Ah, but significant to whom? Perhaps the company with access to that oil, but that is what the motivation here is (beyond the political pandering).

Note the relative amounts of "undiscovered" oil and gas which will be "unleashed" by removing restrictions:

And, as reported by Grist

Amy Myers Jaffe, energy studies fellow at the James Baker Institute for Public Policy of Rice University, testified that the country needs to diversify its fuel sources, noting that in the '70s, the United States stopped relying on oil for electricity and home heating. The same needs to be done for automobiles, she said, which use the bulk of the oil consumed in the country today. And in order to diversify, companies are going to have to invest in research and development, she said, citing a report that found that the five largest oil companies spend very little on R&D each year -- less than half of what General Motors or Microsoft does, she said.

Myers Jaffe also rebutted the folks who are lobbying for the government to allow oil and gas drilling in new offshore areas and places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, noting that oil companies aren't spending money on exploration in the places they're already allowed to drill.