Drilling offers only a political benefit

President Barack Obama's approach to drilling off Virginia has been one inconsistency and reversed commitment after another.

Last spring, the administration began clearing the way for drilling off Virginia. Late last summer, after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the White House reversed course.

Now, in the face of brutal gasoline prices and a concerted campaign from the House of Representatives and Richmond, the president reversed course again. It's a move that serves the administration's political ambitions more than it does the nation's energy needs.

That the White House stops just short of encouraging actual oil and natural gas production - as the administration seems intent on doing in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico - should come as precious small comfort for Virginians.

The arguments against drilling haven't changed since the first time a politician tried to win points by arguing that the solution to America's current energy crisis was just a well away.

1. The current federal scheme promises Virginia no royalties.

2. The allocation map gives most of Virginia's offshore territory to Maryland and North Carolina.

3. Even after tightening, regulation remains insufficient to protect the environment or current industries.

4. Offshore facilities would complicate Navy training.

Domestic oil and gas are critical to American economic security and even our national well-being. As are domestic alternatives to petroleum. As is energy efficiency. An economy as huge and energy-dependent as America's will need to tap every source it can.

There are proven major oil reserves in Alaska, where the risks of drilling are relatively minor. That's also true for all but the deepest wells in the Gulf, despite last summer's spill. Suspected reserves exist all over America, but the industry has decided that many aren't worth either the trouble or the expense.

If past data turn out to be at all accurate, there's not much oil or natural gas off Virginia. There's another treasure, the real lure of Virginia's outer continental shelf: the prospect of prying open the ocean floor off America's populous and prosperous East Coast.

There's no other plausible explanation for this eagerness to drill off Virginia. Unless there is a major surprise discovery, drilling will do nothing for the punishing price of a gallon of gasoline. And because oil goes to international markets, it would do nothing to lower the specific price Virginians pay at the pump.

Even if crews managed to pump as much oil as was leaking out of the Macondo well in the Gulf, it wouldn't make a dent in gas prices. (Nearly 5 million barrels leaked into the Gulf over four months. The United States imports twice as much - every single day.) Not enough to change gas prices, but certainly enough to endanger the region's tourism and fishing and water-recreation industries. Not to mention the environment.

There is a reasonable argument to be had about the wisdom of continuing to explore Virginia's offshore territory. But until the federal government changes the rules, it makes no more sense now than it did five years ago.

"Philosophically, this page simply can't advocate proceeding in ignorance," we wrote, as the Bush administration made a similar move. "If there is significant [natural] gas and oil off Virginia's shores, Virginia should know it....

"The biggest risks to our environment, our culture and our economy come from producing whatever might be out there. Gas production is about as benign as any fossil fuel extraction. It's clearly less worrisome than oil production, at least at the wellhead.

"Unfortunately, under the current federal scheme, there's really no practical difference between producing oil and gas, which are often found together. If exploration finds oil, the same rules that allow companies to extract gas will let them extract oil."

Nothing has changed in the past five years to make drilling off Virginia a better idea. A year after a disaster in the Gulf, nothing has changed in Washington to make the prospect of drilling more attractive. Nothing, that is, but the calculus of political advantage.