McCain’s Oil Rig Photo-op
Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) visited an oil rig just off the coast of Louisiana in order “to highlight his support for increased domestic offshore drilling.” On Fox Noise this morning Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) promoted McCain’s oil rig visit.
In the interview Jindal oddly “emphasize that drilling alone is not enough” to address America’s energy needs. Whoops, guess he got all those various lies talking points mixed up.
This is McCain’s second attempt for a photo-op on an oil rig to drill home (sorry for the pun) his plan to open-up more offshore drilling leases. His last scheduled event was canned after a barge spilled more than 419,000 gallons of fuel oil into the Mississippi forming a slick 12 miles long slick.
There are a number of problems with McCain’s energy plan of expanded drilling. The first is he likes to say it is totally safe, as McCain did again on this visit. He and other Republicans like to point to the lie that no damage was done by Hurricane Katrina and Rita, which just isn’t true. The EPA called the spills cause by Katrina and Rita “worse than the worst-case scenario.”
Plus, we are already drilling and there just isn’t enough oil. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Web site in 1998 Louisiana produced 11,269,000 barrels of oil a month. Now it is just 6,293,000 barrels. Almost half as much. It isn’t cause of lack of production, it is cause of lack of oil.
It is also not accurate to say we’re not opening up more areas to drilling. In fact:
McCain’s visit came a day ahead of the Minerals Management Service’s lease sale in New Orleans to auction off 18 million acres of the western Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling. The tracts could potentially yield as much as 400 million barrels of oil, but that amount would only meet the nation’s oil needs for about 19 days, and it would be at least seven to 10 years until oil started flowing.
Yes you read that correctly. It will take 7-10 years to get to the oil and 18 million acres of land will only give us enough oil for 19 days. This is nothing but election year politics and somebody on our “Traditional Media” ought to call them on this shit
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