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Of the roughly 3,700 offshore oil production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, roughly 3,200 lie off the Louisiana coast. Yet Louisiana produces one-third of America's commercial fisheries and no major oil spill has ever soiled its coast.
On the other hand, Florida, which zealously prohibits offshore oil drilling, had its gorgeous "Emerald Coast" panhandle beaches soiled by an ugly oil spill in 1976. This spill, as almost all oil spills, resulted from the transportation of oil not from the extraction of oil. Assuming such as Hugo Chavez deign to keep selling us oil, we'll need increasingly more and we'll need to keep transporting it stateside typically to refineries in Louisiana and Texas.
This path takes those tankers (as the one in 1976) smack in front of Florida's panhandle beaches. Recall the Valdez, the Cadiz, the Argo Merchant. These were all tanker spills. The production of oil is relatively clean and safe. Again, it's the transportation that presents the greatest risk. And even these spills (though hyped hysterically as environmental catastrophes) always play out as minor blips, those pictures of oil-soaked seagulls notwithstanding. To the horror and anguish of professional greenies, Alaska's Prince William Sound recovered completely. More birds get fried by landing on power lines and smashed to pulp against picture windows in one week than perished from three decades of oil spills.
But forget cheaper oil and less pollution for a second. All fishermen and scuba divers out there should plead with their states to open up offshore oil drilling posthaste. I refer to the fabulous fishing the EXPLOSION of marine life that accompanies the erection of offshore oil platforms.
"Environmentalists" wake up in the middle of the night sweating and whimpering about offshore oil platforms only because they've never seen what's under them. This proliferation of marine life around the platforms turned on its head every "environmental expert" opinion of its day.
The original plan, mandated by federal environmental "experts" back in the late '40s, was to remove the big, ugly, polluting, environmentally hazardous contraptions as soon as they stopped producing. Fine, said the oil companies.
About 15 years ago some wells played out off Louisiana and the oil companies tried to comply. Their ears are still ringing from the clamor fishermen put up. Turns out those platforms are going nowhere, and by popular demand of those with a bigger stake in the marine environment than any "environmentalist."
Every "environmental" superstition against these structures was turned on its head. Marine life had EXPLODED around these huge artificial reefs: A study by LSU's Sea Grant college shows that 85 percent of Louisiana fishing trips involve fishing around these platforms. The same study shows that there's 50 times more marine life around an oil production platform than in the surrounding mud bottoms.
An environmental study (by apparently honest scientists) revealed that urban runoff and treated sewage dump 12 times the amount of petroleum into the Gulf than those thousands of oil production platforms. And oil seeping naturally through the ocean floor into the Gulf, where it dissipates over time, accounts for 7 times the amount spilled by rigs and pipelines in any given year.
The Flower Garden coral reefs lie off the Louisiana-Texas border. Unlike any of the Florida Keys reefs, they're surrounded by dozens of offshore oil platforms.
These have been pumping away for the past 50 years. Yet according to G.P. Schmahl, a Federal biologist who worked for decades in both places, "The Flower Gardens are much healthier, more pristine than anything in the Florida Keys. It was a surprise to me," he admits. "And I think it's a surprise to most people."
"A key measure of the health of a reef is the amount of area taken up by coral," according to a report by Steve Gittings, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's science coordinator for marine sanctuaries. "Louisiana's Flower Garden boasts nearly 50 percent coral cover. In the Florida Keys it can run as little as 5 percent."
Mark Ferrulo, a Florida "environmental activist" uses the very example of Louisiana for his anti-offshore drilling campaign, calling Louisiana's coast "the nation's toilet."
Florida's fishing fleet must love fishing in toilets, and her restaurants serving what's in them. Most of the red snapper you eat in Florida restaurants are caught around Louisiana's oil platforms. We see the Florida-registered boats tied up to them constantly. Sometimes us locals can barely squeeze in.
America desperately needs more domestic oil. In the process of producing it, we'd also get a cheaper tab for broiled red snapper with crabmeat/shrimp topping.
Florida's tourism industry wouldn't do very well if one had to dive amongst oil rigs.
If you want to see the cost of off-shore drilling to the state of LA, look no further than New Orleans, a city that was destroyed because of oil interests.
