While touting his and Rep. John Shimkus' Energy VISION Act amid the first wave of the Republicans' "Drill Baby Drill" hysteria in July, GOP Rep. Peter Roskam grossly misrepresented how much oil was available on the Outer Continental Shelf, as we documented at the time:
[Roskam and Shimkus'] press release states that extending offshore drilling to the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) would replace 2.4 million barrels per day that we currently import. 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.
Fast forward two months and Roskam appears to be peddling the same faulty math. This time, it's in an email to supporters (emphasis added):
Drilling for American oil is just the first step. The outer continental shelf has enough oil and gas to get us off foreign oil while we pursue cleaner, sustainable technologies.
Again, drilling offshore will not provide a short-term respite to oil prices, let alone replace 2.4 million of the nine million barrels of oil imported by the U.S. every day. If Roskam is going to keep exaggerating in this fashion, it'd be nice to see a reporter press him on the details.
Comments
Geophys55 (not verified) on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 16:44
If you would bother to look at the study you quote you would see that they assume that development would take place at the rate of "the early days of Gulf of Mexico development".
In other words, they pretend that the last HALF CENTURY of technological, scientific and engineering progress DID NOT TAKE PLACE.
That makes the estimate a complete farce!
In the Gulf today they are drilling in up to 7000 feet of water, wells 30,000 feet deep, hundreds of miles from shore. Three D seismic has revolutionized the search for oil to the extent that the "dry hole rate" has dropped from 9 out of ten to one out of ten. Subsea robots allow completed wells, pumping to a pipeline on the seafloor with no human presence.
All that would have been a fantasy in the "early days".
That’s where 200,000 barrels ad day comes from -fantasy. The study you quote has no merit.
Josh Kalven on Sat, 09/27/2008 - 11:24
So where is Roskam getting his 2.4 million barrels/day figure? Where is the study or estimate that projects that amount of output from the OCS?
You say that the EIA study has no merit, but overlook that Roskam and Shimkus' plan cites the EIA as the source for their figures. Then, as I explained in the original post, they appear to completely misread the EIA's findings.
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