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It's not the eevull environmentalists that are keeping us from getting American oil, it's the fact that we've been very, very good at finding and exploiting oil resources. As a result, American oil production has been declining since 1970. Bringing Alaskan oil on-line in the early '80s only slowed the decline. Yes, there are some marginal fields that could yield a bit more oil, but for the most part, the major oil companies have moved offshore and, beyond, to other countries.
On top of that, most countries besides Saudi have had declining production since the 90's, if not earlier.
For what it's worth, I am in favor of developing our Atlantic continental shelf. (I'm against developing ANWR; the environmental cost is too high for the payoff.) But other countries fringing the Atlantic--Canada, Norway, Brazil, Nigeria, etc--have successfully extracted oil there. The geologic setting is similar all the way around the basin, and countries with high environmental standards and significant fisheries have managed to develop oil fields with minimal impact. As others have mentioned upthread, the transport of oil is more hazardous than offshore exploration and production. The real obstacle has been those pesky people living in the coastal states, on both sides of the political spectrum. Get them to go along with drilling!
But it's still not going to solve our basic energy dilemma, nor our greenhouse-gas problem. There's no excuse for not pursuing conservation throughout our economy. In many cases, that will require government incentives. Coal will continue to be exploited, yes, but we've been increasing our usage of that, too (doubling every ~30 years), so that "250 year supply" we had back in the 70's will probably be gone sometime in the mid-century. Renewables need to be developed further--this will require some real support for research. Nuclear power plants should be built, although I understand that right now the economics are against new-plant construction. But, by any measure, the short-lived fossil-fuel age is coming to an end, like it or not. I hope we can transition to whatever follows without destroying ourselves or our environment in the process.
Oh, and for the last time, Cheney's lying (surprise!): CHINA IS NOT DRILLING OFFSHORE CUBA. (Click the sig.) They're doing some landward seismic near Havana; that's about it.
