Congressional Democrats were quick to reject the push for lifting the drilling moratorium, saying oil companies already have 68 million acres offshore waters under lease that are not being developed.
I actually know something about this since I've worked in the oil industry a good portion of my working career. Not every area is suited to drill. There may be oil beneath it but alot of research is put into place to determine whether it's profitable to drill, the amount it would cost to drill at a certain location, logistics of getting the oil back to shore either through a pipeline or via ships, and most importantly whether it is safe to drill.

Oil companies have tons of researchers and geologists to figure all this out. I'm fairly certain that if it was profitable and safe for them to drill in this 68 million acres then they would probably have set up rigs by now.

Secondly, people.. particularly environmentalists need to understand that the switch to alternative energy is not going to happen over night and that we need SOMETHING to create a buffer until that transition occurs. This is something that is probably going to take a course of a couple of decades to transition to and honestly efforts probably should've began in the 1970's.

With people looking at hydrogen, salt water and other means such as harvesting of Helium-3 in hopes of being able to create cold fusion; we will get there eventually but it will take some time to replace all the oil driven equipment we have and update it to alternative fuel source technology.

Miracles work over time, not over night.