Romney unveils oil plan that lets states say where to drill- says it'll make us 'energy independent'
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) – The campaign for presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney laid out a plan Wednesday for America to be energy independent by 2020.
On an embargoed conference call with reporters, Romney staffers touched on familiar themes they said would wean the country off imported oil and spark an economic boom at home. Namely, they called for fewer regulations and more drilling . . .
“There’s incredible potential for the development of these resources, but it’s something President Obama has been doing his best to stifle,” said Oren Cass, Romney’s domestic policy director. “Governor Romney embraces this revolution.”
Specifically, the campaign called for states to have control over drilling on federal land within their borders, the opening of new offshore areas including off the Virginia and North Carolina coasts, and a streamlined and expedited regulatory process.
read: http://wtvr.com/2012/08/23/romney-more-drilling-would-bring-energy-independence-by-2020/
The non-partisan CBO told them to stuff those claims, just a couple weeks ago . . .from the LAT Aug.9: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drilling-cbo-20120810,0,5183187.story
A Congressional Budget Office report finds that opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other federal land would bring modest federal revenues, despite more optimistic projections by the oil and gas industry.
If opened to drilling, the refuge and parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and Florida coasts together would yield $7 billion over the next decade, the CBO said. That's less than 5% of the $150 billion the federal budget already stands to get over that period from oil and gas leases on federal land already open to drilling.
from the CBO: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43527
On the basis of information from EIA, CBO anticipates that production from newly opened areas of the OCS over the 2023–2035 period would be far less than the amounts produced by current operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The California OCS accounts for nearly 80 percent of EIA’s estimate of the potential production from newly opened areas over that period. CBO expects that state and local policies toward resource development will play a major role in determining whether or when those resources are developed.
= new reply since forum marked as read
and fly to the moon. 
Here's a map the repugs are fond of:
The problem now is that the "No Zones" off the east coast, the gulf, and off much of Alaska are now open for oil leasing, compliments of president Obama. For the most part, the US is the best explored piece of geography outside of the Persian Gulf, and if there's no oil rigs on a piece of land or no interest in a piece of ocean, its because there's no oil there.
The two exceptions are ANWAR, which hasn't been explored - which gives the RW the option of making batshit crazy claims of how much oil there might be there. In fact, there might be oil, or there might not - we don't know. The other exception is the West Coast, where local politics are unlikely to ever allow extensive drilling - so Romney's plan to leave it up to the states amounts to nothing.
We've been in the midst of an oil and energy boom under Obama, and the biggest problem isn't regulations or restrictions, its lack of labor and equipment to keep up:
