Don't These Guys Know we Fact-check them?

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

Don't these guys know we fact-check them?
By: MARK TAPSCOTT
Editorial Page Editor
05/14/10 10:26 AM EDT
Nobody should be surprised to see members of Congress rushing in front of the TV cameras to take political advantage of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but couldn't they at least stick to the facts?

Take Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, who earlier this week told Oil Daily that he persuaded Senators, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut not to include in their new cap-and-trade anti-global warming bill provisions to open up eastern areas of the Gulf to new oil and gas exploration and drilling.

I’m glad the climate bill includes my proposal for a moratorium on any new drilling, until we know what happened aboard the Deepwater Horizon. They had their eye on expanding drilling into new areas of the Gulf of Mexico near Florida, and I told them to stay out of it. And I’m glad they listened."

That's fine, but Nelson knows better because, as a long-time opponent of development of the eastern Gulf, he is aware that energy companies are focused on natural gas resources in that region, especially an area known as the Destin Dome.

As Dan Kish, vice president of the Institute for Energy Research told Oil Daily, "If what had happened with BP in the Destin Dome area, for example -- based upon everything we know -- there would be nothing but big bubbles of natural gas coming to the surface. There is no oil there because of the geology."

Oil Daily also noted that water depths in the eastern Gulf off of the Florida coast tend to be much shallower than in the western area off Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. You can read the full Oil Daily story here.

Even as the U.S. maintains its hands-off policy toward the eastern Gulf, other nations are moving forward in efforts to develop oil and natural gas resources in the Gulf. Russia, for example, signed a deal last year with Cuba, as did China and India in 2006, and Brazil in 2008.

Over on the Pacific side, senators from California, Oregon and Washington are falling all over each other to ban exploration and drilling off of their coasts.

As the Seattle Times pointed out, Washington has no known or suspected oil or natural gas resources off its coast, but that didn't stop Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray from co-sponsoring a permanent ban on such activities along the entire U.S. Pacific shoreline.

By the way, approximately one-third of all U.S. oil is from the Gulf area where an estimated 4,000 active rigs are in operation.

[Sanguine]

They don't care if we fact check them. So what? They have been virtually bullet-proof. Hopefully, that is changing and a lot of them will have to go get honest jobs after the elections.