Bonnie Erbe

Oil Spill Undermines Obama's Risky Offshore Drilling Policy

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April 30, 2010 RSS Feed Print
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By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

A couple of weeks ago I posted here that the Vatican's most vocal enemy could not possibly have done a better job of discrediting the Catholic Church than the Pope himself, who is acting as if it's still the Middle Ages and there is no such thing as the priest pedophilia scandal.

Well now the same can be said of BP and offshore oil rigs. The timing of BP's environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig couldn't be better to bolster the validity of claims by environmentalists that offshore drilling is a calamity waiting to happen. Is this example worth the environmental damage is it doing and will continue to do for some time? Of course not! But it already has made a dent in the process of approving future offshore drilling for oil. According to the Washington Post:

Obama's announcement last month (now put on hold) that he planned to allow oil exploration and drilling along vast new offshore areas began a long process that requires public input, permitting and other steps.

But the huge plume of oil floating toward the shoreline--and the prospect of images of wildlife covered with crude--have made it crucial for the White House to show it is not rushing forward. The spill started washing ashore in Louisiana late Thursday, and is threatening the environmentally sensitive coastlines of five different states.

 

 

Tags:
Gulf of Mexico,
Louisiana,
oil,
Barack Obama

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Has it been determined what caused the explosion? It would seem an oil platform would be a "soft target" for terrorist attacks. Would seem easy to attack and would produce tremendous damage to our economy and ecology both at the site, and to our national security with regard to our dependence on oil. If another platform, or the Alaska pipeline for that matter,were attacked it would make me feel a lot like I did on 9/11. I hope our government is considering this possibility.

Dick Jones of SC 1:26PM May 04, 2010

and found that more than 200 ships (dozens of oil tankers) were sunk by German submarines off Florida and in the Gulf between 1941 and 1945. Millions of barrels of crude oil, fuel oil, aviation fuel - not to mention the thousands of tons of depth charges and torpedoes the were exploded in near-shore waters. Many of these ships were sunk by U-boats in sight of the shore.

I found a few pics of bodies of sailors washing around in the oily surf or being plucked from the massive slicks drifting offshore. Didn't see any of people in rubber suit wiping the oil off birds.

I read a few news articles about the tragic loss of our brave sailors and Merchant Marine crews who died - many within sight of our shores.

What I didn't find was any mention of; "eco-disaster" , environmental cataclysm, massive coastal clean up, floating booms, oyster beds threatened, endangered mangrove swamps, fleets of ships (or even one small boat) trying to stop the spread of the oil, endangered species or "unprecedented environmental tragedy".

No....the only "tragedy" mentioned were the bodies awash in the oily, surf and the prospect of years of bloody sacrifice to come.

11 crewmen were killed on the rig - not much ink spilled over them - much more on birds, mangroves and oysters.... The times have certainly changed - Welcome to our new, brave, Green World.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 12:38PM May 03, 2010

Bacteria will breakdown the oil - as they have for millions of years. The worst part of the whole affair will be the 24/7 coverage of hordes of volunteers trying to clean the oil off our stricken feathered friends. Instead of watching - I think I will bring to mind, and pray for, the hundreds of thousands of children who lay dying in "death warehouses" because of Rachel Carson's lies about DDT - children sacrificed on the pantheist altar of Environmentalism.

Here are some petro factoids that might offer some perspective - at least to non-dogmatic Environmentalists.

‘’Natural seepage of crude oil from the sea floor into the marine environment of North America exceed 47 million gallons and 180 million gallons globally.

“Activities associated with extraction and production introduce an average of 880 thousand gallons in North American waters and 11 million gallons worldwide.”

Source, “Oil in the Sea III” Committee on Oil in the Sea - National Research Council.

“Natural seeps from the earth’s undersea strata introduce about 1700 barrels of oil a day in U.S. marine waters, which is approximately 150 times the amount from offshore oil and gas activities.”

Source, “National Academy of Sciences 2003-2004.

“Natural seepage introduces 160 kilotons into North American Waters annually. Total from exploration, extraction, transportation and refining is approximately 12 kilotons.”

Source, “U.S. Dept. of the Interior - Minerals Management Service 2004.

“Activities associated with exploration and production account for 3 - 5% of all releases due to anthropogenic activity.”

Source, “Committee on Oil in the Sea: Inputs and Effects - National Research Council - National Academy of Science 2003”

Here are some more fun factoids.

1. More oil was spilled into the sea from shipping losses every 6 weeks of W.W.II than in the entire 65 years since the war’s end. The oceans survived.

2. The “hopane marker” of petro -chemical pollution in the sea reached it’s maximum in 1946 and has been in decline ever since.

3. In 1792-6, George Vancouver, Captain Cooke’s famous navigator made notes in his log regarding numerous, vast oil slicks off the Pacific Coast of North America. Around the middle of the 16th century Juan Cabrillo sailed through oil slicks that stretched for many miles along the California coast. Mountains of tar glistened along the shore line.

4. Over the past 20,000 years sea levels have risen more than 300 feet and the erosion caused by rising levels has increased “natural seepage.”

5.University of Ca. Santa Barbara researchers (Hardly a neo-con group) find that off shore drilling reduces natural seepage of crude oil by more than 50%.

6. 20-30 tons of oil leak from southern California fissures every day!.

7. More than 70% of anthropogenic petro/chem pollution in the sea comes from storm drains - urban run off from; parking lots, roads, asphalt roofs and millions of miles of emulsifying asphalt roads around the world.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 12:00AM May 02, 2010

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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