U.S. offshore oil fields could hold enough crude to supply all of the country's needs for more than 11 years.
Or they might not. No one knows for certain because, with new offshore oil drilling banned on the east and west coasts, no one has gone looking for oil there in years.
Now congressional Republicans are pushing hard to make offshore drilling a key issue in the presidential campaign, hoping to channel the anger Americans feel over historically high oil and gasoline prices. More oil, they argue, will bring lower prices.
The federal government estimates the nation's outer continental shelf might hold 85.9 billion barrels of crude, including 10.13 billion barrels off California. For comparison, the United States consumes about 7.56 billion barrels of oil per year. The nation's sea floor could also could hold 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, equal to U.S. consumption for 14 1/2 years. But the federal estimates are just that - estimates.
"You don't really know what's there until you go out and drill a well," said Ken Medlock, an energy research fellow at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. "And even then, you're not 100 percent sure of what you're going to get."
In addition, offshore oil exploration is slow and costly.
If the federal government opened California's coast to drilling tomorrow, the first exploratory wells probably wouldn't be drilled for at least six years, Medlock said. Bringing newly discovered oil fields into full production would take longer.
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