McCain Pushes Offshore-Drilling Plan

By David Jackson

John McCain said Tuesday that the nation faces an “energy crisis” with both economic and national security implications, requiring more offshore oil drilling to lower gas prices and offset imports from hostile countries.

“My friends, we have to drill offshore — we have to do it,” McCain said during a town-hall-style meeting in Rochester, N.H.

McCain also touted alternatives to oil such as nuclear power and batteries to power cars, and he cast Democratic rival Barack Obama as a foe of increased energy production. Criticizing Obama’s opposition to drilling for oil offshore, McCain joked that the campaign should change its slogan from “Yes, we can,” to “No, we won’t.”

Congress must vote every year to renew a federal moratorium on drilling off most of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, covering 80% of offshore drilling sites. McCain wants the moratorium lifted; Obama doesn’t.

Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said Obama’s stand on energy is a $150 billion plan to develop alternative energy sources such as bio-fuels and low-emission coal plants that would “create millions of new jobs, keep the cost of energy affordable and secure our energy independence once and for all.”

McCain says those ideas are no substitute for increasing domestic production of the fuel America depends on most — oil.

Last month, McCain supported a GOP energy plan in the Senate that would have allowed states to request to have the federal moratorium lifted for waters off their coasts. The measure was voted down 56-42.

Last week, President Bush lifted an executive moratorium on offshore drilling; Congress would need to follow suit before drilling could take place. Congress has not yet voted on renewing the moratorium this year.

McCain plans to promote more domestic oil exploration as well as the lifting of the moratorium when he visits New Orleans on Thursday. The Louisiana coast and some areas of the Gulf have oil wells that are exempt from the moratorium.

McCain has argued that 14billion barrels of recoverable oil are available in waters now off-limits that would wean the U.S. off foreign oil and eventually bring prices down. Loosening the nation’s dependence on foreign oil would cut off billions of dollars to countries that “don’t like us,” he said Tuesday.

McCain had supported the moratorium in his career as a senator. He has voted to allow new drilling in certain specific areas, including a 2006 piece of legislation that involved about 8 million acres off the coasts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. “He has often voted for more drilling,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, legislative director with the League of Conservation Voters. “But it was a major flip-flop when he said he supported overturning the moratorium.”

The league raises money and runs ads opposing candidates it says are anti-environment. It is backing Obama for president.

Although it’s true that McCain has voted for the moratorium as part of the Interior Department budget, his aides said that was before gas was averaging $4 a gallon. Using America’s own oil is one piece of a new approach to keep energy costs down that includes nuclear power and other fuels, senior adviser Charles Black said. (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.