(Jesus Christ.  2 terms, people.  Anyway, where was I...)

So instead of looking to the current pres for guidance, let's look at the stances of the two politicians looking to replace him.  John McCain was long an opponent of offshore drilling, but has recently changed his stance to pro-drilling.  However, as you heard here first, McCain has recently been dried and hollowed out so that George Bush can crawl inside and control his actions like the alien in the first Men In Black movie.  So, we can't trust him.

Obama is anti-drilling, but, as a secret Muslim, he would obviously take that stance since increased oil production stateside would interfere with the operations of his Arab overlords.  Can't trust him, either.

No choice - we have to go to the numbers. (Note: if you don't actually want to see the numbers, just skip to the end.  Srs bizness!!)

Unless you are an oil company executive, your decision on a pro/anti drilling stance should be made on whether or not you think taking these actions will help bring down the price at the pump.  Let's break it down: the question of "should we drill offshore and in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR)" becomes "how much more oil will we get, how much will that bring down the cost of oil, and how much does the price of oil affect the price of gasoline?"

How much more oil will we get?

In the ANWR, about 10.5 billion barrels. Peak oil production would be 800,000-900,000 barrels a day... sometime after 2020.

Offshore, about 16 billion barrels would be opened up. Peak production would be on a similar scale and timeframe.

How much will that bring down the cost of oil?

I'm not an economist, and I don't feel like building a supply-demand curve to figure this out the right way.  So, I'm going to fudge a little bit.

The US currently consumes 20 million barrels of oil every day, give or take. Let's give the ANWR and offshore fields the benefit of the doubt, and say we'll get a total of 2 million barrels of oil every day, once they hit peak production - this will happen many years from now, but, again, I'm going to make this simple, so let's assume it happened right now, today.  Oil costs $140 per barrel.  If there was an extra 2 million barrels on the market, let's say this drops the price of oil by 10%. 

How much does the price of oil affect the price of gasoline?

Why, that is an excellent question.  Thank you for bringing it up!

To determine this, we will explore some historical prices.  Let's look at the national average price of both oil and gasoline today, 5 years ago, and 10 years ago. (Costs are per barrel/per gallon)

2008:  $140/$4.12
2003:  $28/$1.78
1998:  $12/$1.17

From 98-03, oil went up by a factor of 2.3, while gas prices went up by a factor of 1.5.  From 98-08, oil went up by a factor of 11.7, while gas only went up by a factor of 3.5. 

On other words: the price of oil goes up much faster than the price of gasoline.  Whaaa? That's right: there are other factors in the price of gasoline other than how much the oil costs.  A 10% reduction in oil cost does NOT translate into a 10% reduction in gasoline costs.  Refinery costs and capacity make up a very large part of the cost of a gallon of gasoline (that is why after Hurricane Katrina, gasoline prices spiked dramatically - refining capacity nationwide was hit hard by the storm, in addition to some black people.) 

From a typical barrel of oil, depending on the refining process used, you get 20 gallons of gasoline (the rest of the oil goes to make jet fuel, heating oil, and the salve Dick Cheney soaks in every night to stay alive).  At $140 per 42-gallon barrel, oil costs $3.33 per gallon.  Reducing the cost of oil by 10% would result in a per gallon of oil savings of about 33 cents per gallon.

Summary

If the ANWR and the Gulf Coast fields were at full capacity today, we'd save something like 30-40 cents on every gallon of gasoline.  Of course, full capacity won't be reached for 10 years at the earliest - who knows how high the price of gasoline will be by then.  30-40 cents will be a drop in the bucket against $6-7 per gallon. 

At $140 per barrel, though, there is money to be made.  Offshore drilling becomes profitable at about $60 per barrel.  With a profit of $80 per barrel, the oil in the Gulf alone is worth $1.2 trillion dollars.

Like I said, the choice of whether to drill is up to you.  Just know what you are getting out of it (30-40 cents off a gallon of gasoline), and what the cost might be.