http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/31/critics-claim-offshore-drilling-plan-half-step-energy-independence/

Special thanks to Richard Charter
Fox News

Updated March 31, 2010
Critics Claim Offshore Drilling Plan a Half-Step Toward Energy Independence

President Obama’s decision to open up the nation’s shores to new oil drilling drew complaints from both sides of the aisle Wednesday, as environmentalists and congressional Republicans alike claimed the move would do little for America’s energy independence.

President Obama’s decision to open up the nation’s shores to new oil drilling drew complaints from both sides of the aisle Wednesday, as environmentalists and congressional Republicans alike claimed the move would do little for America’s energy independence.

The president, in announcing the plan to allow drilling off the Eastern seaboard and potentially the western coast of Florida, said he anticipated the pushback. Yet, on the heels of a health care reform victory that cleared the way for work on other domestic challenges, the president defended his proposal, saying that “homegrown fuels” are needed to move away from foreign oil and help “transition” to more clean-energy sources.

The announcement appeared in part to be a bid for GOP support — but Republicans swiftly panned the policy change as a weak, half-hearted attempt at domestic oil exploration. Obama lifted a 20-year moratorium on exploration and drilling on the Atlantic seaboard from the northern tip of Delaware down to central Florida and approved it for a new section of the Gulf of Mexico and the Cook Inlet in Alaska. But exploration is expected to last years, and no lease sales will be held before 2012. It may take up to a decade to move oil and natural gas to marketplace.

In addition, no exploration or drilling would be permitted along the entire West Coast, even though Congress green-lighted it in 2008.

“The Obama administration continues to defy the will of the American people, who strongly supported the bipartisan decision of Congress in 2008 to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling not just off the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, but off the Pacific Coast and Alaskan shores as well,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said in a written statement.

 “Keeping the Pacific Coast and Alaska, as well as the most promising resources off the Gulf of Mexico, under lock and key makes no sense at a time when gasoline prices are rising and Americans are asking ‘Where are the jobs?'”

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., called the plan a “smokescreen” that would delay new exploration until at least 2012 and include a “fraction” of the resources in the Bush administration’s plan.

“Unfortunately, this is yet another feeble attempt to gain votes for the president’s national energy tax bill that is languishing in the Senate,” he said, in reference to the climate change legislation Democrats have been trying to pass.

The plan would open up drilling 50 miles off Virginia’s coast — and the state could see drilling leases sooner than 2012 for verified reserves. In addition, the Interior Department has prepared a plan to add drilling platforms in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, 125 miles off the coast of Florida, if Congress allows a moratorium to expire.

But the proposed leases in Alaska’s Bristol Bay will be canceled. And the Interior Department also planned to reverse last year’s decision to open up parts of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Instead, scientists will study the sites to see if they’re suitable for future leases.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the overall plan a step in the right direction, “but a small one that leaves enormous amounts of American energy off limits.”    But while Republicans said Obama wasn’t going far enough, Democrats and environmentalists claimed he was going too far — and wouldn’t shake the country’s dependence on foreign oil in the slightest.

“We cannot achieve meaningful energy independence through our own oil reserves,” Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., said, noting the country’s oil reserves pale in comparison to how much Americans consume.

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune also said “drilling our coasts will (do) nothing to lower gas prices or create energy independence.”

And Phil Radford, director of Greenpeace, called the announcement a “betrayal” of the people who voted for Obama.

Obama will offer environmentalists something they like, though, on Thursday when the administration cements sweeping emissions and fuel economy standards that will impact U.S. auto manufacturers.    The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation on Thursday are expected to sign the final rule establishing emissions and fuel economy standards for the U.S. auto fleet. Those standards call for new vehicles to average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. It will cover model years 2012 through 2016, and is estimated to cost up to $1,300 per vehicle.

Fox News’ Major Garrett and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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http://thebristolbaytimes.com/article/1013bristol_bay_drilling_gets_a_reprieve

BRISTOL BAY TIMES

Bristol Bay fishermen and members of local Native corporations reacted with gratitude and relief after today’s announcement that the Obama administration decided to halt plans for offshore drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and southeast Bering Sea.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that, as part of a comprehensive strategy for strengthening the nation’s energy security and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, the Obama administration will expand oil and gas development and exploration on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, while protecting fisheries, tourism, and places off U.S. coasts that are not appropriate for development, a press release said.

“In our quest to secure our energy future, we must not lose the places and values that set our nation apart,” said Salazar. “Bristol Bay is a national treasure that we must protect for future generations.”

The reprieve from drilling in Bristol Bay is part of a broader decision by Salazar on the current and proposed Five-Year Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas leasing programs and includes drilling in other areas of the nation.

“When Secretary Salazar visited Bristol Bay this past April, community leaders and residents voiced overwhelming opposition to drilling in waters critical to our subsistence way of life and our fisheries-based economy. We are thankful and grateful he took to heart the message that this is truly a place that’s not appropriate for oil drilling,” said Verner Wilson, acting executive director of Nunamta Aulukestai, an association of eight Bristol Bay Native Village corporations.

The administration reinstated the presidential withdrawal for Bristol Bay from offshore drilling until 2017. It had been in place under former administrations and was removed under President George W. Bush in 2007. The decision will cancel a planned 2011 lease sale in the region (known as North Aleutian Basin Sale 214) that would have put 5.6 million acres of rich Alaskan waters – including vital habitat and fishing grounds for some of the world’s most sustainable and lucrative fisheries – at risk, said a press release from Alaska Marine Conservation Council.

Bobby Andrew, a Bristol Bay village elder also with Nunamta Aulukestai, had a view farther than 2017.

“The people of Bristol Bay are thankful for the decision by Secretary Salazar but our message to Congress and the President is that we need permanent, permanent, permanent protection so this threat to our way of life is curtailed not only for the current generation, but also for future generations.”

David Harsila, president of the Alaska Independent Fishermen’s Marketing Association also called for permanent protection.

“Bristol Bay’s salmon resource is like no other on Earth and provides thousands of jobs to fishermen across Alaska and the west coast. Our organization and hundreds of member fishermen are thrilled with this decision, but want to see something permanent so we don’t have to fight this battle again,” stated Harsila.

The administration’s strategy does support exploratory drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in the Arctic Ocean, exploration in much of the Atlantic Ocean OCS, some of the Florida coast and expanded development and production in the Gulf of Mexico. For more information visit the Department of Interior Web site, www.doi.gov.

 BAYTIMES STAFF can be reached at editor@alaskanewspapers.com, or by phone at 907-348-2438
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http://www.dailyastorian.info/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=398&ArticleID=69122

Daily Astorian
Oregon

Recharging debate, Obama expands offshore drilling – but not on West Coast

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – Shaking up years of energy policy and his own environmental backers, President Barack Obama threw open a huge swath of East Coast waters and other protected areas in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska to drilling Wednesday, widening the politically explosive hunt for more homegrown oil and gas.

Obama’s move allows drilling from Delaware to central Florida, plus the northern waters of Alaska, and exploration could begin 50 miles off the coast of Virginia by 2012. He also wants Congress to lift a drilling ban in the oil-rich eastern Gulf of Mexico, 125 miles from Florida beaches.

Still off limits: the entire Pacific seaboard, an action that drew praise from Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski. And in a nod to conservation, Obama canceled oil exploration in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, deeming the area a national treasure.

For this oil-dependent nation, the decision could start to reshape far-reaching economic and national security policies, affecting where the U.S. gets the fuel for its cars, heating and energy-gulping industry.

For a president on a roll following a big health care win, Wednesday’s drilling declaration was both aggressive and pragmatic. Even with a push for cleaner energy sources and efficient cars – and with promises of protection for ecosystems and coastal tourism – the nation still needs more oil, Obama said.

“The answer is not drilling everywhere all the time,” Obama said in an event at Andrews Air Force Base. “But the answer is not, also, for us to ignore the fact that we are going to need vital energy sources to maintain our economic growth and our security.”

Inside politically conscious Washington, Obama’s announcement was viewed, too, as a play to win Republican support for a comprehensive climate change bill. Obama needs GOP help to move legislation through the Senate that would limit carbon emissions, a key priority, and his decision on drilling drew at least a bit of Republican applause.

Republican George W. Bush pushed for years to expand offshore drilling. He and Congress lifted bans on some drilling in 2008, when gasoline prices hit record levels. But Obama’s plan is narrower than Bush’s, which also would have opened up oil and gas leasing areas off California and in the North Atlantic.

Obama got a predictable pummeling Wednesday from environmentalists, who sarcastically compared him to Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate whose oil-promoting speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008 famously drew chants of “Drill, Baby, Drill!”

Any big changes to environmental policy – particularly oil drilling – tend to touch off the bitter debate that Obama says he wants the country to end.    His support for exploratory drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska, for example, drew outrage from the Center for Biological Diversity as a threat to polar bears. “Short of sending Sarah Palin back to Alaska to personally club polar bears to death, the Obama administration could not have come up with a more efficient extinction plan for the polar bear,” said Brendan Cummings, the center’s senior counsel.

More broadly, the conservation group Oceana declared Obama was “unleashing a wholesale assault on the oceans.”   Obama has been a supporter of drilling as part of a broader energy agenda, and the White House played down any talk of wooing Republicans.

But it is clear the president wants to show the opposition party that he is willing to come toward them with hopes the GOP will do the same in return. He has already done so on nuclear energy. However, winning a broad climate and energy bill remains an enormous lift for Obama in this election year.

“He could certainly point to this: ‘Look, I’ve moved away from where we were even a year ago, so let’s work something out,”‘ said Guy Caruso, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Department of Energy administrator. “Whether it’s enough? I doubt it. But it’s a step.”

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, offered just that kind of response but also questioned whether Obama’s government will actually follow through and open areas for oil production. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a key negotiator with the White House on the energy bill, said he listened to Obama with “great interest.”

As for the fallout from environmental activists, White House spokesman Bill Burton said, “None of this should have been a surprise to anybody. We’ve been talking about all these different elements for a very long time and the president is following through on promises.”

While the first lease sale for an area 50 miles off the Virginia coast could come as early as 2012, development in other areas of the South Atlantic would still be years away, according to the Interior Department’s leasing plans released Wednesday. The department said it plans seismic studies, environmental reviews and public meetings in the regions involved to determine if leases should be offered in those areas between 2012 and 2017.

Obama’s plan to open more of the eastern Gulf of Mexico would require Congress to lift a drilling moratorium it imposed several years ago. An energy bill before the Senate would open an even wider area of the eastern Gulf than Obama is proposing, allowing drilling within 45 miles of some of Florida’s coast.

Access to oil and gas in South Atlantic waters also would probably meet stiff resistance from the coastal states unless Congress first enacts a plan to share the billions of dollars in potential revenue from lease sales and oil and gas development. And that’s not easy.

Lawmakers from coastal states that would benefit have been pushing for that, but some other senators argue that proceeds from oil and gas resources in federal waters should go to the U.S. Treasury.

Obama is trying to push several levers at once.  As part of his oil announcement, Obama said his government would release new requirements Thursday requiring automakers to build more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. The standards include first-ever rules on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions, which have been blamed for global warming.   For a bit of imagery, Obama stood in front of a Navy F-18 fighter scheduled to fly on Earth Day with a half-biomass fuel mix.   He implored people to accept a middle ground between viewing drilling as a cure-all or claiming it has no place in an energy portfolio.    Said the president: “This issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles.”

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 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h1sB0OGKHXVLuRKN0Hg2uLY6mGiQD9EPMGL04
Obama backs oil drilling along Atlantic seaboard
By PHILIP ELLIOTT (AP) – 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says he’s expanding offshore oil drilling along the Atlantic coast, arguing that America must break its dependency on foreign oil and rely more on “homegrown fuels and clean energy.”

Obama chose Andrews air base on the outskirts of Washington for his announcement, telling a military audience “this is not a decision that I’ve made lightly.”

The move reverses longstanding government policy. Obama is allowing drilling along a large portion of Virginia’s shoreline and is considering it for a large chunk of the Atlantic seaboard. He said “there will be those who strongly disagree,” but pledged that it will be done “in ways that balance the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect Americas’s natural resources.”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) – In a reversal of a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, President Barack Obama is allowing oil drilling off Virginia’s shorelines and considering it for a large chunk of the Atlantic seaboard. At the same time, he’s rejecting some new drilling sites that had been planned in Alaska.

Obama’s plan offers few concessions to environmentalists, who have been strident in their opposition to more oil platforms off the nation’s shores. Hinted at for months, the plan modifies a ban that for more than 20 years has limited drilling along coastal areas other than the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama was set to announce the new drilling policy Wednesday at Andrews air base in Maryland. White House officials pitched the changes as ways to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and create jobs – both politically popular ideas – but the president’s decisions also could help secure support for a climate change bill languishing in Congress.

The president, joined by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, also was set to announce that proposed leases in Alaska’s Bristol Bay would be canceled. The Interior Department also planned to reverse last year’s decision to open up parts of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Instead, scientists would study the sites to see if they’re suitable to future leases.

Obama’s blueprint would allow Interior to go ahead with oil and gas leases on tracts 50 miles off the coast of Virginia. Those leases had been approved for development but were held up by a court challenge and a departmental review.

In addition, an administration official said Obama would allow exploration along the south Atlantic and mid Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf “to support energy planning” – a step toward potential leasing. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of Obama’s announcement.

Obama is allowing an expansion in Alaska’s Cook Inlet to go forward. The plan also would leave in place the moratorium on drilling off the West Coast.

In addition, the Interior Department has prepared a plan to add drilling platforms in the eastern Gulf of Mexico if Congress allows that moratorium to expire. Lawmakers in 2008 allowed a similar moratorium to expire; at the time President George W. Bush lifted the ban, which opened the door to Obama’s change in policy.

Under Obama’s plan, drilling could take place 125 miles from Florida’s Gulf coastline if lawmakers allow the moratorium to expire. Drilling already takes place in western and central areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

The president’s team has been busy on energy policy and Obama talked about it in his State of the Union address. During that speech, he said he wanted the United States to build a new generation of nuclear power plans and invest in biofuel and coal technologies.

“It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” he warned.

Obama also urged Congress to complete work on a climate change and energy bill, which has remained elusive. The president met with lawmakers earlier this month at the White House about a bill cutting emissions of pollution-causing greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020. The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.

White House officials hope Wednesday’s announcement will attract support from Republicans, who adopted a chant of “Drill, baby, drill” during 2008’s presidential campaign.

The president’s Wednesday remarks would be paired with other energy proposals that were more likely to find praise from environmental groups. The White House planned to announce it had ordered 5,000 hybrid vehicles for the government fleet. And on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department are to sign a final rule that requires increased fuel efficiency standards for new cars.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-offshore-disaster-lessons,0,4136178.story
Orlando Sentinel
Could oil-spill disaster happen in Florida? Aussie rig debacle offers lessons

As the nation’s top regulator of offshore drilling, Elmer “Bud” Danenberger was nearing retirement last year when he began to get word of a major rig accident halfway around the world.

An Australian oil well blew out at dawn Aug. 21, gushing yellow-green crude into the Timor Sea along the country’s northern coast. And it wasn’t letting up.

Though 10,000 miles away, the spill would quickly play into Florida’s emotional debate over whether drilling rigs similar to the fated one down under should be permitted within sight of the Sunshine State’s sugar-sand beaches.

And for good reason: The Aussie debacle lasted more than 10 weeks, spewing millions of gallons of oil into the ocean. As a result, it is giving Floridians a raw and apt look at the scenario they fear most about offshore drilling, thanks in part to an Australian investigation providing an astonishingly detailed chronology of the disaster.

Florida environmental advocates crowed, “I told you so,” about the risks of drilling even with the newest rigs available. U.S. petroleum interests, wanting to avoid a black eye for a spill in foreign waters, shot back that the accident was the result of inferior standards and regulations and could not happen in the Gulf of Mexico.

Florida lawmakers were warned two weeks ago, by the author of a Florida think tank’s drilling report, that the Australian “rig that was being used appears to be within the class of technologies of the rigs that are being considered for Florida waters.”

Last summer, Danenberger grew ever angrier as phone calls and e-mails poured into his Reston, Va., office, about the worsening environmental crisis off the Australian coast. To him and many others, what happened in the Montara offshore oil field was a failure that shook the industry worldwide.

He and others suspect that operations on the rig, named West Atlas, departed from basic international guidelines and that the blowout resulted from a series of bad and avoidable human decisions — the bane of many complex industrial systems that operate correctly only with a multitude of overlapping safeguards.

A rig worker in his youth, Danenberger had sought for 38 years to eliminate drilling catastrophes in U.S. waters. But when he left his job in January as chief of offshore regulatory programs for the U.S. Minerals Management Service, he knew that the human error involved in the West Atlas accident remains a challenge along any coastline.

“I think people are doing everything they can to prevent that,” Danenberger said. “However, nobody can rule out this type of horrible incident.”

Drill-ban repeal near

Before it adjourns its regular session at the end of April, the Florida Legislature is likely to consider, in the face of furious opposition, repealing a ban on drilling in the 10.36-mile-wide strip of state-controlled waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

April is also when the Montara Commission of Inquiry is to issue its findings in what could turn out to be Australia’s worst offshore-oil spill.

Drilling of the doomed “H1” well began in January 2009, when the then-2-year-old West Atlas rig, owned by a Norwegian company, set up shop in 260 feet of water about 400 miles west of Darwin, capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory.

By last May, the “jackup” machine — distinguished by the three massive legs it stands on while drilling — was floated away to a new job elsewhere. It left behind a partly completed H1, which had penetrated a high-pressure reservoir of oil and natural gas.

At that point, Danenberger is all but certain, pivotal errors already had been made.

Before the West Atlas jackup departed, its crew had followed the standard procedure of pumping a large slug of concrete to the bottom of the well pipe to prevent escape of natural gas and oil. Several aspects of the “cementing job” most likely were botched, according to testimony in the Montara inquiry.

That doesn’t surprise Danenberger, who considers well cementing as much art as science — and in need of better standards, even in the U.S.

“Cementing problems are a leading cause of well-control incidents,” he said in his submission to the Australian inquiry, which included several case studies from the Gulf of Mexico.

Then another blunder occurred: A redundant plug should have been inserted deep into the well, according to U.S. and international drilling standards, consisting of another slug of concrete or a powerful mechanical device.

The standards followed by the oil company drilling the well — Thailand-based PTTEP Australasia — called for such a secondary plug. But the company decided at the last minute — with hastily given government permission — to use a pair of screw-on caps at the top of the well instead.

That was inexcusable, according to Danenberger and U.S. drilling engineers, because such devices are best used to prevent corrosion, and not as barriers to control a half-finished well.

“The well design is not one that we would have approved,” a top Minerals Management Service official told Congress late last year.

To make matter worse, the crew on the West Atlas jackup somehow neglected to install one of the two caps.

Crisis, then disaster

When the West Atlas crew returned to the H1 well Aug. 19 to complete its plumbing chores, rig workers discovered the missing cap. The screw threads where it should have been attached were badly corroded, but to clean those threads and finish their work on the well, the workers had to remove the second cap.

From there, an emergency began to unfold.

At 5:36 a.m. Aug. 21, H1 burped up as much as 2,500 gallons of oil — a dangerous occurrence with any oil well — so West Atlas’ 69-member crew prepared to abandon the rig. But then the flow subsided to “bubbles” in the well pipe, so the crew instead scrambled to insert a mechanical plug — until, at 7:23 a.m., a fountain of oil and natural gas enveloped West Atlas.

Crew members shut off the rig’s lights and motors, to prevent them from igniting the flammable spray, and escaped in three lifeboats.

The rig’s misfortune continued as efforts were made to choke off an oil flow that might have exceeded 80,000 gallons a day. Well-control experts were barred from boarding West Atlas because of the danger of fire, so the only option was the time-consuming task of drilling a second well, at an angle, to pierce the side of H1’s pipe — a kind of oil-patch Hail Mary.

