Senater McCain recently proposed opening up environmentally sensitive offshore zones to drilling in response to the recent jump in oil and gas prices. He argues that increased offshore production will reduce dependence on foreign oil, in addition to lowering gas prices.
However, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that Senator McCain’s proposal would have no impact in the near-term since it will be close to a decade before the first oil can be extracted from the currently protected offshore areas. The EIA projects that production will reach 200,000 barrels a day (0.2 percent of projected world production) at peack production in close to tenty years. It describes this amount as too small to have any significant effect on oil prices.
