In February, MMS estimated that the OCS harbors 85.8 billion barrels of undiscovered crude. Given that we imported 3.67 billion barrels of crude in 2005, according to the Energy Information Administration, that means the undiscovered offshore oil equals about 23 years' worth of imported crude at current consumption levels.
In June, the House voted 232-187, to approve a bill engineered by Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R.-Calif., and co-sponsored by Abercrombie that would open the spigots on at least some of this oil. Forty Democrats supported it.
Under current law, state governments control the first three miles off shore and the federal government controls from three to 200 miles. When the federal government issues an oil lease for territory more than three miles from shore, it collects a royalty on the oil produced from the lease, but gives no share to the state.
Pombo and Abercrombie's Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act would change this. It would ban all new oil and gas drilling leases out to 50 miles, unless a state specifically passed a law to allow them. It would allow new leases between 50 and 100 miles, unless a state specifically passed a law to forbid them. And it would allow new leases beyond 100 miles, and give sole authority over that remote region to the federal government.
States would get 63.75 percent of the royalties from wells inside 12 miles, and 42.5 percent from wells outside 12 miles.
Voters in some states might support drilling for oil off their shores because they think it's a good way to create jobs, ease dependence on foreign oil and keep gas prices down. Others might support it for the royalty money.
In states where environmentalists hold the balance of power, they can permanently ban drilling within 100 miles of shore.
But environmentalists in places like California, Florida, New York and Massachusetts would no longer be able to tell Americans in places such as Virginia, Georgia and Alaska that they could not drill oil off their shores and sell it in places such as Indiana and Tennessee -- and thus compete on an equal basis with the royal families of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
President Bush and Republican Senate leaders should join with Abercrombie and Pombo to make this bill law -- before the next Middle East crisis makes gasoline $4 per gallon.