John McCain and Sarah Palin are banking a lot on the "Drill Here, Drill Now" mantra, that caught fire about a month ago. As this campaign has showed, the shelf life of a talking point is, at best three weeks, before it is either debunked, revealed, or in the end, ignored. If a talking point gets ignored, it can be revived sometimes. If the Dems and Obama play this right, they can take this catchy little phrase out of circulation for the duration of the election cycle.
More? You bet!
Hurricane Ike has put a bright spotlight on the real problem facing Americans in regards to fuel costs. 25 % of our gasoline refining production capability lies in a quadrant small enough to be drilled by one Hurricane. Without production, gas prices skyrocket because of decreased production. Right now the price of gasoline has jumped by almost 30% in one day in some places in the country. The price of oil dropped by $1.00 a barrel at the same time. This is not the first time this has happened.
In the last two years, there have been spikes in prices because of lack of capacity, not lack of oil. Seasonally, prices jump a little in October as refineries switch over some of their production to Heating Oil. Whenever this happens, we focus momentarily on the fact that we have not built a new refinery in the US since the early seventies. There apparently has been some movement towards building a new refinery to increase production, but that is years away still.
So when John McCain and Sarah Palin say, we have too great a dependence on foreign oil, they are just dealing with half the problem, and the wrong half at that. Americans really don't care about the laws of supply and demand. We are more than happy to shop at Wal-Mart for clothes and goods made in China. When we're asked, we shrug and say, it's how the economy works now. It's the same for oil. As long as the spigots are open, we really don't care where it is coming from. And if the spigots are open and we still can't get cheap gas, we are going to complain. How come we have so few refineries? How come they are located in places that are more and more going to be targets? Why are we talking about drilling for more oil if we can't process it anyway?
Drill here, Drill Now in its ideal state only solves half the problem. If we could effectively drill here and maximize capacity, then we might alleviate our reliance on foreign oil. But if natural disaster, or equipment failure, or any other unforeseen circumstance shuts down gas and heating oil production, then the average family will still be paying through the nose to keep their cars and businesses running.
Obama can pounce on this once the damage is assessed and the families and the country have had time to grieve for the losses in this disaster. If and when a hurricane hits this part of the country, offshore oil rigs, and refineries are right in harms way, and they always will be. Moving away from oil, to solar, wind, hydro, and other alternative fuels alleviates the problem. Increasing CAFE standards for cars alleviates the problem. Drill here, drill now does not alleviate the problem.