OH-02: Yet Again, Schmidt (R) Plays Fast and Loose with the Truth

In what would resemble a comedy if it weren't so tragic, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Loveland) has once again trampled the truth -- continuing a remarkable string of false claims and erroneous assertions.

On Saturday the Chilicothe Gazette published a column by Rep. Schmidt titled "Time to stop playing politics with gas prices," which is a word-for-word reprint of a press release issued by her office last Thursday. In it Schmidt claims that "[t]he U.S. Minerals Management Service estimates there are 86 billion barrels of oil located off our own shores" but "85 percent of this oil is off-limits to producers due to a 1982 moratorium on offshore drilling." Sounds like an awful lot! Especially after she uses this percentage to come up with 124.9 billion barrels of oil as the amount of reserves that could be produced domestically if Congress removed all restrictions.

Ah, but not so fast ... that percentage is completely wrong. The data is contained in the Comprehensive Inventory of U.S. OCS Oil and Natural Gas Resources [.pdf] prepared by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) in February 2006. That report (at p. 72) says that federal restrictions cover 85% of the acreage of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), not 85% of the resources. Actually, the MMS estimates recoverable oil resources in restricted OCS areas at 19.1 billion barrels of oil, which is only about 22% of total offshore resources. Even if Schmidt's other source figures are correct, her computation of total restricted oil resources is off by more than half (it should be 58 billion barrels of oil, not 129.4).

So Schmidt's central argument is wrong, and she shows once more that she can't get her facts straight!