A second rig went to work 1.2 miles away but failed in four attempts to hit the 10-inch-diameter H1 well pipe at a point more than 8,000 feet underground. It punctured H1 on the fifth try, and workers had begun pumping heavy fluid into the runaway well — when an unexplained ignition engulfed West Atlas in an enormous blaze.

The blowout and fire were not extinguished until Nov. 3; by then the pipe had spilled, according to some of the widely varying estimates, about half as much oil as the 11 million gallons that gushed from the stricken Exxon Valdez tanker off Alaska in 1989.

Many species in area

Australia’s beaches were spared damage thanks to currents that pushed the well’s many separate oil slicks out across the Timor Sea. But the spill contaminated a marine wilderness that includes coral and sponge reefs; a rich variety of dolphins, sea snakes, fish and birds; as well as one of the world’s largest populations of humpback whales.

SkyTruth, a nonprofit organization in West Virginia that analyzes satellite images to document oil spills, measured the spread of H1 crude at 22,000 square miles — an area 55 times larger than Tampa Bay.

“These big runaway incidents are thankfully very rare,” SkyTruth President John Amos said, “but they always catch people by surprise, and the exact chain of events that causes them are always unique.”

Human error?

With the West Atlas jackup, the chain of events wasn’t triggered by a failure of advanced technology or an act of nature, such as the hurricanes that devastated Gulf of Mexico rigs in 2004 and 2005. Instead, the Australian inquiry is zeroing in on human error.

During testimony 10 days ago, an Australian government lawyer asked the senior oil-company supervisor on West Atlas about the botched cementing job.

“You were operating at very outer reaches of your knowledge and experience?” the lawyer asked.

“I wasn’t out of my depth,” the supervisor said. “I just made the mistakes.”

Danenberger said drilling rigs have multiple safeguards, so it often takes more than a single mistake to cause injuries or a spill.

“Bad companies can be lucky and never have a thing go wrong, because it usually takes a series of screw-ups that lead to a disaster,” he said. “So you get away with it.”

“Everybody who works in the industry should study the big disasters,” he added: ” Santa Barbara, Bay Marchand, Main Pass 41, Piper Alpha, Alexander Kielland, Montara, Ocean Ranger.”

Those are among the world’s worst offshore-rig accidents, accounting for spectacular explosions, hundreds dead, environments wrecked and, subsequently, more stringent standards.

“We need to study those things all the time,” Danenberger said. “I don’t know that that’s being done.”
Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5062. 
Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/mar/24/mark-strain-mark—oil-and-tourism-not-good-mix/

Naples News

On The Mark – Oil and tourism: Not a good mix
By MARK STRAIN
Posted March 24, 2010 at 5:18 p.m.

It is surprising how quickly some Floridians are willing to reduce their standards if there’s money involved. It was easy during the boom years to initiate costly government programs, yet when the easy money is gone, instead of cutting not-so-necessary programs the first thing some elected officials do is support sources of revenue they may never have considered in the past. The most recent is offshore oil drilling.

There is a wide range of estimated revenues that could be realized by Florida from offshore oil royalties in addition to the benefit of the thousands of new jobs that would be created. But oil derricks moving into areas close to our shorelines can also have a negative impact on another industry that brings in a lot of revenue and provides a lot of jobs: tourism. Tourism figures are not estimated, they are real and well documented. Yet we are seriously considering jeopardizing not only that industry, but our fragile ecology as well in exchange for some quick money from a non-renewable resource.

Oil drilling is not foolproof and with the constant threat of annual hurricanes it would only be a matter of time before large blobs of black goo start to show up on our beaches. As someone who spent nearly two decades living in an oil area in Southern California, I can attest that the damage to the shoreline from oil is very real. One oil spill would eliminate millions in tourist revenue and we can certainly count on more than one occurring. While technology may have advanced a long way and some believe it to be foolproof, nature is not.

It is absurd to think the fact that oil derricks would be small, hard to distinguish silhouettes on the horizon, would mitigate their presence. Their appearance is far from the point. Our beaches are the asset that drives local tourism and a recreational source that many of us constantly enjoy. There is no comparison to losing that amenity in exchange for oil royalties.

