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Offshore drilling ban unlikely to be reimposed
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by 72JAG | February 22, 2009 at 08:22 am
165 views | 4 Recommendations | 3 comments
Earlier this week, President Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar nudged the debate over offshore oil drilling forward by deciding to allow for further study of the energy potential of the country’s offshore oil and gas deposits before permitting any leases. The newly opened areas along the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) have been off-limits to energy developers for nearly 30 years; but late last year, both President Bush and the 110th Congress allowed the moratorium on OCS energy development to expire in an attempt to pave a possible path toward American energy independence.
More than 600 million acres were opened up to allow for natural gas and oil drilling (in some places, as close as three miles offshore). There is no way to know for sure exactly how much oil or gas is located in these offshore reserves, and estimates vary. The Department of the Interior puts their estimate around 18 billion barrels. Seeing how the world uses 86 million barrels per day, and the U.S. alone uses 20 million barrels per day, critics argue that opening up the OCS for oil and gas development will only harm our coastal waters and not actually help our country in the long run. Without conservation efforts, the 18 billion gallons will be gone in 3-5 years. Oil and gas development simply doesn’t add up to energy independence.
Instead of simply opening up these areas for oil and gas development, Salazar proposes using OCS waters to develop renewable energy, using wave power and wind. President Bush’s haste to ram the passive expiration of the moratorium through Congress completely neglected the renewable energy angle and concentrated solely on benefits for oil and gas developers. The new Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, promised to place emphasis on clean energy in the study he proposed. As part of President Obama’s comprehensive energy plan that seems to be taking shape, expanding offshore drilling as a way of developing American energy independence and sustainability simply does not seem plausible without the addition of offshore wind and wave power generation.
The moratorium that was...
Full article at:
http://www.examiner.com/x-2903-Energy-Examiner
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 11:11 on February 22nd, 2009
I am happy that the moratorium will be over. Creating our own energy supply will help balance of payments and keep us afloat financially in a world that is undergoing a death spiral in terms of finance and economics.
Any problems of civil disorder in Venezuela or Nigeria in the near future, a highly likely scenario, will cause oil to rise quickly, leading to inflation and recession, the return of stag-flation.
Off-shore drilling is our only immediate counter-balance to all of that.
I will be happier when the switch to renewables has happened, but, when I worked in the energy saving business in the 1980s, I learned a few things.
One of them was the irony that people were less likely to want to be bothered with energy saving when energy was cheap. They didn't go for the programs, even though the programs would have made them money, because of the emotional burden of taking on the management of the process.
More were willing to get into energy saving when the cost of energy was higher, but there was less money available to do such programs because of the high cost of energy.
We need to tax imported oil to favor our own production and to make money available to subsidize investment in renewables and efficiency.
at 11:15 on February 22nd, 2009
The radical faction of the environmental movement objects to the use of wind and wave energy.
Oregon has been trying for years to get the wave generator program going on the coast.
If you want progress, you have to be allowed to put in those wind generators and wave generators and accept the idea that the small amount of environmental damage that is caused in the immediate vicinity is offset by the tremendous overall improvement in the environment.
But radical environmentalists have been successful in stopping these projects.
Your image of the ironworks of a drilling platform is a statement regarding the motivation of those who propose off-shore drilling.
It should be clear that there are many good reasons to drill off-shore, but the real mystery is why the radical groups, who do not stand to make any money, continue to object very successfully to the implementation of programs that would help the environment.
Money is obviously not the root of the evil here. I would challenge those who propose alternatives to explain what exactly the root of radical and nihilistic "environmentalism" was and how to defeat it.
at 09:59 on February 24th, 2009
Hi Roy,
I was looking up nihilism to try to get some ideas to your question about "what exactly the root of radical and nihilistic environmentalism is and how to defeat it."
The term 'nihilism' is sometimes used to denote the general mood of despair at the pointlessness of existence that one has when they realize there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws. I think the terms you might be searching for are the different shades of green that environmentalists assume. Through posting regularly on the internet about energy, the environment, and climate change, I have come to realize that some people are very fearful of the future and some people deny their actions can affect the planet. I believe the nihilistic environmentalists are probably a combination of Dark Greens who want to see a fundamental change in the way that industrial capitalism works and those of us who are regularly inundated with dire warnings from the likes of Gore, Hanson, NASA, IPCC, and other professionals in the science community; I can imagine that they feel as though business and politics will never change in time in order to avert catastrophic changes on this planet and the ultimate destruction of society as we know it. I am not saying that I subscribe to this kind of thinking, but I can understand it.
Environmentalists that are opposed to wind and solar, geothermal and biofuels, hydro and wave power, electric cars and offshore drilling are concerned that the improvements in efficiencies will only lead to more consumption of our resources (check out Jevons Paradox). In a time when we need to be consuming less resources, I believe nihilistic environmentalists may be feeling despair because even a move toward renewable energy and energy efficiency is going to require a major build-out phase that will consume countless resources we don't have and further pollute ecosystems already in distress.
Thank you for reading and commenting.