The Wonk Room

Exposing The Big Oil Lie: ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’

Even as the sordid details of the Drill, Baby, Drill sex, drugs, and oil scandal in the Minerals Management Service are revealed, conservatives continue to press their drill-drill-drill agenda in Congress. They continue to repeat the Big Oil lie that opening America’s coasts to further drilling would lower gas prices, despite the clear finding by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium would not affect oil prices.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the news media has mindlessly amplified that lie. The hundreds of broadcasts on “proposed drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive zones in the United States” almost completely ignored the EIA report:

CNN — whose news coverage is sponsored by the coal and oil industry — was particularly egregious, talking about the drill-drill-drill agenda 139 times but mentioning the EIA’s debunk only once on August 7 (actually, I was able to find one other mention that same day).

From the American News Project comes a telling video report on how conservatives are “just lying to the American public” by promising lower gas prices from expanded drilling. Climate Progress’s Joe Romm is interviewed, and he explains the dirty money connection:

It is conservatives who get ad campaigns and who get contributions from the oil companies. The oil companies get bigger profits when oil prices are high. So it is not surprising that conservatives have for twenty-five years opposed higher fuel economy standards. And it is not surprising that conservatives have steadfastly opposed alternative energy and renewable energy. They don’t want people to get off of fossil fuels and traditional energy because conservatives get paid by those companies.

Digg It!

Watch it: