Do You Think Drilling Offshore For Oil Would Help The Present Gas Crisis?

It mite  and i repeat mite . But in the long run we need to get off oil and on to a source that will never run out or that the big three can can abuse as they have oil by  charging over and above the cost to produce or should i say "reclaim" from the earth. As long as they can produce a claim to say that supply and demand have increased beyond their capacity to produce then they have the world over a barrel so to speak. Where they can charge what ever the market will pay which is rediculous as you say.

The very permission of offshore drilling will drive oil futures down. That will quickly trickle down to hedge prices and current barrel prices. Frankly, we owe it to the world to harvest our own oil.

No, it will not.  Even by the oil industry's own admission, it would take at least 20 years for the benefit of offshore oil to make any difference.  

And if we rely on offshore oil drilling, then we are not making any attempt at all to get away from oil as a fuel source, which is what we really need to be putting our time and effort into.