Posted on 03/20/2021 4:49:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
“Louisiana officials say the state’s oil and gas industry is in danger. This comes after President Joe Biden cancelled a March oil lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly 80 million acres of available leases would have been sold this week. The damage to Louisiana’s (and the nation’s) oil and gas companies started in January when President Biden signed an executive order banning all new oil and gas leases on public land and waters for 60 days," reports KLFY.
Now for the cheering:
“Cancelling this huge offshore Gulf oil auction helps protect our climate and life on Earth. President Biden understands the urgent need to keep this oil in the ground…This is a great step toward phasing out all offshore drilling and bringing environmental justice to the Gulf Coast and Alaska. We need to help restore coastal communities and marine life," the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement.
And speaking of “marine life.” If bona-fide science has crowned “Global Warmists” with 10-foot dunce caps, then over half a century of scientific evidence has crowned anti-offshore drilling activists with 50-foot dunce caps. That offshore oil drilling—far from an environmental disaster, is empirically an environmental bonanza—has been pounded home with a vengeance in study after study. The science, you might say, is settled. To wit:
According to the Energy Information Administration, "Gulf of Mexico federal offshore oil production accounts for 17% of total U.S. crude oil production." Yet with over 3000 of the 4000 plus offshore oil production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico off her coast, Louisiana provides almost a third of North America’s commercial fisheries.
A study by LSU’s sea grant college showed that 70 percent of Louisiana’s offshore fishing trips target these structures. “Oil platforms as artificial reefs support fish densities 10 to 1000 times that of adjacent sand and mud bottom, and almost always exceed fish densities found at both adjacent artificial reefs of other types and natural hard bottom,” revealed a study by Dr. Bob Shipp, professor at the Marine Sciences department of the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. “Evidence indicates that massive areas of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico were essentially empty of Red Snapper stocks for the first hundred years of the fishery. Subsequently, areas in the western Gulf have become the major source of red snapper, concurrent with the appearance of thousands of petroleum platforms.”
In brief, “villainous” Big Oil produces marine life at rates that puts to shame “wondrous” Earth Goddess Gaia. “The fish Biomass around an offshore oil platform is ten times greater per unit area than for natural coral reefs,” also found Dr. Charles Wilson of LSU’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Science (emphasis added). "Ten to thirty thousand adult fish live around an oil production platform in an area half the size of a football field.”
But you’re very conveniently “forgetting” the infamous BP oil spill! comes the retort from Environmentalist Whackos.
Glad you mentioned that. Because only one year after the infamous spill, the FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Seafood Inspection Laboratory, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, along with similar agencies from neighboring Gulf coast states, have methodically and repeatedly tested Gulf seafood for cancer-causing “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.”
“Not a single sample [for oil or dispersant] has come anywhere close to levels of concern,” reported Olivia Watkins, executive media advisor for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
“All of the samples have been 100-fold or even 1,000-fold below all of these levels,” reported Bob Dickey, director of the FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory. “Nothing ever came close to these levels.”
That this proliferation of seafood in the Gulf of Mexico came because – rather than in spite – of the oil production rattled many environmental cages and provoked a legion of scoffers.
Amongst the scoffers were some Travel Channel producers, fashionably greenish in their views. They read these claims in a book by yours truly—"The Helldiver’s Rodeo”—that Publishers Weekly hailed as “highly-entertaining!” (Ted Nugent’s blurb certainly didn’t help against their scoffing!)
The book describes an undersea panorama that (if true) could make an interesting show for the network, they concluded, while still scoffing. They scoffed as we rode in from the airport. They scoffed over raw oysters, grilled redfish and seafood gumbo that night. More scoffing through the Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s. They scoffed even while suiting up in dive gear and checking the cameras as we tied up to an oil platform 20 miles in the Gulf off the southeast Louisiana coast.
But they came out of the water bug-eyed and indeed produced and broadcast a Travel Channel program showcasing a panorama that turned on its head every environmental superstition against offshore oil drilling. Schools of fish filled the water column from top to bottom – from 6-inch blennies to 12-foot sharks. Fish by the thousands. Fish by the ton.
The cameras were going crazy. Do I focus on the shoals of barracuda? Or that cloud of jacks? On the immense schools of snapper below, or on the fleet of tarpon above? How ’bout this – whoa – hammerhead! We had some close-ups, too, of coral and sponges, the very things disappearing off Florida’s pampered reefs—a state that bans offshore oil drilling. Off Louisiana, they sprout in colorful profusion from the huge steel beams —acres of them. You’d never guess this was part of that unsightly structure above. The panorama of marine life around an offshore oil platform staggers anyone who puts on goggles and takes a peek, even (especially!) the most worldly scuba divers. Here’s a video peek at this seafood bonanza.
