Offshore drilling, yay or nay?
TEXT OF STORY
MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: Today the House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill that would open up the Gulf of Mexico to more offshore oil drilling. The Senate has already given its approval, but special rules require a two-thirds vote for that measure to pass the House. Alisa Roth has the story.
ALISA ROTH: The bill would open up millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling. And states, especially those along the Gulf, would get billions of dollars in royalties.
There are supposedly about a billion barrels of oil and five trillion cubic feet of natural gas under the gulf, and proponents say drilling would help reduce the American dependence on foreign oil.
But the bill has opponents on both sides of the aisle: those who say it goes too far and those who say it doesn’t go far enough.
Analyst Jerry Castellini says a lot of people stand to make a lot of money.
JERRY CASTELLINI: Beneficiaries include all the risk-takers, which would be the oil companies, it would be the oil and gas service businesses that are employed to locate and bring oil into production as well as the places who would generate tax and other income from it.
If the House passes the bill today, the President would sign it into law, but Castellini and others doubt it can pass in the current political climate.
In New York, I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.
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