Posted on 07/08/2008 10:47:43 PM PDT by newbie2008
In posting on the "crisis of choice" made by Democrats and Bill Clinton's veto of ANWR drilling, Gary Gross links to a letter in the local paper praising renewable energy. Why not drill offshore?
Offshore drilling is extremely expensive and jeopardizes important sources of seafood.
This despite there being not one drop of oil spilled from Katrina or Rita off of the Louisiana Coast. And Humberto Fontova points out, the fish and coral life seem to like being around oil rigs. He's written a book on a group of people who go fishing off of abandoned oil rigs, most of which are off the Louisiana coast. The group has a video that shows spearfishing off those waters.
The high prices of gas and oil are exactly the thing that induces offshore drilling. Yes it's expensive, but firms in Florida who got a few leases squeezed out of Congress in 2006 are willing to risk $100 million or more to see if they can find new reserves. When Congress passed the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2006 , Democrats like Florida Senator Bill Nelson threatened a filibuster. DOER never passed the Senate. It kept drilling (in a rider on another bill) to 125 miles offshore the FL panhandle, an area of 8.3 million acres. That's when gas was $3 and oil $60. Now we're north of $4 and $140, and they're drilling and wanting more leases. Any chance we could get Congress to agree?
Let's say that again: in 2006, the Republican House passed DOER Act; the Democrats in the Senate threatened a filibuster and gutted it. Anyone wanting to blame Republicans for not drilling OCS when they were in charge is ignorant of DOER's history.
Mom and Dad LOVED it when I'd come home with 4 or 5 packs of frozen fish after each hitch.
Unnecessary fabrication..
124 spills were reported with a total volume of roughly 17,700 barrels of total petroleum products, of which about 13,200 barrels were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 4,500 barrels were refined products from platforms and rigs. Pipelines were accountable for 72 spills totaling about 7,300 barrels of crude oil and condensate spilled into the [Gulf of Mexico]. Response and recovery efforts kept the impacts to a minimum with no onshore impacts from these spill events.
Most of the rest came from refineries onshore..
One point to consider...although all the rigs shut down pumping in advance of the storm, they did not purge the oil from the lines on the sea-floor. Remember the reports of floating rigs in the Gulf, of them having come unmoored? Think about it.
Katrina Oil Spills May Be Among Worst on Record
The oil pollution in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could be among the worst recorded in North America, officials trying to coordinate the clean-up say. The US coastguard, which is responsible for the marine environment, said yesterday more than 6.5 million gallons of crude oil had been spilt in at least seven major incidents. The previous worst spill in US waters was the 11m gallons in Alaskan waters from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
“This is a major event,” said Lieutenant Colonel Glynn Smith of the coastguard in New Orleans. “Things are going well, but three-quarters of the oil from the spills has not yet been recovered.”
The figure does not include petrol and oil spilt from up to 250,000 cars which have been submerged, or that spilt from hundreds of petrol stations. The coastguard says it has received almost 400 reports of spills, the vast majority of which have not been assessed.
When I lived in New Orleans and went fishing in the Gulf we would head directly for the rigs. That’s the best fishing on the planet. The rigs are like man made reefs and fish love them.
I had the same experience in the Texas Gulf
Oil Rigs and fish are made for each other
I live a half hour drive from Prince William Sound. I have been "recreating" there for 25+ years and have a freezer full of proof that there was no lasting damage.
Ironically, the parts of the sound that took the longest to recover were the ones "treated" following the spill. It seems that the areas just "left alone" recovered faster with less long term damage.
The COMMERCIAL fishery can’t fish there, hence “they are bad for fishing”... Which is also why there are actually fish there, but that is another story.
Once caught 25,000 lbs of Yellowfin Tuna in 5 days fishing the Missippi Canyons. That was in 1984...Back when I was still young enough to long line sword-tuna.
The best part of fishing off a rig is, NO SEA SICKNESS! However, we’d get commercial snapper boats tying up either on our main rig, or our satellite rig, and they’d haul up hundreds of snapper at a time. We’d get so mad at them for taking our fish. Once, we loaded nails into airguns (used for painting) and shot at them.
“Which is also why there are actually fish there,”
Yeah, you can look down into the water and see thousands of fish swimming around. It’s like they are waiting in line to be caught and fighting over who’s next. :-)
I'm amazed the enviros haven't freaked out about the abandoned oil rigs and demanded they be removed. Maybe they just hadn't heard about them. Until now, that is.
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