Progress Illinois

The big news coming out of the Tribune's editorial board debate last week between 10th District congressional challenger Dan Seals and Rep. Mark Kirk was the GOP incumbent's statement regarding vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin -- a pick he lauded in early September, but about which he now has concerns.

Buried in the discussion about energy policy, however, was yet another misleading claim from Kirk regarding offshore oil drilling.

You may remember that back in June, Kirk falsely claimed that the Chinese were drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba. Two months later, he justified his support for offshore oil exploration by offering a false proposition between drilling here at home or buying oil from Iran, which we immediately debunked.

Sitting before the editorial board, Kirk's false proposition shifted to a different country:

KIRK: Then you go into the difficult choices. You should also expand exploring for American energy offshore. My opponent and I differ on this. I think you should absolutely expand for American energy offshore because, for a time, you will still be on oil. But the question is: is it Venezuelan oil or is it American oil? And I think it should be American.

Watch it:

We currently import over 1.3 million barrels of Venezuelan oil every day. The EIA estimates that opening up the Outer Contitnental Shelf 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." Regardless of whether or not we crack open the OCS, we will be importing a lot of Venezuelan oil until we ween ourselves off the resource. Like the Iran example, Kirk's math just makes no sense.