Use a few brain cells. Why do you think they rerouted the Mississippi?
Katrina was so devasting, in part, because of the loss of costal wetlands that previously acted as a storm buffer. City elevation became a factor when the levees broke, but the intensity of the unbuffered storm was a significant cause for that failure.
Ravir should not have singled out oil interests, but RSG was wrong (as usual) to deny that factor and to blame elevation alone. The U.S. Geological Survey blamed several factors for degradation and loss of wetlands, including natural processes, massive levees that channel the river, and drainage to accommodate development and agriculture. "In addition, . . . an extensive system of dredged canals and flood-control structures, constructed to facilitate hydrocarbon exploration [that includes oil and gas] and production as well as commercial and recreational boat traffic, has enabled salt water from the Gulf of Mexico to intrude brackish and freshwater wetlands."
Much of the development for which wetlands were drained included facilities for oil and gas production, and housing to accomodate employees in that industry.
Also, if oil platforms cause an explosion of marine life, then I would expect Florida's tourism industry to flourish.
Katrina was so devasting, in part, because of the loss of costal wetlands that previously acted as a storm buffer. City elevation became a factor when the levees broke, but the intensity of the unbuffered storm was a significant cause for that failure.
Ravir should not have singled out oil interests, but RSG was wrong (as usual) to deny that factor and to blame elevation alone. The U.S. Geological Survey blamed several factors for degradation and loss of wetlands, including natural processes, massive levees that channel the river, and drainage to accommodate development and agriculture. "In addition, . . . an extensive system of dredged canals and flood-control structures, constructed to facilitate hydrocarbon exploration [that includes oil and gas] and production as well as commercial and recreational boat traffic, has enabled salt water from the Gulf of Mexico to intrude brackish and freshwater wetlands."
Much of the development for which wetlands were drained included facilities for oil and gas production, and housing to accomodate employees in that industry.
I did not claim oil had nothing to do with it.
I was responding to the post were you wrote, "LOL. It was destroyed because it sits UNDER the sea level in an area that is renowned for HURRICANES. The swamps are vanishing not because of Oil but because of controlling the Mississippi river."
You subsequently wrote, "Ohh I see, the ONLY traffic on the Mississippi is Oil traffic, you really are a PEA BRAIN. They also rerouted and leveed it all along its length to prevent FLOODING, which has ZERO to do with OIL."
So I said you blamed elevation alone, because I was responding to your first quote and did not consider your second comment about levees. Sorry for the oversight.
But you did deny that oil had anything to do with the loss of swamp land, and blamed the levees alone, which is contradicted by the USGS. If you had written "The swamps are vanishing not [just] because of Oil but [also] because of controlling the Mississippi river", my comments would have been off the mark. But you didn't, so STFU about my ability to read when it is your ability to write that's deficient.
*** delusional rant omitted ***
Florida's tourism industry wouldn't do very well if one had to dive amongst oil rigs.
If you want to see the cost of off-shore drilling to the state of LA, look no further than New Orleans, a city that was destroyed because of oil interests.
That's debatable. I've been on several offshore fishing trips in which we tie off to oil rigs and pull up snapper, ling, mahi mahi, and grouper. Guides make a living doing this and tourists pay good money and have no complaints with the rigs. We really do need to drill more in the gulf and off the coast of Florida while we're on our way to electric and other technologies.
Rigs create artificial structures that baitfish live around for protection. The rigs will have an effect on the biodiversity of marine life, but I don't know what marine ecologists think the outcome will be.
Not sure that florida has a problem with a lack of offshore reefs.. hell.. its hard enough trying not to hit em with anything more than an Island packet type keel ...I'm not sure that any oil spils have resulted from LA drilling. I am not sure as well that the gulf has been harmed by oil drilling at all.. although I'd say that there is a serious problem with light pollution when navigating a field at night... almost got rundown by a tanker that was invisble against the rig backdrops... Gov Bush shot down many a proposal to drill... does anyone from Florida know why this was?
The oil is there. Drill it. I'm not saying we should destroy the coral reefs but we do need to be realistic. I'd rather have people being able to afford a way to pay for gas so they can go to work versus saving a few species. And while we're doing this, push for new technologies.
