Posted: 07/15/2008
NCPA Applauds Rescinding of Drilling Ban
Burnett Urges Congress to Act
DALLAS (July 14, 2008) - President Bush on Monday lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling that has stood since his father was president. But the move, by itself, will do nothing unless Congress acts as well.
Sterling Burnett, Senior Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, applauded the president's action, but wished it had come sooner.
"If Congress and previous Presidents had not enacted bans of oil production in Alaska and in off-shore sites, we could have upwards of an additional two million barrels a day of production on the market now," Burnett said.
There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order signed by the first President Bush in 1990. The current president, trying to ease market tensions and boost supply, called last month for Congress to lift its prohibition before he did so himself.
"The President has done his part, finally -- through executive order and by increasingly using his bully pulpit. Now it's time for Congress to act and put American consumers and the American economy ahead of narrow, ill-informed environmental special interests," according to Burnett.
"Opening up new areas for drilling will lower prices: directly due to the increased supply and indirectly due to the market confidence; the market would know that oil from the U.S. will be delivered and will not disrupted by rebel action, nationalization, terrorism or underinvestment," Burnett added.
The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D. C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems.