Dammit! Drilling isn't going to lower the price of Gas.

Opening America's coastal waters to oil drilling, as John McCain urged in an address Tuesday, is unlikely to provide Americans with more oil for at least seven to 10 years. That's the estimate from the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group. Major environmental groups think the increased supply would be at least that distant before arrival, and say it mostly would benefit Big Oil. "It would take a decade to bring new leases into production, and then they would only line the coffers of the oil industry," said Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director. Deron Lovaas, senior energy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that even if billions of barrels of oil are available offshore, the U.S. still will control only a fraction of the world's supply, so energy independence isn't within reach. "We are just not blessed in this country with enough resources for this to make a big difference," Lovaas said.
McCain, speaking Tuesday in Houston, disagreed."We have enormous energy reserves of our own," he said, "and we are gaining the means to use these resources in cleaner, more responsible ways." McCain argues that increased offshore drilling would help lessen dependence on foreign oil. It estimated that the Outer Continental Shelf could hold 115.4 billion barrels. However, it also estimated that recoverable reserves off U.S. coasts in areas now banned from production probably hold only about 19 billion barrels. "The world consumes about 86 million barrels a day. The U.S. share of that is about 20.6 million barrels, 60 percent of them from foreign sources. One thousand million barrels equals 1 billion, so if there are 19 billion barrels in the areas McCain would open to drilling, that's enough to provide about 920 days, or about 2.5 years, of current U.S. consumption. Even if states let drilling proceed, it would take years before new oil would flow. If companies found significant amounts of oil, some question whether this country has enough refining capacity to handle the new supply.

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 06/17/2008 | McCain's call for offshore oil drilling won't bring relief soon