WASHINGTON (AP) — The House, responding to growing public demand for more domestic energy, voted Wednesday to end a quarter-century ban on oil and natural gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, giving Republicans a major victory on energy policy.

An extension of the ban for another year was left off a $630 billion-plus stopgap government spending bill that President Bush had threatened to veto – possibly shutting down the government – if the anti-drilling measure were included.

The bill was approved 370-58 and now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to be approved within the next few days, also without the drilling ban.

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My guess is that if Obama is elected, we’ll probably see a bit of a drawback on thiis one.  If McCain/Plain are elected, it will be expanded.

Opening up drilling doesn’t do much for now, but might help a tiny bit in the future.  If we structure the deals right, we could make some money, but without real pressure, expect to get raped like we were before.

WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

[full story]

What this group did was collect money on the oil and gas we are already letting be “drill, baby, drilled”.  This office was rife with corruption as the profits involved in the gas business, and the payments tied to them, have skyrocketed in recent years.  What Big Oil realized was that by boozing and blowing certain humans that represented the government, they could avoid paying any extra taxes on those record profits.

This was one of the tactics in their strategy to maximize shareholder value.  And is something that would be multiplied a couple-fold by allowing more drilling (it’s really not going to change the equation that much).