MM REBUTS LIAR SEAN HANNITY

On his radio show and on Hannity & Colmes, Sean has repeatedly claimed that most of the available offshore oil is off-limits to Big Oil. I figured he was lying but I didn't get around to checking into the facts. Fortunately, Media Matters took the time:

As The Boston Globe noted in a June 20 article, "About 86 billion barrels of additional oil may lie offshore, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration," and then continued: "Of that amount, about 18 billion barrels are subject to the moratorium." Indeed, DOE's Energy Information Administration's 2007 Annual Energy Outlook stated that there were 18.17 billion barrels of "technically recoverable resources currently off limits in the lower 48 OCS." A similar report by the Federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) stated that "[t]he MMS estimates that the resources in OCS areas currently off limits to leasing and development total 18.9"