You know those commercials where the camera takes the dog's perspective and runs around following the illusive scent of bacon produced by some fake bacon flavored dog treat? I know you've seen them: Bacon, bacon, bacon! Where's that bacon? What's that in the bag? I CAN'T READ!
Well, of late, this commercial is really reminding me of Republican energy policy, right down to the fake bacon part. It seems to me that everything the GOP presents regarding energy policy revolves around drilling for more oil, rather than really developing new energy sources. Its all: oil, oil, OIL! Where's the oil? And just like the dog character in the commercial, the GOP and Bush BFF Peter Roskam can't tell the American public what's in the bag of tricks they are proposing to solve our energy problems.
What's worse, given Roskam's proposed Energy Vision Act, it appears he can't read any better than that dog either.
According to Roskam, this policy proposal is going to save us 9.5M barrels of bacon oil a day, including a whopping savings from opening up off shore oil drilling:
Oil Import Replacements in the Energy VISION Act:
• Total: 9.5M barrels per day*
• Outer Continental Shelf production: 2.4M barrels per day
Is it no wonder why Roskam and Bush are BFF? Bush wants off shore drilling. Roskam convieniently has a plan that includes off shore drilling, savings us 2.4M barrels a day! You gotta love that kind of man-crush.
Problem is, if you look at the report Roskam cites on off shore drilling - Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to those in industry - Pete's numbers don't jive with his own source. Not even close.
Their source for this projection is the U.S Energy Information Agency (EIA), which recently released a report examining how drilling in the OCS would affect production.
But curiously, the EIA estimated that opening up the OCS would only increase production by about 200,000 barrels a day and "would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."
There's a big difference between 2.4 million and 200,000. So where did the GOP congressmen get the larger number? It appears that they took the total amount of offshore production once the OCS is opened up -- including the 2.2 million barrels a day already being extracted by offshore rigs here in the U.S.
That's right boys and girls: Roskam has - wait for it - fudged the numbers. I mean, surely he can read a chart that shows OCS drilling only adds an additional .2M barrels a day, and then only reaches this figure in the year 2030 (for the ideologically impaired, it's the green line below).
