Examiner Editorial: Instead of drilling for oil, Obama tilts at windmills

Weaning the U.S. off imported oil by drilling for known reserves off our coasts and under federal lands is a no-cost economic stimulus that would create 160,000 high-paying jobs and generate $1.7 trillion in new tax revenue and royalties. Tapping this resource would stop the flow of U.S. dollars to Middle Eastern sheikdoms, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan madhouse and other OPEC outposts of petroleum-fueled global lunacy. But even though a large majority of Americans favor expanding domestic oil and gas production, the Obama administration is literally tilting at windmills instead.

The Minerals Management Service estimates that there are 115 billion barrels of recoverable oil beneath the Outer Continental Shelf, enough to replace 50 years worth of OPEC imports. Almost half can be accessed using existing technology. Last year, in response to the House Republicans’ “Drill Here, Drill Now” revolt during the August recess, Congress removed decades-long legislative obstacles to recovering these resources.

But when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently announced the sale of more than 40 oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, it was if August had been erased from history. Salazar only approved leases in areas already designated for drilling. He then ordered a 180-day review of offshore drilling, an obstructionist move that is clearly a prelude to a bureaucratic re-establishment of the drilling moratorium. To add insult to injury, Salazar also canceled 77 leases in Utah.

Salazar claims wind turbines off the Atlantic can produce enough electricity to replace the 1 million megawatts currently being generated by coal, natural gas, nuclear, biomass and other energy sources. “Secretary Salazar is living in fantasy land,” Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, told The Examiner. The wind currently generates less than 1 percent of our electricity needs, he said, adding that “we would need to install 309,587 giant turbines — about 172 turbines per mile of coast — and hope the wind blows 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” while paying twice as much for electricity as we do now. This is the road to economic ruin.

No credible studies support claims that the U.S. can quickly replace oil, gas and nuclear energy with even the most heavily subsidized alternative-energy sources. That effort will require at least another two decades.

We should develop all available energy resources, to be sure. But in the meantime, instead of tilting at windmills and continuing to buy 70 percent of our oil from foreign nations, let’s develop our own natural energy resources and keep our money and jobs here in America.