Oil exploration is not a good fix, environmental group leader says

By Anne Paine · The Tennessean

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Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, criticized the Republican-proposed Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, arguing that oil exploration is a false solution to high fuel prices. Smith advocated instead for higher fuel economy standards, clean technology development, and renewable fuel sources like cellulosic biofuels, citing Energy Information Administration data showing offshore drilling would have minimal impact until 2030.

The solution to high fuel prices lies in our ability to be increasingly efficient in our fuel use while we develop sustainable, renewable fuel sources such as cellulosic biofuels here in the Southeast
Stephen A. Smith

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Oil exploration is not a good fix, environmental group leader says

Congress should focus on higher fuel economy standards and more clean technology development rather than pushing for oil exploration in wilderness and oceans, an official with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in Knoxville said today.

The point, said Stephen Smith, SACE executive director, should be to help Americans conserve fuel and reduce the country's dependence.

"The solution to high fuel prices lies in our ability to be increasingly efficient in our fuel use while we develop sustainable, renewable fuel sources such as cellulosic biofuels here in the Southeast," he said in an emailed statement.
"It is disappointing that almost all of our region's Senators fail to recognize that drilling is not a real solution to fuel prices or oil independence."

He was responding to the Republican-proposed Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008.

It would allow states to petition the Interior Department to lift the federal offshore drilling moratorium off their coasts, 50 miles from shore, according to the Associated Press.

States would get a financial windfall - 37.5 percent of the federal royalties. It also would provide incentives for developing plug-in electric hybrid automobiles and repeal a moratorium on oil shale production on federal lands.

The bill sponsors said it would allow exploration where it is estimated there is 3 times as much recoverable oil as in Saudi Arabia.

Smith said that this is a "false solution" to the current high gas prices.

He said, for instance, that the Energy Information Administration's 2007 Annual Energy Outlook says that offshore drilling could not significantly affect oil production until at least 2030, and even this it would be minimal.

Here is a link for the EIA: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html.