Natural Recourse Defense Council Issues:
Oil & Energy
The True and False of Oil Drilling

President Bush and the oil companies would have you believe that we can drill our way to lower gas prices. Is it fact or damaging fiction?

With gas prices soaring, oil companies and their allies in the Bush administration are pushing to exploit America's wildlands and protected coastal regions -- all in the name of short-term relief at the pump. On July 14, 2008, President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling that was put in place by his father 18 years ago, claiming it would bring down gas prices. But the president and his buddies aren't playing straight with the American people. Sinking oil rigs into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Outer Continental Shelf and the American West won't alleviate the pain we're feeling right now, or help solve the nation's energy problems in the future.

Still, a lot of arguments are floating around, and sometimes it's hard to separate fact from fiction. Here's a guide to what's real, and what's fantasy.

Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf could help lower gas prices quickly.

FALSE
It would take almost a decade before significant oil production could occur in either place, and even then it would have a marginal impact. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for example, would only shave 4 cents off a gallon of gas by 2026, or $23 per year for the average driver, assuming that other conditions affecting gas prices remain the same. And that's at maximum benefit! Likewise, it would take many years for the oil from new offshore wells to go into production, and even at peak, the additional supply wouldn't reduce energy prices significantly. These numbers are all according to the U.S. government's own estimates. A June 2008 Congressional report makes it clear: "The argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices ... there is simply no correlation between the two."

America could have plenty of oil and stop importing so much fuel from foreign countries if we were allowed to drill for it in our own backyards.

FALSE
Americans burn through 20 million barrels of oil a day -- accounting for 25 percent of the world's total consumption -- but government estimates show that we only have 2 percent of the world's oil reserves. As an example of how little difference drilling would make, say that we did open the Arctic Refuge for exploitation. It would take an estimated 50 years to drain the whole thing dry. During that time, the oil fields would likely produce less fuel than what our country now consumes in just six months. With so little of the world's oil supply and such high demand, even if we allowed drilling everywhere that the oil companies want to -- from the Arctic refuge to the American West to protected offshore areas -- there's still no way we could quench America's thirst for oil. We must embrace other solutions.

If we can't get the oil we need out of the Arctic Refuge, there's no good reason not to look for it offshore, as President Bush is urging.

FALSE
Congress first banned drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf in 1982, and for good reason: Offshore drilling is an enormously wasteful and dangerous means of energy production. Between 1981 and 2005, 187 large oil spills on the continental shelf dumped more than 2,100 gallons each into the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes Rita and Katrina alone resulted in 125 spills, totaling 685,000 gallons. Offshore drilling is also associated with air pollution and land degradation, and with seismic activity that has been shown to have profound, even fatal, effects on marine mammals. The ban was affirmed by executive orders signed by the first President Bush in 1990 and extended by President Clinton in 1998. Even the current President Bush supported the ban until the summer of 2008, when soaring gas prices exposed the failure of his oil-centric energy policy.

Billions of barrels of oil are just waiting to be tapped from oil shale in the American West and would help reduce prices at the pump right away.

FALSE
Along with efforts to drill offshore and in the Arctic Refuge, Big Oil is pushing federal agencies to turn over publicly owned wildlands in the American West for oil shale development. Oil shale is a rock found in precious wildlife habitat and undeveloped open spaces running through Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. It produces liquid petroleum when heated to extreme temperatures. Industry allies in Congress and the Bush administration propose rushing development of commercial oil shale production in the Western states, but this won’t provide relief for consumers. It will take almost a decade or more before essential research on potential technologies is completed and we know what their impact would be. But it would be even longer before significant production of oil shale could occur, assuming that a viable technology is developed. What's more, because oil shale will be far more costly to produce than conventional fuel, commercial oil shale development is not likely to reduce gas prices. But most significantly, the environmental impact of oil shale production would further deplete the West's scarce water resources, threaten precious wildlife habitat, increase air pollution and generate toxic waste from the conversion process. The costs to Western communities would be enormous.

The oil companies already have plenty of places where they could be drilling for oil other than the Arctic Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf.

TRUE
It might be hard to believe, considering how much they're clamoring to drill on public lands, but oil companies already have plenty of resources available to them that they're not using. Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by 361 percent, according to a June 2008 Congressional report called "The Truth About America's Energy: Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits." In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 10,000 more permits than have been used. That means the oil and gas companies are actually stockpiling extra permits, and that these companies hold leases to nearly 68 million acres that are not in production. Oil companies haven't run out of land, as they're claiming -- they just want unfettered access to protected natural areas, and they're using the current crisis to try to get it.

