We’re Still Opposed to Offshore Drilling

 
I guess the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) will have to agree to disagree on this one.

Virginia’s two U.S. senators, Mark Warner and Jim Webb, introduced legislation in Congress this week that seeks to speed up the sale of gas and oil leases off the coast of Virginia, remap the offshore exploration area, and provide Virginia with half of any proceeds from resulting leases.

The bill has the support Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, former Governors Tim Kaine and George Allen (both of whom are running for Webb’s soon-to-be open Senate seat), and the oil and natural gas industry. Proponents see offshore oil and natural gas, to the extent there is any, as a potential way to make Virginia a player in the energy supply game, help reduce the country’s reliance on foreign petroleum, reduce gasoline prices at home, and provide Virginia with new revenue for transportation, conservation, and other needed projects.

Senators Warner and Webb and Governor McDonnell all invoked the word “responsible” in referring to oil and gas drilling. Certainly federal and state regulators can require petroleum companies to be responsible, to follow safety and environmental rules, and reduce the risk of accidental spills. But accidents always happen. Safeguards are never foolproof and sometimes – often – are mitigated by human error or carelessness.

Last year’s Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrated for all to see how such “accidents” can happen and how devastating an offshore oil spill can be to an entire region -- so devastating that President Obama halted all further offshore leasing until 2017.

CBF believes the stakes are just too high to jeopardize the health and safety of the Chesapeake Bay and all of those who depend upon it.

“The risks posed by offshore drilling to the Chesapeake Bay outweigh any potential benefits,” CBF President Will Baker has said. ”Moreover, clean, safe alternatives such as wind and solar power as well  as energy conservation readily exist that will provide the energy and jobs needed without threatening our communities, our economy, the military, and the Bay.”

The waters off the mouth of the Bay are indistinguishable both biologically and hydrologically from the Chesapeake. Ninety percent of the blue crab population utilizes those waters during the early life stages. The crab larvae can float miles out into the ocean at the top centimeter of the water column, vulnerable to even the smallest oil spill, after they are spawned at the mouth of the Bay.

The Bay is a national treasure, and drilling offshore poses unjustifiable risks to its waters, living resources, the tourism economy, and the many jobs dependent on clean water.  That’s been CBF’s position for four decades. It remains so. We respectfully but profoundly disagree with the senators and the governor.

Do you?

Chuck Epes
Chesapeake Bay Foundation

(Photo credits, top to bottom: iStockphoto.com, iStockphoto.com, Christopher Frederick)

Comments

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Supporters see oil and natural gas, to the extent they exist, as a possible means to a player from Virginia in the energy supply of the part, reducing its dependence on foreign oil contributes.

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