Energy: Is There Any Reason to Doubt the Dems' Sincerity on Domestic Production?

The Wall Street Journal takes an almost, well, skeptical tone:

It took a few months, and more than a few polls, but Democrats have concluded that they've lost the debate against more oil-and-gas drilling. The surrender became official on Saturday, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that even she was ready to "consider opening portions" of the Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration.

That's great news, assuming she and her fellow Democrats really mean it.

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For example, the [Democratic Party] platform draft now says that "We know we can't drill our way to energy independence." Then there's the bit about ending "the tyranny of oil," which will require "far more than simply expanding our economic and political resources to keep oil flowing steadily" from overseas and elsewhere. There's also no mention of drilling offshore, much less in Alaska, and nothing about exploiting our vast domestic supplies of oil shale.

Fortunately, Democrats have time to fix these political oversights. If they are serious, surely Democrats will have someone rise on the convention floor next week and offer an amendment that endorses offshore drilling and pledges not to extend the Congressional ban on drilling that expires on September 30. Come to think of it, Democrats should offer this amendment in prime time. How better to steal the drilling issue from Republicans?

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The fossil-fuel love-in could also extend to oil shale. Abundant on federal lands in the Mountain West, these deposits could yield more than seven times more fuel than Saudi Arabia has crude oil reserves. While extraction technology is still a work in progress, the immediate hitch is that a pilot leasing program was deliberately killed last year in legislation offered by Colorado's Democratic Senator, Ken Salazar. His partner in imposing that exploration ban was none other than House Democrat Mark Udall, who is now running for Colorado's open Senate seat.

Mr. Udall recently had his own pro-drilling epiphany, after weeks of getting pounded on the issue by his Republican opponent, Bob Schaffer. Mr. Udall's lead in the polls has vanished. "We've got to produce our own oil and gas here in our country," he now says in a new TV spot. But a campaign ad isn't enough. Surely, Mr. Udall will now want to acknowledge his mistake of a year ago and fight to lift the oil-shale ban on the House floor next month. That is, unless his new pro-drilling rhetoric is merely campaign triangulation that he doesn't really believe.

We'll know Democrats are not serious if they limit their drilling support only to the so-called Gang of 10 proposal in the Senate. The bipartisan Gang would allow drilling only offshore of four states -- Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas -- and only if it is farther than 50 miles out. It would leave the most promising areas off limits, especially in the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico.

And in return for this de minimis drilling, the Gang wants to spend $84 billion more in subsidies for ethanol and other "alternatives," while hitting the oil industry with a $30 billion tax increase. This proposal is a trick designed to give Democrats political cover while opening up very little new land or offshore area for drilling.

No doubt any or all of these three actions would enrage the green lobby, but politics is about choosing. In this case, the Democratic choice is between sticking with an anticarbon theology that opposes all new drilling, or siding with American consumers who want more energy supplies so they don't have to pay $4 for gas and blow their family budget to keep the lights on. [ . . .]