Oil industry group’s ads target Obama on Gulf drilling in key battleground states

An oil industry group is launching TV and online ads Thursday in political battleground states that claim the Obama administration’s Gulf of Mexico drilling policies are hurting the economy nationwide.

The initial Consumer Energy Alliance TV ads are running for two weeks in Wisconsin and Colorado, states President Obama won in 2008 but which could be closely contested next year.

{mosads}The spots — available here — include a Colorado farmer and a Wisconsin truck driver discussing the impact of high fuel prices and calling for stepped-up drilling. Others show people from Gulf of Mexico businesses linked to the oil industry.

The Colorado farmer, for instance, notes that “when fuel costs go up, the first thing to cut is labor,” and warns of farms shutting down.

“When the farmer can’t produce it affordably any longer, we will have turned over not only our fuel supply to foreign nations, we will also have turned over our food production to foreign sources,” he says.

The Consumer Energy Alliance’s membership includes oil companies and trade groups, and businesses and associations representing a range of energy consuming sectors, such as the chemical, steel, trucking, airline and restaurant industries.

The ads are also running online through YouTube and other outlets in several states.

Energy industry groups, many Republicans and conservative Democrats have for months alleged the Obama administration is processing oil-and-gas drilling permits far too slowly.

The Obama administration imposed a moratorium on deepwater permitting shortly after the April 2010 BP spill began and has issued several rules to toughen offshore drilling and spill prevention requirements.

Deepwater permitting resumed early this year, but industry groups say Interior Department regulators should act faster on permit applications.

The Consumer Energy Alliance, in a news release on the ads, highlights a July report by the industry consulting firm IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates that alleged the pace of exploration plan and drilling permit approvals is slowing job growth and the economy.

The report concludes that speeding up federal drilling approvals to match the industry’s development capacity would add 230,000 jobs next year — a third of which would be outside the Gulf region — and boost GDP by $44 billion.

But the Interior Department’s top offshore drilling regulator, in a detailed early August letter to the study’s authors, called it “fundamentally” flawed and packed with errors and misleading conclusions.

Obama administration officials say they are committed to offshore drilling while noting it’s vital for regulators to ensure companies are meeting enhanced safety standards in the wake of the BP spill.

The White House-commissioned panel that probed the BP accident concluded in a major January report that the disaster laid bare “systemic” industry problems.

This post was updated at 1:52 p.m.