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Date published: 4/24/2009

OAKLAND, Calif.

Consider President Barack Obama's campaign promise to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, while increasing our use of "alternative" fuels. In fact, administration policies will ensure America's dependence on foreign oil far into the future.

There is no on-off switch that will allow the United States to end its addiction to foreign oil. It will be a gradual process, requiring that we pursue all available options, as The Boston Consulting Group's Harold Sirkin wrote in Business Week last fall.

The administration, however, won't go there. Congress last year decided to allow the moratorium on offshore drilling in untapped areas of the Outer Continental Shelf to expire. Recent polls show that 61 percent of Americans support this policy. But Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, saying more studies are needed, has placed a hold on offshore leasing--keeping as much as 1 million barrels of domestic oil per day off limits.

We've had enough studies. If President Obama and Secretary Salazar are concerned about the environment, they should consult the National Academy of Sciences, which confirms that less oil is spilled by offshore drilling than seeps through the ocean floor naturally. Even during hurricanes Katrina and Rita, no significant oil spills were reported from Gulf rigs.

The new administration also has suspended a program for leasing government-owned tracts of oil-shale land in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. As much as 1.6 trillion barrels of oil can be extracted from those deposits, according to reliable estimates, more than triple Saudi Arabia's proven reserves.

Although recovering shale oil in an environmentally responsible way is a challenging technological problem, new methods already are under development here and in Alberta, Canada, which experienced an economic boom during last year's run-up in crude oil prices.

Regardless of the challenge, producing oil from shale is no more daunting than safeguarding oil tankers from Somali pirates, mollifying Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, or suppressing dissidents bent on sabotaging Nigerian oil fields. The administration, in its record $3.6 trillion federal budget, also has eliminated funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility, which could stall needed expansion of America's nuclear generating capacity.

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Date published: 4/24/2009