We've heard all of these arguments for increased drilling before.

TRUE
In 2001, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, some members of Congress called for immediate action to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. But even in that time of crisis and fear, cooler heads prevailed and Americans rejected the idea. They realized that the problem isn't just how much oil we import from foreign sources, it's how much we use overall. The first Bush administration acknowledged this fact in 1991 with a National Energy Strategy that said: "Popular opinion aside, our vulnerability to price shocks is not determined by how much oil we import." The No. 1 factor in our vulnerability, according to the Bush administration itself: "How oil dependent our economy is."

We could have solved this problem a long time ago if we had just taken action.

TRUE
Not, however, in the way that the oil companies and their cronies would like you to think. For many years, national security and energy experts, including NRDC, have urged the president and Congress to adopt a farsighted national energy policy that would move the United States away from our reliance on fossil fuels. In 2001, for example, an NRDC report on overcoming U.S. oil dependence urged "reducing demand for gasoline with better gas mileage, cleaner fuels from America's farms, and faster deployment of hybrid and fuel cell technologies." Those are the same arguments that NRDC and many other experts had been making for years -- and are still making today. It's time for the president and Congress to listen.

Sadly, there really is no short-term solution to high gas prices.

FALSE
Thank goodness, this one's not true. Yes, we need to make major changes in America's energy policy, but there are ways that you can make up for the government's neglect by taking matters into your own hands. In fact, studies show that energy efficiency measures are a lot more effective, over both the short and long term, than increased drilling, and they're good for both the environment and your wallet. Simple steps such as keeping your car engine in top shape and your tires properly inflated will yield significant savings over the long term and help you begin saving money right now. A new NRDC analysis of cars currently on the road shows that by driving smarter, keeping vehicles properly maintained, and using transportation alternatives one day per week, the average driver could save about $800 on gas per year. Find out how.

NRDC Legislative Facts
The Destructive Consequences of Offshore Drilling

Offshore drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) could do serious, irreparable damage to our oceans, coastal communities, and marine life. Some consequences of drilling in the OCS include:

Damaging coastal lands, economies, and communities
Offshore oil and gas operations have detrimental effects onshore. These operations require roads, pipelines, and processing facilities to be built on America’s beaches, wetlands, and coastal areas. Current drilling projects in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico have destroyed more wetlands than exist between New Jersey and Maine. These activities hurt local communities and damage economies that depend upon these resources for tourism, coastal recreation, and fishing.

Endangering ocean health
Offshore drilling and production create huge quantities of waste that contain toxic and radioactive pollutants, which can contaminate fish and marine life consumed by humans.

• Drilling muds and cuttings removed from wells contain toxic metals, including mercury, lead, and cadmium. Each well creates 180,000 gallons of this waste and most of it is dumped untreated into surrounding waters.
• Each well also discharges hundreds of thousands of gallons of “produced water.” Studies of thisbyproduct have detected radium, an extremely radioactive material; toxic pollutants, such as benzene, arsenic, lead, radium, naphthalene, zinc, and toluene; and petroleum hydrocarbons in waters downcurrent of the discharge.

Polluting air and emitting greenhouse gases
Offshore wells emit air pollutants that are known carcinogens, cause respiratory problems, and aregreenhouse gases. For example:

• Emissions from drilling an average exploration well include 50 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx), 13 tons of carbon monoxide, 6 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 5 tons of volatile organic compounds.
• Emissions from drilling an operational OCS platform include 50 tons of NOx, 11 tons of carbon monoxide, 8 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 38 tons of volatile organic hydrocarbons each year.

Seismic surveys harm wildlife
Seismic surveys can seriously affect gray whales, sperm whales, beaked whales and bowheads, and can injure fish at substantial distances. Fish are particularly vulnerable to hearing loss that can significantly threaten their survival. Many fish, including salmon, which are endangered in portions of the United States, have swim bladders that can rupture when exposed to intense sounds like those emitted through these types of surveys.

Oil spills
There have been 187 large oil spills on the OCS, each emitting more than 2100 gallons into the Gulf of Mexico, between 1981 and 2005. As storms and hurricanes have intensified, the number of oil spills has increased. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita alone resulted in 125 spills of petroleum products from platforms, rigs, and pipelines on the OCS, totaling 685,000 gallons. Oil is toxic for most marine species and, according to the National Academy of Sciences, cleanup methods can only remove a small fraction of oil spilled in marine waters.

www.nrdc.org/policy July 2008
© Natural Resources Defense Council
For more information, please contact Roberta Elias at (202) 289-6868.

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