Lucy Offers to Hold the Football for Charlie Brown Again

Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time

The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border...

The administration is anticipating taking a beating on gas prices.  If you look at President Bush's popularity, it closely paralleled the price of gas.  Obama doesn't get the bad press on this that Bush does, but people are starting to notice, and remember that as a candidate he promised to raise energy prices.  I predict this move will help briefly, both in holding the price of gas down, and holding his popularity up.  The former because promises of increased supply are rapidly sensed by the market, and that will drive speculation to move the price down.  His popularity will benefit somewhat from that.  However, I further predict that if this opening actually produces exploration and the possibility of increased drilling, the Obama administration will find an excuse to regulate it out of existence. This is even more likely in a hypothetical second Obama term. Lucy will pull up the football, again.