The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) takes a look at President Obama's new policy on offshore oil drilling and finds that what the president offers with one hand, he takes away with the other:

In 2008, President George W. Bush revoked his father's executive order barring new offshore energy development and the Department of the Interior prepared a five year offshore leasing plan. The Democratic Congress co-operated by dropping the long-time moratorium which banned offshore oil production everywhere except in the western Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean off Alaska. The Obama administration, however, suspended the Interior plan and delayed a planned lease auction scheduled for 2011. It is now proposing a new plan that is much more limited.

"Anyone who sees this as a step in the right direction should remember that President Obama still supports energy-rationing policies to address global warming that would cause electricity prices to, in his own words, ‘necessarily skyrocket' and would require gas prices of at least seven dollars a gallon according to a recent Harvard study," said Ebell. "I guess when gas hits seven dollars as a result of Obama's policies, Americans can take comfort in the fact that a bit more of it is being produced in the U.S."