And here’s the book that caused so many “environmentalist” heads to explode.
You don’t need gas, as you can be unemployed or work from home...
“...When will the Governor of Louisiana nullify the illegitimate fedguv EO and just let the drilling continue?...”
Most likely NEVER.....he’s a RAT.
“forgetting” the infamous BP oil spill!”
I still remember the Torry Canyon spill. Anyone remember it?
Then there was a well blowout in the 1860s-1880s USA. The oil flowed toward the Atlantic, till the river caught fire.
Any damage today?
Does anyone remember, in WW II when Congress authorized the digging of a canal across the peninsula of Florida to shorten the trip from the Gulf oil fields to the east coast refineries? The purpose was to avoid U-boats around Fla.
The canal was never dug.
I fished too. Spent time in Cordova.
https://www.businessinsider.com/alaskas-fishing-industry-after-the-exxon-valdez-oil-spill-2020-6
Sarcasm? If not you should rethink your position, it’s foolhardy
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No. I just go with what people I know that are there say and my own experience - not some web page from a somewhat dubious organization in my experience
Remember the mystery of what happened to the massive oil pools from the Deep Water Horizon spill? Natural bateria ate it.
The brother, who was an engineer of some sort here in SE Michigan, got a job with an oil company up there. Don't know what he does but he has a wife and home in Florida. He works two weeks and then is off two weeks and if he wants, they pay his way to fly home to Florida or he stays there and fishes......
I basically started ignoring environmentalists about offshore drilling after seeing the results of oil spills over decades.
When the spill occurs you get the Enviro Hysterics telling the press that this is irreversible damage or it will take hundreds of years to recover.
Then you get the story five years later of the “remarkable recovery” of the area that “no one could ever have imagined”.
That’s not a reason to do all things reasonable to prevent the spill in the first place, and impose real consequences for negligence, but it never turns out to be the ecological doom it is portrayed as.
they pay his way to fly home to Florida or he stays there and fishes......
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Fishing commercially and fishing for sport - two different classes - I always say commercial which is what I did so the reader can understand the difference.
Charter is on the lower rung, so to speak, of commercial fishing, as they are more in the sport fishing class than commercial. 90% of the charter business is dealing with the public vs. 5-10% for commercial fishermen.
Sounds like he’s got a really good deal.
Wild salmon vs. farmed salmon.
“I still remember the Torry Canyon spill. Anyone remember it?
Then there was a well blowout in the 1860s-1880s USA. The oil flowed toward the Atlantic, till the river caught fire.”
Dang..... you must really be an old fart. How did you manage to live that long?
“... We had some close-ups, too, of coral and sponges, the very things disappearing off Florida’s pampered reefs—a state that bans offshore oil drilling.”
Someone should send this to Desantis. He’s done well to ‘follow the REAL science’ with the COVID19 mess. I was disappointed when he caved to the NIMBY and RINO pearl-clutching crowds.
Maybe if someone got this to him and Rick Scott, they’d push the FACTS to Floridians.
Good living, hard work, good genetics.
“You don’t need gas, as you can be unemployed or work from home.”
Good point. There won’t be food or anything else in the stores, so no need for shopping. You will need an unobtainable permit for travel, so no problem there. No gas will be the least of our worries.
And you can even have booze delivered to your shitty apartment. Now you can drink yourself to do death by 40.
Excuse me while I put on my shades, my future is bright...
In Santa Barbara, Calif the socialists want to shutdown oil production even though nature leaks millions of gallons of oil from seeps out of the ocean bottom every year for untold time with no effect. The oil leaks out of the cliff face by the beach. There are tar balls in the sand as the oil in little rivers go to the ocean. The beach goers would be stepping on more tar bars if not for the oil drilling sucking up the oil by offshore rigs.
Long Beach, Calif has lots of oil, the derricks now hidden.
https://la.curbed.com/2018/9/28/17858248/history-long-beach-oil-islands-thums
Some idea of the amount of oil being shipped and stored in Long Beach, Ca
Dozens of oil tankers spotted off coast of Long Beach.
https://abc7.com/long-beach-oil-tankers-coast-prices-docked/6120048/
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