Oil panel comes up dry on drilling

[Geee]

Washington Times:

With gasoline prices at unusually high levels for this time of year, a report from a presidential commission Tuesday did little to break the political deadlock over offshore drilling, prompting some observers to warn that the U.S. is headed toward another gas-price crunch this summer.

The nationwide average price of regular gas over the weekend rose to $3.08 a gallon while crude-oil prices have surged to more than $90 a barrel — levels seen in only one previous winter, in 2007-08. Gasoline prices then ran up dramatically in the 2008 spring-summer driving season and reached an all-time high of more than $4, prompting public outrage and demands that the government open offshore drilling for the first time in 30 years.

But despite the threat of much higher gas prices again this summer, the momentum for increased drilling has been effectively snuffed out by the disastrous Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year. The Obama administration has withdrawn most of its proposals to expand drilling off U.S. coasts and has imposed more layers of regulation that have stifled new development even in the well-pocked Gulf of Mexico.

Tuesday's report from a commission appointed by President Obama to investigate the oil spill blamed it on "complacency" within the industry and the government bureaucracy that regulates drilling, and mostly ratified the administration's moves toward heavier regulation.