Wednesday, March 31, 2010

About time: Obama approves offshore drilling

Pop quiz: What nations currently drill off the coasts of America, including the Gulf of Mexico?

If you answered Russia, Cuba, or India (and possibly other countries that my exhaustive 15 seconds of research didn’t uncover) give yourself a hand!
If you answered America, however, then you might possibly be correct…Just not for another two years.

”President Obama announced Wednesday his administration will approve significant oil and gas exploration off America's coasts, including a possible sale two years from now of leases off the Virginia shore.

The new strategy calls for oil and gas exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, more than 125 miles from Florida's coast, and in large areas in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in the Arctic Ocean, north of Alaska, after the government conducts detailed studies.”

This move will undoubtedly piss off many of his supporters in the environmental movement, despite the fact that he plans to keep many wildlife preserves off limits to exploration. Of course, any move that does not steer us towards beating our corn into meal on the highways while wearing 100% organic loincloths would piss off the environmental movement.

This is a very welcome step back towards a lucid energy policy that the Administration desperately needed to take. “Alternative” energies are all fine and good, but to have continued pursuing the course of cutting off all “traditional” energy sources until we find an alternative would have been utter madness.

Now if only we can get the government to allow us to drill in the ANWR we’ll really be cooking with gas. Before you try to convince me it is a bad idea because of the mating habits of caribou, let me stop you and make a statement: I would gladly drill through the heads of every caribou in Alaska who won’t mate to save its species if it meant we get to the oil faster.

Then again, who would want to disturb such a barren wasteland beautiful preserve like this?

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