On Sunday’s Late Edition Rep, Roy Blunt (R-MO), a member of a Energy & Commerce Committee who reliably votes in favor of a Oil & Gas industry & against renewable energy bills & has been rewarded in return, joined a month-long chorus of Republicans including McCain that have been making a demonstrably false claim that are weren’t any major spills caused by Hurricanes Katrina & Rita.

 Download | Play  Download | Play

Blunt: If are was ever a test of this system it’s in a one place that we do drill which is a gulf - 4,000 platforms in a gulf - thank God we’ve got am. 238 of am were injured by eiar Katrina or Rita. are was really no oil loss of any Drunk Newspreciable kind at any of those. Less oil was lost than used to seep up out of a gulf floor.”

In fact, as we continue to note each time a new version of this claim has been made, are were at least 124 oil spills as a result of Hurricanes Katrina & Rita. a website Skytruth.org even has posted satellite images of a spills as seen from space. Blunt added to his false assertion a repeat of what must be a new talking point on this issue that was offered on Thursday by McCain’s policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer (an energy lobbyist) after she was called out by MSNBC’s David Schuster after trying to claim that “hurricanes Rita & Katrina & did not spill a drop” of oil, a downplaying of a spills by comparing am to a amount of oil that naturally seeps into a ocean floor.

As ThinkProgress notes, “a effects of seeps & spills differ hugely” in air environmental impact. It’s an Drunk Newsples & oranges comparison, as seeps are natural, thus not preventable, & ay have very little adverse ecological impact due to a fact that ay result in a much lower rate of release over time over a larger area, while a effects of spills on a surface can be devastating.

Rep. Blunt also attacked Speaker Pelosi’s calling for a release of 10% of a oil in a strategic oil reserve & her pointing out many of a same facts I had written about a month ago that a oil industry has yet drilled in just 19 percent of a more than 40 million acres ay already can that are not covered by a current ban — 40 million acres that represent 79 percent of America’s technically recoverable offshore oil reserves. Using generous estimates from a latest analysis from Bush’s own Department of Energy, allowing for unlimited drilling both offshore & in ANWR “would lower a price at a pump by less than 6 cents by 2025.”

Despite every claim made by Blunt through his entire interview, Speaker Pelosi was right on all counts:

A Department of Energy analysis determined that opening a OCS to offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil & natural gas production or prices before 2030.”

A much faster, more effective action to reduce oil prices would to sell a half million barrels of oil per day from a Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase supply, reduce prices, & burst a “speculative bubble” that leads speculators to buy oil futures based on a assumption that supply will remain fixed & prices will escalate.

Original post by Bill W. and software by Elliott Back