EDITORIAL: Democrats’ energy ploy rightly fails

The gathering storm over the energy crisis came to a head last week in Washington as Democratic congressional leaders were thwarted in an attempt to pass a bill that superficially demonstrated support for expansion of domestic oil production.



House bill H.R. 6515, officially known as the ``Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands (DRILL) Act`` was nothing more than a political feint. Instead of offering consumers hope that government was finally going to take action to provide relief for high fuel prices, the proposed law opened no new areas for domestic oil exploration and added another layer of obstacles to dissuade oil companies from investing in exploration.



The center piece of the Drill Bill was a ``use it or lose it`` clause intended to force oil companies to abandon leases held on federal lands if oil isn't produced over a certain period of time. Democrats claim the oil industry is ``warehousing`` 68 million acres of federal lands in the western United States and the Gulf of Mexico for the purpose of controlling supply and demand and, thus, sustain high profits.



The bill also called for the Interior Department to hold annual instead of biennial lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) and prohibit the exportation of domestic oil; more window dressing for what Republicans characterized as a purely rhetorical, politically opportunistic piece of legislation.



Democrats had hedged their bets on receiving a two-thirds affirmative vote on the Drill Act which would have allowed ``suspension of rules`` under an expedited procedural process, thereby preventing Republican amendments to the bill. The measure came up 30 votes short of the number needed.



In the end, Democrats failed to make a case for the sincerity of their ``drill now`` ploy. The supposition that oil companies in a free market could be forced to spend millions and years slogging through a bureaucratic and legal quagmire to drill for oil deposits spread over a 23-million acre tract of geologically, logistically and climatologically challenged land is a tough sell, indeed.  



No law that further complicates an already frustratingly complex, lawsuit-laden regulatory and permitting process is going to speed up oil projects, especially in the NPR-A. The much richer, more concentrated deposits sitting under a tiny, remote 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), however, if opened for exploration would draw immediate, intense interest and investment.  



The highly charged atmosphere of debate on the House floor last Thursday mirrored the edginess and disenchantment of the nation as a whole. With congressional approval ratings hovering at 14 percent, there was little to bolster confidence on a day that could have been spent constructively debating real solutions for America's energy future.



Expansion of domestic oil production is just one piece of the holistic energy puzzle, but it is now the most strategically important, actionable piece.