When talking about oil it is easy to claim patriotism is the reason why we need to take action. Such claims stir folks up, especially in hard times. Our oil dependency needs to stop, but the best way for that to happen is not with a quick fix of oil from the Gulf. Oil from anywhere is non-renewable and has consequences to our environment that are still not completely known, despite being constantly debated. Drilling for more oil in very limited quantities at such high risks does nothing for America’s oil dependency.

For America, oil is easy. It is much easier for Americans to sit back on their laurels and enjoy the benefits of petroleum over the hardship and challenge of inventing new and alternative resources to meet our needs. Our country was founded by men and women of invention, who would try new things and fight with a problem until a solution was found.
That was once our way. Like many other aspects of our lives, until we reach a crisis we tend to not work as hard as we could. Making oil easier will only slightly delay the inevitable crisis we will have if we are not pushed harder to find viable alternatives. We can do it; the incentive just needs to be realized sooner rather than later.

We do not need to buy into the oil pitch. Politicians like to claim the only alternative to less revenue is cutting popular programs. If they were working for the interests of the citizens who elected them they would be cutting government waste, which includes the perks, benefits and freebies they all enjoy at our expense. We can survive without oil royalties. Less easy oil will strengthen America; not make us more dependent.
Many people were riled up over a potential challenge when Moraya Bay reduced the public use of a fractional piece of the beach; just one mistake on an oil rig will have far greater impacts on use of our beaches.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/e77fdd4f5afd88a3852576b3005a604f/8d717a8525394687852576ef00595ffc!OpenDocument

Environmental Protection Agency

EPA Proposes to Add Sources to Greenhouse Gas Reporting System/Requirements target potent and persistent greenhouse gases

Release date: 03/23/2010
Contact Information: Cathy Milbourn (News Media Only) Milbourn.cathy@epa.gov 202-564-7849 202-564-4355

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to include additional emissions sources in its first-ever national mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting system. The data from these sectors will provide a better understanding of where GHGs are coming from and will help EPA and businesses develop effective policies and programs to reduce emissions.

“Gathering this information is the first step toward reducing greenhouse emissions and fostering innovative technologies for the clean energy future,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “It’s especially important to track potent gases like methane, which traps more than 20 times as much heat as carbon and accelerates climate change. Once we know where we must act, American innovators and entrepreneurs can develop new technologies to protect our atmosphere and fight climate change.”

EPA finalized the first-ever mandatory greenhouse gas reporting requirement in October of 2009. That rule required 31 industry sectors, covering 85 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions, to track and report their emissions.

In addition to those 31 industries, the agency is now proposing to collect emissions data from the oil and natural gas sector, industries that emit fluorinated gases, and from facilities that inject and store carbon dioxide (CO2) underground for the purposes of geologic sequestration or enhanced oil and gas recovery. Methane is the primary GHG emitted from oil and natural gas systems and is more than 20 times as potent as CO2 at warming the atmosphere, while fluorinated gases are even stronger and can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Data collected from facilities that inject CO2 underground would enable EPA to track the amount of CO2 that is injected and in some cases require a monitoring strategy for detecting potential emissions to the atmosphere.

The data will also allow businesses to track their own emissions, compare them to similar facilities, and identify cost effective ways to reduce their emissions in the future.

EPA is also proposing to require all facilities in the reporting system, including those proposed today, to provide information on their corporate ownership.

Under these proposals, newly covered sources would begin collecting emissions data on January 1, 2011 with the first annual reports submitted to EPA on March 31, 2012. These proposals will be open for public comment for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The agency will also hold public hearings on these proposals on April 19, 2010 in Arlington, Va. and April 20, 2010 in Washington, D.C.

More information on these proposals and the hearings: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/proposedrule.html

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100321/OPINION/3211023/2198/OPINION?Title=Access-to-federal-waters-may-be-the-real-goal-of-legislative-proponents
Herald Tribune
Sarasota, Florida
Opinion

Access to federal waters may be the real goal of legislative proponents

Published: Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, March 19, 2010 at 5:52 p.m.
The Texas oil men behind the proposal to drill off Florida’s Gulf Coast beaches are neither stupid nor dreamy-eyed optimists. So the information in a draft report presented Monday to a Florida House committee surely came as no surprise.

