Build it and they will drill

McQueeg and Bush want to support offshore drilling of oil to reduce the nation's dependency on foreign oil (which could also be addressed if we reduced our dependency on oil in general, but I digress). I guess they forgot about the shortage of oil rigs in the world that won't let up until at least 2012 and quite possibly, beyond that year. So much for a sound energy policy based on facts. From the second link:

Demand is so high that shipbuilders, the biggest of whom are in Asia, have raised prices since last year by as much as $ 100 million a vessel to about half a billion dollars.

“The crunch on rigs is everywhere,” said Alberto Guimaraes, a senior executive at Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company that has discovered some of the most promising offshore oil but has been unable to get at it.

“Almost 100 percent of the oil companies are constrained in their investment program because there is no rig available,” he said.

As a result, drilling costs for some of the newest deep-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico — the nation’s top source of domestic oil and natural gas supplies — have reached about $ 600, 000 a day, compared with $ 150, 000 a day in 2002.