Obama Slams McCain Over Offshore Drilling Proposal

Last updated on February 12th, 2013 at 03:47 pm

ImageToday before John McCain could announce his energy plan that would lift the moratorium on offshore oil drilling, Barack Obama put out a statement hammering him for the idea. Obama correctly pointed out that McCain has changed his position on the issue since he ran for president in 2000.

“John McCain’s support of the moratorium on offshore drilling during his first presidential campaign was certainly laudable, but his decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades,” Obama said.

He correctly pointed out that it would take at least a decade before an offshore drilling would have an impact on the market. “Much like his gas tax gimmick that would leave consumers with pennies in savings, opening our coastlines to offshore drilling would take at least a decade to produce any oil at all, and the effect on gasoline prices would be negligible at best since America only has 3% of the world’s oil. It’s another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil.”

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I would like to add a few points of my own to Obama’s statement. The United States consumes 20, 687,000 barrels of oil a day. This means that we consume over 600 million barrels of oil a month. John McCain suggests that there is a reserve of 21 billion barrels of oil still to be drilled for in the U.S. This would be a little over 3 years of oil, if the oil actually belonged to us.

Yep, that’s the catch. Any oil that the oil companies find does not belong to the United States. It belongs to the oil companies, and they can sell it to whoever they want. Under McCain’s plan, the nation could trash its coastlines, so that China could buy more oil ten years from now. I think that it is easy to see why this is such a horrible idea. McCain’s plan is a Republican gift to the oil companies, and yet another reason why he is the wrong choice to be president.

Obama Statement



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