Congress, get off your gas, and drill!

[Ravi]

Not quite. Jebbie used to brag that 900 people moved to Florida a day when he was Gov. Another thing I hold against him.

 

[Toro]

Not quite. Jebbie used to brag that 900 people moved to Florida a day when he was Gov. Another thing I hold against him.

And Jeb was against drilling.

 

[Gunny]

Most Floridians don't want any drilling off the coasts.

Here in Florida, the biggest industry is tourism. There is a real fear across the political spectrum that the energy business will drive tourists away. It is a highly polluting industry. We're not sure why we should risk our livelihoods for the rest of the country.

As for ANWR, drill in it.

I'm just curious, and perhaps you can answer this. With today's ability and modern equipment, what is the actual ecological impact to drilling off the Florida Coast? Is it a matter of the ugliness of the rigs?

As someone ignorantly stated, NO is not a cesspool because of the oil rigs and I don't see that happening provided the rules are strictly enforced. The Gulf States and the pollution they have incurred is due to the excesses of the 60s and before where no regard at all was given to future consequences.

DO you know what the actual impact is IF the rules are strictly enforced?

IMO, there's a happy medium. As in most other things however, "happy mediums" are the unattainable in this country anymore because someone's always letting nimrod extremists drive the trains.

 

[Ravi]

Experts say Hurricane Katrina was all the more devastating because so much of the coast protecting New Orleans has been eroded, about 25 square miles a year. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita swept away an additional 217 square miles, the equivalent of 30 years of erosion, over three weeks.


Officials and environmentalists here deem the new accord as a major victory for the state, because it implicitly acknowledges that drilling for oil and gas off Louisiana harms the coastline and contributes to devastating erosion.

NY Times Advertisement

Drilling isn't just about drilling. It's also about transporting to port. And we've had sink holes form because of water being piped out of areas of the state. As far as I know there haven't been any impact studies, but I could be wrong. If there were and they were favorable I'd imagine Cheney would have cited them instead of claiming that the Chinese are drilling off the coast of Florida.

The state of LA, unless the law has been recently changed, doesn't get the taxes charged the oil companies for drilling off their coast, even though it enters and impacts their port. Why would we want the same kind of deal?

signed, the ignorant one

 

[Ravi]

Here's another about the impact of the oil industry on LA.

Oil lines and the environment
Louisiana's pipelines may not always be easy to locate, but their environmental impact is well understood. Along with levees and shipping channels, the pipelines - or rather the canals dug to lay them in the marsh - cause erosion and land loss. In its natural condition the Mississippi River fed the terrain along its banks with regular floods that replenished the land's sediment. But after hundreds of years of levee building on the river, its sustaining silt pours out into the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In effect, the land in southern Louisiana has been starved and is slowly sinking, even as sea levels rise because of climate change. Meanwhile, endless channels and canals have been carved out of the marshes for shipping and for oil and gas wells and facilities. Those canals eat away at the marshes and allow damaging incursions of salt water, which can kill freshwater vegetation.
"All this was marsh when I was a kid," says Allen Moreau, 41. "My grandaddy could walk across it." Moreau, who runs a charter fishing boat, is piloting up a bayou in Venice, La., on another 95-degree July day. The area he is describing as formerly solid land is open water. Also on the boat is George Pivach, general counsel for the Venice Port Complex, a smaller version of Port Fourchon in Plaquemines Parish. As we float further south, Pivach points to two parallel rows of rocks extending several hundred feet. He explains that they marked where one of the bayous joined the gulf. Two decades later the bayou is gone, and the lines are stranded a mile out in the gulf like a landing strip in an aqueous desert.
Every so often Pivach calls my attention to a "well jacket," a protective apparatus for an oil well. The wells, he says, were constructed on solid land, but now they are their own little islands. The flow lines that take oil from the wells to bigger collection facilities periodically poke out of the water. They were originally built underground, Pivach explains, so the oil companies didn't erect signs to warn passing boats of the protruding pipes.

New Orleans: The next energy crisis - Aug. 6, 2007

 

[Gunny]

NY Times Advertisement

Drilling isn't just about drilling. It's also about transporting to port. And we've had sink holes form because of water being piped out of areas of the state. As far as I know there haven't been any impact studies, but I could be wrong. If there were and they were favorable I'd imagine Cheney would have cited them instead of claiming that the Chinese are drilling off the coast of Florida.

The state of LA, unless the law has been recently changed, doesn't get the taxes charged the oil companies for drilling off their coast, even though it enters and impacts their port. Why would we want the same kind of deal?

signed, the ignorant one

I'm not saying you should "want" anything. I think I've already stated I'm opposed to drilling off the Florida coast, but don't let that stop you.

Unlike someone else, that does not mean however that my mind is completely closed to the topic and I'm willing to say "no, just because ...."

You bring up a good point where transportation is concerned. There also are the accidents -- leaks, spills, tankers breaking open/sinking .....

