Bill Scher: Who Is Coastal Drilling Really For? Follow The Money

[marmar]

Who Is Coastal Drilling Really For? Follow The Money.
Bill Scher

July 28th, 2008 - 3:01pm ET


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Who is really going to benefit from opening up our coastal shores to oil drilling? You, or Big Oil?

Follow the money and get your answer.

Last month, Sen. John McCain changed his position on coastal oil drilling. And all of a sudden, the fossil fuel crowd took a big liking to his campaign. The Washington Post reports that even though "oil and gas executives have not traditionally been a major source of campaign money for McCain," in June McCain took $1.1 million from oil and gas corporate executives -- five times more than in the previous month.

(Check out Huffington Post's David Donnelly for more.)

Why? Because while coastal drilling amounts to nothing in regards to lower energy costs for you and me, it does amount to a fat giveaway to Big Oil.

You may say, so what? Who cares if oil companies do well, so long as they increase the supply of oil and lower prices for me.

Except that there's not nearly enough oil off our shores to lower the price of oil (both the White House and McCain concede, when pressed, that opening up the coasts for drilling won't lower prices.)

And there's no reason to expect that oil and gas companies would be in any rush to use the leases and actually drill. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/who-coastal-drilling-really-follow-money

[ihavenobias]

1. Thanks, good article! Bill was on TYT recently talking about the conservative mindset

on the economy and it was very good:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3645147

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Same game that was played in the 70's

Timber was becoming scarce, big timber companies were pushing for leases on state parks, the redwoods, lumber prices were climbing, there was a "shortage" of lumber, and it turns out
we were selling and shipping lumber to Japan and other countries as fast as we could.
S, where are we selling oil to now?