Politicians and thier spinners (paid liars) appear on talking head TV shows and make proclamations that support their positions based on documents they reference, but they misrepresent what the documents actually say. At present Democrats like to quote an EIA report that says it would take 10 years to get any oil from new off-shore drilling, and the amount to be obtained would only be 200,000 marrels per day. THey omit the assumptions made in the report that could be easily changed, if politicians had the will. here is a discussion of this:

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2008/08/07/offshore-oil-production-estimate-illustrates-flaws-in-eia-forecasting/