Offshore Drilling, Why It May Not Happen, Even if Approved by Congress

Ah, the wonders of federalism. Even though Bush is pushing Congress hard for it, the Interior Secretary is prepping “just in case”, and John McCain is a fairly supportive fellow, they all seem to agree that it should be up to states to actually allow the drilling to begin. For offshore drilling to actually happen, the states that are implicated are going to have to get on board, and that’s not necessarily a given.

While a recent Gallup poll has demonstrated that 57 percent of Americans would support drilling in the nation’s coastal and wilderness areas that are currently closed to exploration—if it helped reduce gasoline prices and if the drilling were conducted under strict environmental safeguards.

Those are two pretty big ifs, and one that other, state-level politicians are going to pay attention to. That means that 43% of Americans are not in favour of offshore drilling even if it were to lower gas prices, and the other 57% want strict environmental controls (anyone else remember Paris Hilton’s comments?). And let’s not forget that the first state that has an environmental disaster will then very quickly have a politically crucified governor.

For states that have thriving tourism industries (North and South Carolina, California, Florida to name a few), the economic benefits that would accrue from having offshore drilling may not outweigh the political and economic risks and potential costs.

So which states would see majority-level support for offshore drilling? Well, non-coastal states are potentially going to reap the economic rewards without the environmental costs. The political calculus in North Dakota is going to be very different than that in Oregon. Therein lies the political trade-off in the offshore drilling debate: will gaining votes in the mid-west outweigh the lost votes in California and other coastal states? Obviously McCain thinks so.

Since the political consensus on the right seems to be to devolve down to implicated states the actual decision to drill, and Obama’s focus on alternatives to drilling, it looks like the actual decision as to whether or not to allow offshore drilling will fall to the next President.

I love election years (and I’m Canadian!).

For more on offshore drilling, read:

• Why Liberals Should Be Happy That Barack Obama Changed His Position On Offshore Drilling for Oil
• Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling– Why It Matters and Why It Doesn’t
• Poll: Americans Don’t Think More Drilling Will Lower Gas Prices

Photo credit (update):mandj98 via flickr under a Creative Commons License

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