Nancy Pelosi's War on Oil Drilling

So why is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi so against opening up new territory for the drilling of oil and natural gas? Her stance, which is shared by Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid, would seem to be a political loser as 73 percent of the American people favor drilling.

Nancy Pelosi has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent legislation to end the ban on drilling of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as well as ANWR in Alaska. Nancy Pelosi has used her considerable powers as House Speaker to block such legislation, ordering House Committee chairmen to adjourn meetings of House Committees to prevent pro drilling amendments from being offered. Pelosi, with the help of House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, has actually stopped the appropriations process in order to stop drilling amendments.

Nancy Pelosi's nightmare is that pro drilling legislation would actually get to the House floor. Were that to happen, such legislation would almost certainly pass as the Republican caucus is united on the issue and there are enough pro drilling Democrats in the House to put any lifting of the ban over the top.

Nancy Pelosi's hostility toward oil and natural gas drilling may already be having an effect on prospects for the Fall election. Approval of Congress is already in single digits, but a recent poll conducted by the Rasmussen organization shows that the generic lead of Democrats over Republicans for Congressional elections has been cut from 14 percent to 9 percent. Many pundits have suggested that whatever happens in the Presidential race, Congressional Republicans are in for a blood bath. But the oil drilling issue may well forestall that if Nancy Pelosi and her allies are not careful.

So why the hostility toward oil drilling? Partly that can be explained by the 1969 oil spill that fouled beaches at Santa Barbara in California and led to a ban on further development of off shore oil fields in the Pacific. This incident seems to have buttressed Nancy Pelosi's antipathy toward oil drilling. In 1996, Nancy Pelosi told a committee hearing, "We learned the hard way that oil and water do not mix on our coast."