The Blog @ Spolitics

Democrats on Oil: Crude Lies

With oil prices through the top of the barrel and Americans clamoring for more exploration and drilling at home, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer are spouting some pretty worn and lame talking points. 

First there’s the “We can’t drill our way out of this” canard.  Are we supposed to believe that Boxer & Pelosi, et al know beyond any doubt the exact amount of oil reserves hidden underneath the entire U.S. and our Outer Continental Shelf without any exploration?  And this is the party that wants to nationalize America’s oil industry.  For what purpose?  To shut it down? 

Try and reconcile this with their other talking point, that there are plenty of ”unused leases” where the oil companies could drill for oil but for some reason, they just don’t want to.  If Democrats like Boxer are to be believed, rather than drill in the U.S., oil companies prefer to drill in places like Nigeria amidst frequent militant violence a greedy government trying to seize more of their profits (okay, the last points isn’t too different from our Democrat congress).

And of course, to accept ”unused leases” excuse as valid, you have to believe that there’s oil in every single lease, so much of it that there’s no need to open up more territory.  If that’s true, then why do they say we can’t we drill our way out this?  Or are there simply leases where the companies did not discover oil, in which case, we would need to open up more territory for exploration.  The Democrats’ own talking points undermine each other. 

But it’s even worse than that.  One look at Boxer’s own state of California tells the true story: they’re not drilling on those leases because environmentalists and the state governments are suing to block them from drilling.  It takes a disgusting amount of Gaul to sue these companies to stop them from drilling and then blame them for not drilling.  With Americans are getting whacked by higher gas prices, is this the best the Democrats can offer?