(CNSNews.com) - President Bush announced on Monday that he will lift the executive order banning offshore drilling, a move that Republicans consider essential to boosting oil supply. Some Democrats, however, say the move won’t lower gasoline prices any time soon.
 
Bush criticized the Democrat-controlled Congress, saying that it “sat idle” as gasoline prices rose. The American Automobile Association (AAA) listed the national average for unleaded, regular gasoline Monday at $4.109, compared with $3.054 a year ago.
 
The executive ban on drilling was established by Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, in 1990 and extended by President Bill Clinton to last through June 2012.
 
Bush’s rescinding of the order is largely symbolic, since Congress passes an annual order banning the leasing of coastal waters, except for parts of the Gulf of Mexico and some waters off the coast of Alaska.
 
Bush’s action does not affect the Congressional moratorium on offshore drilling. He urged Congress to rescind the law last month and did so again Monday.
 
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino told a press briefing Monday that the president wants to work with Congress to move towards opening up offshore areas for drilling.
 
“It’s become increasingly clear that Congress is not willing to take that step on their own, so President Bush is going to lead, and we hope that they will follow us,” Perino said.
 
‘Important first step’
 
The Institute for Energy Research (IER) applauded President Bush’s decision to rescind the executive moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf energy production.
 
“Fortunately, we appear to be nearing the end of nearly three decades of short-sighted, one-size-fits-all policies that restrict access to domestic supplies despite explosive global demand," said IER president Thomas Pyle in a statement.
 
"The lack of a commonsense offshore energy policy has placed this country in economic and strategic peril.  Ending these bans will send a strong signal to the rest of the world that America is finally getting serious about producing more of its own energy.”
 
The IER noted that while President Bush is eliminating one of the largest barriers standing in the way of new energy supplies, the biggest one still remains -- and that rests with Congress. “It comes in the form of an annual appropriations rider in Congress, which expires -- and must be renewed -- every year.  Congress has enacted Outer Continental Shelf energy bans every year since 1981,” Pyle noted.
 
Unless the Congress and the president approve a new appropriations rider, the Congressional ban on Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling will expire on September 30th, the end of the federal fiscal year.
 
The IER says 97 percent of America’s 1.76 billion acres of OCS lands are not being used for their energy potential.
 
‘Hoax’
 
In a statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not discuss whether Congress would comply with Bush’s request to lift the OCS moratorium. Instead, she called the president’s plan a “hoax.”
 
“It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence,” she said in a statement. “It just gives millions more acres to the same companies that are sitting on nearly 68 million acres of public lands and coastal areas.”
 
Pelosi instead called for Bush to release some of the oil contained in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
 
The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service estimated in February 2006 that approximately 85.9 billion barrels of "undiscovered technically recoverable" oil could be found on the Outer Continental Shelf.
 
If Congress does lift the federal ban, it would take five to 10 years for significant amounts of oil to be produced, estimated Jerry Taylor a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and an expert on energy and environmental policy. 
 
But, as Taylor wrote in the New York Post last month, the several years it will take to get the oil fields at a strong level of production is “all the more reason to start now,” even if aggressive exploration does not return gas prices to 1990s levels.
 
“We do it because it’s economically valuable, because the oil and gas under these lands is far more valuable than the recreational or aesthetic amenities associated with the land,” he told Cybercast News Service on Monday. “That’s how you create wealth in society.”
 
But Taylor admitted that, in the long run, production of offshore oil resources would probably lead to only a two percent reduction in the price of a barrel of oil. 
 
“Environmentalists are correct to point out that the oil we are talking about is probably not great enough to have a substantial impact on global price,” Taylor said.
 
That’s the stance the Sierra Club took in a statement it issued Monday regarding Bush’s announcement that he was lifting the executive ban.
 
“This is the most cynical of political ploys,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope in a statement. “Even the Bush administration admits that offshore drilling will do absolutely nothing to lower gas prices, today, tomorrow or even a decade from now.”
 
A spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute also predicted it would take five to 10 years for oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf to start flowing, depending on factors such as infrastructure and geology. Spokeswoman Karen Matusic said it was impossible to predict with accuracy how markets will respond to Bush’s announcement.
 
“But we think anytime you add more supply to a market that is very tight, or even the promise of more supply, that that will have a downward effect on prices,” she said.
 
A 2007 report by the Energy Information Administration projected that access to Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf regions of the Outer Continental Shelf would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.