The Nexus

Sen. John McCain boasts that he knows what is best for the American people. He hears their cries for salvation from the rising oil prices. He will purge them of the nuisance that is high oil prices.

And all he needs to do is to completely open up the outer continental shelf that surrounds our country for drilling. It’s a nominal price to pay for a lifetime of bliss.

But there’s a glitch in his plan: he doesn’t have the facts to support his claims. His promises of lower gas prices through expanded drilling are not grounded in fact.

We would reap no immediate benefits from the drilling off of the shelf.

According to estimates by the Bush administration, once we allow for drilling on the entire shelf, it would take until about 2017 for the oil to be found. That’s about 10 years of waiting until we can get any benefits from this drilling. We would have to wait until 2030 until we could garner the benefits of full oil production.

A 22-year gap in time will not console many Americans who need quicker change to help aid their family’s finances.

Even if the American people were fine with a 22-year wait for the oil, McCain’s policy still has major faults.

According to Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency director Jim Sweeny, 80 percent of available oil in the shelf is located where American oil companies can already drill in.

The companies can implement two different drilling methods in order to obtain the oil. The first is the more commonly known, where oil companies drill vertically into the ground.

However, the key to obtaining enough oil is cross-drilling, the second method that many Americans may not recognize. This method is where oil companies will be able to drill into the ground that is currently under the prohibited part of the shelf from the area where they are already allowed.

This allows for the companies to avoid damage to the earth because they do not need to invade the shelf above ground, which is where the major damage is dealt when drilling. Because of cross drilling, it is completely unnecessary to open more of the shelf for drilling

According to Sweeny, once we start to drill for the untapped oil, we would be able to draw enough to account for a mere one percent of worldwide oil consumption.

That number is paltry since the U.S. already exports an average of 1.8 million barrels a day. If the U.S. were to retain its oil, by the time we get oil from offshore drilling, we could have gotten what is equivalent to 40 percent of the oil that is thought to be in the outer shelf. Retaining the oil produced in our country is how we need to gain energy independence. With the extra oil reserves that we would gain, it would allow us time to work on alternate energy sources to help us gain independence from oil. With the increased amount of oil reserves at our disposal more drilling would be unnecessary.

It is obvious that Sen. McCain’s attempt to gain votes is really just an empty proposal to aid nobody but himself. Voters would have to wait a generation for a nominal impact on oil prices and would be left with a scarred planet and empty pockets just because of Sen. McCain’s attempt to win an election.