Liberal extremists reacted in anger to President Obama’s plan to open up offshore drilling for the first time in more than 20 years. The Center for Biological Diversity said the decision was tantamount to “sending Sarah Palin back to Alaska to personally club polar bear cubs to death.” The Sierra Club said flatly, “There’s no reason to drill our coasts.”

Their jeers should have been cheers, as this is a decision to restrict American energy.

The plan dictates that there will be no drilling in the Pacific Ocean, no drilling in the north Atlantic, no drilling in Bristol Bay, and no drilling in some of the most oil- and gas-rich areas of the eastern Gulf of Mexico. It also cancels existing leases in the Chukchi Sea, where scientists believe there could be more than 70 billion barrels of oil.

In the few areas that the President appears to be okay with offshore drilling, the Department of the Interior is going to conduct further tests and environmental reviews, which may lead them to the conclusion sometime in the future that offshore drilling will occur. In other words, there’s no drilling, they’re just going to think about it.

When Congress lifted the ban on offshore drilling in 2008, the entire Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) was opened for the first time in a quarter century. But when President Obama took office, his administration dragged its feet in developing a responsible program — in effect, re-imposing the OCS moratorium on the OCS.

Consider:

Within two weeks of being appointed by President Obama, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar delayed the existing offshore drilling program for an additional six months to get more feedback from the American people. Secretary Salazar promised an “open and transparent” process that would maximize the opportunity for taxpayers to “give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

Some 530,000 people commented on the plan, but Interior kept the information hidden from the public. It took an American Solutions’ Freedom of Information Act request to discover what most of us already suspected: The comments heavily favored offshore drilling — a two-to-one split, according one internal e-mail from Minerals Management Service Director Liz Birnbaum.

But the administration clearly didn’t like those results, so they just scrapped the plan. And with this newest announcement, the next phase of offshore drilling has been functionally delayed until at least 2012.

The American Energy Alliance estimates that offshore drilling could create more than 850,000 new jobs per year in coastal states and generate more than $2 trillion in new government revenue. President Obama’s decision, however, effectively kicks the can of economic recovery and energy independence down the road.

Unfortunately, the president made his announcement regarding offshore drilling on March 31st. Waiting one more day would have been more fitting.

– Steve Everley is manager of policy research at American Solutions.