EDITORIAL:

Facts sink new drilling technology

Saturday, December 26, 2009 1:51 AM (Source: Tampa Tribune) By Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Dec. 26–It is becoming increasingly evident that the shadowy group promoting oil drilling immediately off Florida’s shores is playing fast and loose with the facts.

Florida Energy Associates, an independent group of oil producers that won’t identify its members, claims in its literature, “New technology allows for safe, sub-sea energy exploration without creating a visual blight. No visible, permanent structures need be seen from the shoreline.”

Rep. Dean Cannon, the Winter Park Republican who is the Legislature’s leading champion of drilling, continually claims there will be no unsightly rigs.

Not so.

As the Sarasota Herald-Tribune found, the new technology is a deep-sea system that operates in thousands of feet of water. The American Petroleum Institute told a Herald-Tribune reporter the system is intended for water more than 5,000 feet deep. In contrast, the oil group wants to drill between three and 10 miles off Florida’s beaches, where the water is no deeper than 100 feet.

Moreover, a subsea system would be possible in Florida waters only if a traditional drilling platform were nearby and could pipe oil to an onshore refinery, which would require the industrialization of Florida’s coast. This would diminish the state’s appeal to tourists and residents alike.

As an oil official told the Herald-Tribune, “There is no such thing as an invisible rig.” Florida Energy Associates officials, of course, brush off such details, claiming the technology they promise could be developed if only Florida would give drilling the go ahead.

In other words, trust us. Florida lawmakers would be foolish if they do.

Consider other claims.

The drilling proponents said as much as 3 billion barrels of oil lie beneath Florida’s waters. But the 3-billion-barrel figure is based on a U.S. Geological Survey report that included not just Florida’s waters but much of the Gulf of Mexico and land deposits under most of the South.

Another assertion is that Florida would realize $2.25 billion a year in royalties. But that is based on the assumption Florida waters would produce 150 million barrels of oil a year — more than Alaska, Texas, Louisiana and California combined produced in their peak year. And remember, almost all the exploratory wells that were drilled before Florida’s coastline was protected came up dry.

Of course, the oil crowd’s mantra is that the rigs pose no risk to the environment. But just last August, a blowout occurred on a new “jack-up” rig like what is proposed for Florida, and it spilled 300 to 400 barrels of oil a day for weeks in the Timor Sea off Australia.

Such an accident would ruin our white sandy beaches, considered among the best in the nation, and demolish Florida’s $65 billion-a-year tourism industry. And small oil spills remain routine in Gulf of Mexico operations.

It is encouraging that Florida Senate President Jeff Atwater, unlike Cannon, is in no hurry to do the bidding of a group of secretive oil interests.

Atwater wants to determine the truth about drilling. He, like the people of Florida, will find that can’t be done by relying on proponents’ oily sales pitch.

—–

To see more of the Tampa Tribune or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.tampatrib.com

Copyright (c) 2009, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Tampa Bay Newspapers: Join the fight against oil drilling

Dec. 30. 2009

Florida’s coast-related revenues generate 85 percent of our state’s total tourist related revenues. The $7 billion tourists spend each year in Florida is the engine that drives our economy.

Nearly 1 million Floridians are employed by the state’s tourism industry. Just a 1 percent decrease in Florida’s tourism results in a $39 million loss for we, the Florida tax-paying residents.

The 1993 tanker devastation off Florida’s coast alone cost Pinellas County a 45 percent decrease in state revenue for the following two years. It was income that each and every Florida resident made up for with increased taxes and fees during that time.

Visitors don’t come to Florida to tour our museums. They don’t come to Florida to visit our cathedrals, skyscrapers, historical monuments. And they certainly don’t come to Florida to visit our ski slopes.

According to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources, 85 percent of Florida’s visitors come to the state just to visit our beaches. They come to play in the gulf, which is Florida’s primary industry. How do we put a price on it?

To jeopardize this with visible and contaminating oil rigs just 50 miles off our coast is completely unacceptable, especially since the oil cartels already have hundreds of viable leases 300 miles out in the gulf, which they choose not to use.

Having this omni-present oil catastrophe at bay is no less different than risking the oil contamination of precious cathedrals, historical monuments, national parks and ski slopes throughout the rest of our country. Remember this. As goes Florida’s beaches, so goes Florida’s economy.

If you agree, write or e-mail Gov. Charlie Crist, State Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Treasure Island; State Rep. Jim Frishe, R-Belleair Bluffs; or Florida Senate president Jeff Atwater with your thoughts on this issue.

Phil Collins

Vice Mayor Treasure Island

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

NEAR-SHORE OIL DRILLING

Near-Shore Oil Drilling: Deep-Sea Tech Wrong for Florida

Published: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 12:01 a.m.

Floridians and their legislators have had many reasons to be skeptical since proposals surfaced rapidly to open near-shore waters to exploration and drilling for oil.

With little notice and even less scrutiny, the Florida House of Representatives quickly passed a bill last spring to lift a well-established ban on exploration and drilling within three miles of the coastline.

There was no good explanation for the rush, and the bill sailed through the House despite the lack of a cost-benefit analysis or basic review of the proponents’ claims.

Fortunately, Senate President Jeff Atwater refused the join the rush, demanding a “dispassionate review” of drilling methods, environmental impacts and the dubious claims that oil extraction would be a boon to Florida’s economy and promote “energy independence.”

As a result, the House bill died.

Unfortunately, the efforts to promote drilling in state waters – as well as in federal waters farther from shore – are alive. The proposals might not get far soon, however, because of growing skepticism on the part of some legislators.

For example, a sizeable contingent of legislators recently said they were led by lobbyists to believe that new technologies would make drilling safe and “virtually invisible.”

Indeed, interest groups such as Florida Energy Associates presented legislators, the public and the media with simple, slick brochures picturing virtually invisible alternatives to conventional drilling rigs.

INDUSTRY LINE MISLEADS

A leading proponent of the legislation – Rep. Dean Cannon, the incoming speaker of the House in 2011 – followed the industry line.

“Today, temporary ship-based rigs can drill wells far out of sight from shore, using directional drilling and subsea equipment to avoid surface visibility and to protect coastal vistas,” Cannon wrote in an op-ed column in May.

Lawmakers now, however, have reason to question their reliance on the oil industry’s representations.

Directional drilling and subsea equipment haven’t been used extensively, if at all, in shallow waters such as those near Florida’s west coast, according to experts cited in a recent news articles by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

These methods are either expensive – and possibly cost-prohibitive – or they require pipelines and other infrastructure lacking near the coast.

As Dave Mica of the Florida Petroleum Council said: “Shallow-water drilling is generally done with temporary jack-up drilling rigs. Once the drilling is complete, the drilling rigs are removed and replaced with a production system. Fixed production platforms are typically installed after most of the drilling is completed.”

It’s doubtful that coastal residents will find any appeal in the prospect of temporary jack-up rigs and fixed production platforms within three miles to five miles of shore.

Reject near-shore drilling