At the same time, we're doing nothing while foreign countries are pulling up to within an inch of our calim to territorial waters and going to work. So not only are we dependent on foreign nations for oil, but we're going to be dependent on them for oil they're taking from oil fields that in all probability are in our claimed territory. THAT is dumb.

There are two sides to the argument. I'm sure someone could come up with a viable plan if they'd spend the money investigating possibilities instead of who is using steroids in MLB.

 

[Ravi]

I hope you can at least agree that the oil industry has had an environmental effect on LA.

I searched for awhile but apparently there hasn't been an impact study done. The only thing I could find was from back when Poppa Bush was pres and it was concluded there wasn't enough information to make an educated decision.

 

[Gunny]

I hope you can at least agree that the oil industry has had an environmental effect on LA.

I searched for awhile but apparently there hasn't been an impact study done. The only thing I could find was from back when Poppa Bush was pres and it was concluded there wasn't enough information to make an educated decision.

I agree that it has. It has had an adverse impact on ALL the gulf states I think with the exception of FL. The water off the Texas Coast is STILL nasty from it, and you can see the abandoned rigs from shore.

I just think that the vast majority of the damage was done before any concern was given to the issue and no one really cared. When I lived in DC in 1970, the Potomac River was almost brown and you could see debris floating in it. Last I say of it, it was blue and clean, but the impact to the ecosystem is still being felt.

I most definitely and proponent of using the environment wisely and responsibly and making as little imprint as we have to. The fact is however because we exist we WILL have an imprint. That can't be avoided.

On this issue I still fall decidedly to what is called the left. Just not in the extreme.

 

[Zoomie1980]

The US govt owns approx 70-75 percent of all oil shale reserves. Most are found in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and some in Utah. A few years ago there were only a few oil leases in Wyoming, now there are several hundred with most backed up to the Wind River Range and the Wind River Indian Reservation, some are found down near Rock Springs. The costs to extract range anywhere from 60-100 dollars per barrel. The conventional way of extracting originally required huge amounts of water but now they can be extracted by in-situ conversion which heats the oil out of the shales by sending electric resistance heaters into the holes and achieving temps of 700 degrees. This, in effect, takes three to four years. My concerns would be to monitor the water above and below the sites. This could be our future if we could just drill. I've talked to a couple of oil guys in Houston who are doing some work in this area and they've told me that this dwarfs the proven Saudi fields and could sustain us for 60 or more years. If our politicians have any brains, now would be a good time to show it. If they do open up, I'll invest.

That's technically impractical on a mass scale. Oil shale oil is really a myth and would take a massive investment and 20 years to perfect and see a reasonable supply come on line. By then we will be driving electric cars powered by Lithium ion batteries or some other rechargeable storage technology.

It is far more practical to drill in the gulf off Florida and in Alaska to get us over the transitional hump, but long term the answer is moving completely away from burning fossil fuels altogether. At some time we have to move past the stone age of powering everything with fire....

 

[Zoomie1980]

Thanks

Generally, though, what does the broad population want?

Drill in Alaska AND Florida and California.....Everybody has to give up something to get over the fossil fuel hump.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Most Floridians don't have any say in the matter. The media and a bunch of special interest groups all scream about it and the media wants everyone to assume we don't want it, but I've never seen it come to a vote. Put it to a vote today and see what the outcome is.
The Coast Guard down here, for years, chased down oil spills that never seemed to have a source, until they realized that it was oil seeping up through fissures in the ground (not unlike oil the comes up from the ground off the coast of California). The fact of the matter is that no beach or environmental distaster has ever come from an oil rig. They occur when oil is being shipped on barges, etc. who have the bad habit of running into things and bursting when they do. If a rig was to have a leak it would not be in a concentrated quantity, like a ship. There is no real justification for not drilling off the coast of Florida.

Most of the oil is far enough offshore you can't see the rigs. And the rigs off Texas have become popular diving grounds as they create pretty good reefs, themselves. And no rig has ever causes an enivronmental problem. Tankers with drunk captains have, though....

 

[Zoomie1980]

Fine, put it on the ballot and see what happens. I doubt you'd even get the required number of signatures.

Here in Florida, the GOP is as pro-business as it gets, controls both chambers, most cabinet positions and the governorship. Yet they oppose offshore drilling. Must be because the people want drilling off the coast.

First off, it's not up to Florida. Those are federally controlled waters. And most the drilling would be done well off shore, out of sight of the coastal waters. The needs of the country trump whatever local concerns there are. The same as the fact that the Yucca Flats nuclear waste facility IS going online regardless of what Nevadan's think or want....

 

[editec]

Golob's Oil Pollution Bulletin, a Cambridge-based newsletter, found that 55,000 gallons of oil were spilled in American waters last year, the lowest total since 1978, when Mr. Golob began keeping records. It also found that no major spills had occurred in American waters so far in 1992.

Kudos to the oil companies for cleaning up their act!