I didn’t want this to be lost in the comments on my prior post about the Bush/McCain ANWR/OCS drilling nonsense, so I’m posting it as a standalone item.

Joe Romm pointed out over on Climate Progress that even drilling the heck out of the outer continental shelf won’t make any significant difference. In EIA bombshell: Offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030″ he says:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling for their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, “Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).” The sobering conclusion:

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.

And the impact of the projected 7% (!) increase in lower-48 oil production that might result in 2030 thanks to opening the OCS is… wait for it…

…any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

The picture for natural gas is no brighter, as the EIA page linked above says: “Similarly, lower 48 natural gas production is not projected to increase substantially by 2030 as a result of increased access to the OCS.”

If you want foolproof carbon capture and sequestration that doesn’t require any technological breakthroughs or the construction of miles-long pipelines, etc., try this: Leave as much of the fossil fuels in the ground as possible.