Whenever gas prices spike, calls mount to increase oil production in the United States. Then experts point out that this won't make a dent in gasoline prices. And politicians ignore them and keep calling for more oil drilling. Today President Obama at least partly went along with these calls by announcing plans to expand drilling in Alaska, and speed new exploration offshore.

There may be good reasons to increase oil production in the United States--such as increasing high paying jobs, increasing the revenues of oil companies, and reducing the U.S. trade imbalance—but driving down gas prices isn't one of them. Increasing drilling won't decrease gas prices much for several reasons. The increase would be a drop in the bucket of worldwide oil production; it will take many years before oil starts to flow from new wells; and if prices fall too low, OPEC can just drop production a little, causing oil prices to rise again. What's more, gas prices are also related to a factor that's separate from oil production: refinery output, which can be hurt by things like hurricanes and floods.

Some numbers: Opening the Arctic Wildlife National Reserve to drilling could lead to production levels that would constitute "between 0.4 to 1.2 percent of total world oil consumption by 2030" according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That could decrease oil prices by about one dollar, unless OPEC steps in, in which case it wouldn't do anything to oil prices at all. Drilling in the Outer Continental shelf could have a similarly small impact: by 2030, it could alter gas prices by three cents per gallon.

In a speech last week, President Obama announced a new outline of his administration's energy policy, a document called a "Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future." What's new about this latest foray into energy policy isn't the policy itself—which he said is essentially what he's been pursuing since he took office—but the packaging. Whereas he started out with a clear focus on climate change, the emphasis has shifted to decreasing dependence on imported oil and stabilizing gas prices.

In his speech, Obama announced a new goal: reducing oil imports by one-third. But there isn't much new in terms of policies to achieve that goal. There are no direct means of ensuring that this ambitious goal is met, such as a cap on oil imports or a tax on gasoline. What's in the blueprint is largely what's been a part of the policy all along: fuel economy standards, various government supports for biofuels, and support for alternative vehicles such as electric vehicles.

The other big goal in the blueprint is the clean energy standard that Obama announced in his state of the Union address. This also isn't new: it is essentially a substitute for the cap and trade policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions that Obama used to support, but that failed to become law. With a clean energy standard, the mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is requiring utilities to choose from a list of approved technologies for generating electricity.

The clean energy standard is now also a part of the primary focus of reducing oil consumption. It is presented as a way to enable electric vehicles by making electricity generation cleaner.

Will these policies work to reduce oil imports, stabilize gas prices (presumably at affordable levels), and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Will they even become law or official regulation? I'm working on a longer article to try to make an educated guess. My inclination is to be skeptical. The 1970s oil shocks led to regulations that required the fuel economy of new cars to double by 1985. In 1982, the U.S. imported 3.5 million barrels a day (.xls file). Now it imports more than twice that much: about nine million. The policy may have slowed growth in imports, but it certainly wasn't enough to decrease them.

Will increasing fuel economy standards, and other policies that have been tried before, such as supporting biofuels, work now? I'm curious what TR readers think.

The House of Representatives has proposed big cuts in energy R&D, and President Obama has proposed big increases. But no matter which plan prevails (and presumably there will be some sort of a compromise), R&D will remain a tiny sliver of the overall budget. Total non-defense R&D would amount to just 1.7 percent of the budget under the President's plan, and just 1.5 percent under the House plan (based on budget figures from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the White House.)

For a good look at where the big money actually goes, click on the visualization below, which will take you to an interactive that shows expenditures as a percent of GDP, going back several decades. (From this blog, via the NYTimes.)The data is lifted directly from government historical budget tables. Funding for research can be found under "Other Functions."