The report, by a commission the Legislature created five years ago to study Florida’s long-term future, largely shoots down many of the drilling proponents’ arguments.

It says that the minuscule amount of petroleum under the state’s near-shore waters would have almost no effect on gas prices or the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. Efforts to extract the oil would eventually provide relatively few jobs for Florida and provide little revenue to the state.

So why was Dean Cannon smiling?

Maybe because Cannon — who is chairman of the House committee that heard testimony on the report, and is the Legislature’s chief proponent of coastal drilling — sees the big picture.

The debate over Gulf drilling is not really about passing state legislation this year, and might not be about drilling near Florida’s west coast at all. The big picture involves the ban on drilling in federal waters in the eastern Gulf — a longtime target of the oil and gas industry.

The industry wants the federal ban removed — despite the damage that drilling could do to Florida’s environment and economy — and Cannon appears ready to help.

Wait till next year
Cannon told reporters Monday that, after hearing from the Century Commission and many other experts, he still thinks drilling is worthwhile. “Nobody really knows how much is out there until you actually drill,” he said.

He said he expects his committee, the Select Policy Council on Strategic and Economic Planning, to introduce within two weeks legislation to remove Florida’s 20-year-old moratorium on coastal drilling.

The Florida Senate, led by offshore drilling skeptic Jeff Atwater, appears unlikely to pass such a bill this year — something, the Tallahassee Democrat reported, “Cannon acknowledges with a smile.”

Cannon, in fact, said Friday that he is not concerned about the bill passing this year because he will come back next year “with an even better bill.”
And next year, Cannon will be speaker of the Florida House, while Mike Haridopolos will replace Atwater as Senate president. Haridopolos has already introduced a bill in the Senate that would allow near-coast drilling.

Next year, with Cannon and Haridopolos occupying the two most powerful positions in the Legislature, passage of oil-drilling legislation would be practically a done deal. Even if the next governor were to veto the legislation, an important statement will be made:

If the Legislature is willing to allow drilling in state waters — three to 10 miles from shore — why should Congress maintain the federal ban, which forbids drilling within 125 miles of the Florida peninsula?

The Century Commission’s report acknowledges this risk: “Because a major reason for the imposition of moratoriums off Florida is due to political pressure from the state, lifting the state moratorium would undoubtedly weaken political and legal support for the federal moratorium.”

But there are good reasons for that “political pressure from the state” — applied for decades by both Republican and Democratic leaders — and they are just as pertinent for the eastern Gulf as they are for Florida’s near-coast:
While there is likely to be more oil under federal waters than there is close to the coast, numerous federal studies have shown — and the Century Commission confirmed — that there is too little in the eastern Gulf to ever have much, if any, effect on gas prices or the global supply.

An oil spill in the eastern Gulf could be disastrous for Florida’s coastal environment and tourism-based economy. “Accidental oil spills are low-probability events,” the commission reported, “but they have the potential to significantly impact coastal ecosystems and economies.” That is a risk that Florida cannot afford to take.

The potential revenue and jobs to be gained from eastern Gulf drilling do not justify the risks involved. The commission cites a recent study that found that federal and state revenues from that drilling “would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 20 years.” Florida’s share might be “roughly $20 million to $40 million a year,” depending on federal drilling legislation and production volumes. The number of total jobs resulting from the drilling are estimated to be 10,000 over 20 years, “with Florida securing 1,000 to 2,500 of them.”
Compare that with the financial impact of Florida tourism, an industry that generates some $65 billion per year for the state and employs 1 million workers.

Who benefits?

So what is offshore oil drilling — either in state or federal waters — worth to Florida? Not enough to warrant the risks involved.

What is removing the state ban on drilling worth to the anonymous Texas oil men who, under the name Florida Energy Associates, promote the plan? Potentially billions if it opens up the eastern Gulf, or if they hold Gulf leases until the price of oil skyrockets.
But the real issue may be: What is all of this worth to Dean Cannon and other legislators working on the oil men’s behalf?  That’s a question that Florida voters should ask.

Special thanks to Richard Charter