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The high price of gas has apparently convinced a majority of people that drilling for oil here at home and off the coast of Florida isn’t such a bad idea after all. As Mike Vasilinda tells us only 20 percent of those surveyed say it should never be considered.

This rollerblader, these college students, and this retiree all believe that oil drilling can be done safely and closer to home.

“I even bought myself a little car, traded in my gas-guzzler,” state employee John Mirallas said.

“I like the idea of, hey, developing our natural resources,” J.V Noriega, a student, said.

“It’s time that we wake up and do something to help ourselves more than we’ve been doing,” retiree Barbara Agee said.

And with each uptick of the price of here at the pump, there is a growing voice of people who believe that paying people for oil who don’t like us is a bad idea.

Florida’s oil industry says it has gas deposits as close as 50 miles from the panhandle cost and can’t get to them. The current buffer is 125 miles. The industry says it must be allowed to drill closer and it must be allowed to explore.

“The seismic imaging is getting ancient now, 30 or 40 years old. It’s like a first generation computer,” Dave Mica with the Florida Petroleum Council said.

But U-S Senator Bill Nelson says web sites like this one are a ploy to gen up support for off shore oil drilling.

“What we ought to do is keep our eye on the target,” Nelson said.

The target says Nelson, is renewables.

“Start weaning ourselves off dependence on oil. We can do that with plugged in hybrids, making ethanol from things we don’t eat,” Nelson said.

But with each price increase at the pump, opposition to drilling at home is decreasing.

Nelson also contends that oil speculators…not a lack of oil are driving up prices. He hopes to hold hearings in Washington this week to look at how speculators are affecting the price of oil.