When I awoke this morning I noticed the crawler that was creeping across the bottom of the news cast was touting the Presidents plan to expand the area of offshore waters that are open for the exploration of oil.

Critics of the expansion of drilling claim that it would take at least five to ten years for increased drilling activity to impact the price of oil. While I know this is true I also know the sooner we get started the sooner more Americans will find well paying jobs. The oil and gas industry is directly responsible for 9.2 million jobs (1) and the expansion of the industry to its full potential could easily create another nine million jobs.

Environmentalist worry that drilling will cause pollution of the oceans but the fact is that natural oil seeps on the ocean floor account for 60% of all oil in North American waters while releases from oil platforms account for only about one percent of the oil in these same waters (2).

I have been employed in the offshore oil and gas industry for most of my adult life so when I heard this announcement I was cautiously optimistic concerning the long term economic benefits this act would provide our nation. With our unemployment rate continually hovering near 10% coupled with the fact that our economy loses over three hundred billion dollars per year to foreign oil companies and governments would seem to indicate the expansion of drilling activity in offshore waters would be a common sense proposition. Results of some of the most recent polling demonstrate that the majority of Americans support offshore drilling by a 72% to 28% margin while 59% of Americans believe drilling should be allowed of the coast of California and the New England states (3).

While I am enjoying dinner this evening and watching the nightly news I am disappointed to discover the President is opening only a small portion of our country’s available oil rich outer continental shelf. He is leaving off limits the oil rich waters of the Pacific Ocean and the near coastal waters of the State of Florida.

This action is a decision that has angered both the Republican Party and the President’s anti-drilling Liberal base and places the President in the middle of an argument that has persisted for years between pro-drilling factions and anti-drilling environmental protection groups. True conservatives in the Republican Party believe this action does not go far enough, that it is still places too many oil rich lands off limits. Environmental groups that supported Mr. Obama’s Presidential campaign sees this action as a stab in the back because the promises he made to emphasize “green” renewable sources of energy and curtail oil drilling seem to have been abandoned.

When I was growing up my father taught me the middle of an argument was never a good place to be, that you would catch heck from both sides. The President obviously was not taught this. The President has once again managed to simultaneously anger conservative opposition groups and his liberal base of supporters.

There is a wives tale that says cats have nine lives. One has to wonder how many political “lives” this President has remaining.

Carl Goodson lives in Clute, a suburb of Houston TX and is the author of “Letters to the editor: What is your government doing to you?”

(1) www.energytomorrow.org/Industry_Jobs.aspx
(2) http://books.nap.edu/html/oil_in_the_sea/reportbrief.pdf
(3) www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/offshore_drilling/72_support_offshore_drilling_59_favor_it_california_and_new_england