900 billion barrels of oil that can be drilled if we open the doors. John McCain supports offshore drilling while Obama is opposed to it. As much as I don’t like the idea, gas prices are just getting too high and I’m willing to throw my support behind offshore drilling. It may not effect prices that much in the long term, but it will have the Saudis and OPEC nervous enough to ramp up production and lower the overall price of oil. That being said, at the current rate of consumption and the daily growth in demand worldwide, we are going to run out someday, probably within the next 50 to 60 years. We really do need to start moving off oil and into other alternative sources of energy.