US President George W. Bush and Republican presidential nominee John McCain have both called for Congress to lift laws that banning oil drilling of the coast of the US.

In a recent speech, Bush also pushed other expansions of petroleum infrastructure including drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, building more oil refineries and mining for oil shale in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

With oil prices at record highs, extracting oil from shale or drilling in deeper water has become economically profitable.