Sierra Club lands program director Athan Manuel told a House committee Wednesday that drilling has been unsuccessful in driving costs down.

"The disappointing part about some of the energy policies being promoted (is) that it calls for more drilling when drilling really is the problem. And all we've got to show for pretty aggressive (domestic) drilling for the last 35 years is, again, $4 for a gallon of gas," Manuel said, adding "since the first Arab oil shock in the 1970s, the U.S. has produced almost 90 billion barrels of oil since then, so we've tried drilling our way out of the problem and it just hasn't worked."

Now, just a few paragraphs above that blurb is this little nugget:

Most offshore oil production and exploration has been banned since a federal law passed in 1981.