How the media helps the liars! Myths and falsehoods about oil policies

In reporting on high gas prices and initiatives that have been proposed to address the issue, the media have repeated or failed to challenge several myths, falsehoods, and claims contradicted by government agencies. Many of the media-advanced myths and falsehoods have promoted the notion that lifting the current moratorium on offshore drilling and expanding domestic drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will have an immediate impact on rising gas prices.

1. Opening additional acres for offshore drilling will lower today's oil and gasoline prices

After successive speeches from Sen. John McCain and President Bush in which they both called for an increase in offshore oil drilling, many major news outlets have uncritically reported the suggestion by drilling proponents that lifting the federal moratorium will have an immediate effect on fuel prices, without noting that, in its Annual Energy Outlook 2007, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated the effects of allowing the moratorium to expire in 2012 and said that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017." June 23 articles in The Washington Post and New York Times, as well as July 15 articles in the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, reporting on suggestions that offshore drilling would lower oil and gas prices, made no mention of the EIA's findings. By contrast, a July 14 Post article did note the EIA's conclusions, although that article appeared on the front page under a headline -- "Offshore Drilling Backed as Remedy for Oil Prices" -- whose suggestion of short-term effects was contradicted by the article itself.

2. Opening ANWR to drilling will impact today's oil and gasoline prices

Suggestions that opening federally protected ANWR to drilling will help lower today's gas prices also frequently go unchallenged by news media outlets. For instance, while discussing Bush's trip to the U.S.-European Union summit on MSNBC Live, anchor Contessa Brewer said Bush "will push for help from our European partners on the oil front" and aired a video clip of Bush saying, "The United States has an opportunity to help increase the supply of oil on the market, therefore taking pressure off gasoline for our hard-working Americans, and that I've proposed to the Congress that they open up ANWR, and open up the continental shelf, and give this country a chance to help us through this difficult period."

But in its May 2008 "Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," the EIA concluded that oil drilling in ANWR would not impact the U.S. oil supply for at least a decade: "The opening of the ANWR 1002 Area to oil and natural gas development is projected to increase domestic crude oil production starting in 2018" . Further, the report says: "This analysis assumes that enactment of the legislation in 2008 would result in first production from the ANWR area in 10 years, i.e., 2018." Further, based on its Annual Energy Outlook 2008 report, EIA estimated that the opening of ANWR would reduce the price of imported low-sulfur, light crude oil by $0.75 per barrel in 2025 (in the "mean oil resource case"), from a predicted reference case price of $64.49. As of the close of trading on August 13, the price of oil settled at $116 per barrel.

3. No oil was spilled offshore as a result of Hurricane Katrina

Proponents of lifting the moratorium on certain offshore drilling have on several occasions falsely claimed that no oil was spilled offshore during Hurricane Katrina -- with no challenge from cable news anchors; at least one Fox News contributor has also made this false claim. In fact, as Media Matters has noted, a 2007 report prepared for the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) by the international consulting firm Det Norske Veritas found that damage related to Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from outer continental shelf structures with a total volume spilled of approximately 5,552 barrels of petroleum products. The study specifically identified damage from Katrina to 27 platforms and rigs that resulted in approximately 2,843 barrels of spilled petroleum products. The combined impacts of hurricanes Katrina and Rita on outer continental shelf structures in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the report, were "124 spills ... with a total volume of roughly 17,700 barrels of total petroleum products."

On Fox News' Fox & Friends, former Republican presidential candidate and Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee falsely asserted, "When Katrina, a Cat-5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast, not one drop of oil was spilled off of those rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico." The claim has also been promulgated on MSNBC. NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell has twice allowed guests to claim that Hurricane Katrina did not result in any oil spills. On the June 24 edition of MSNBC Live, Mitchell did not challenge Sen. Richard Burr's (R-NC) false assertion that "there wasn't a drop" of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico due to a Category 5 hurricane. And during a July 15 interview on MSNBC Live, Mitchell did not challenge energy lobbyist and former Sen. Trent Lott's (R-MS) false claim that "e didn't have one drop of oil spilt when we had the biggest hurricane in, you know, recent history, Hurricane Katrina."

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