This Week's Feature
Drilling off the Southeast coast:
A zero-sum game
©Charles Shoffner
Opening up areas around the country for offshore oil and gas drilling has floated to the top of America’s national agenda as the debate over rising gas prices and America’s energy supply intensifies. And the South Atlantic coast is smack at the center of the debate.
This rush to allow drilling in the Atlantic Ocean is ill-advised. The beautiful and biologically rich coastline off Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia features some of the most productive estuaries in the country, including the Chesapeake Bay and Pamlico Sound. Our shores also attract millions of visitors each year, from tourists and anglers, to globally rare migratory birds, turtles and whales. Tourism and fishing—both commercial and recreational—are the economic backbone of hundreds of towns and cities along the coast.
The environmental dangers of offshore drilling are well established. Regardless of how carefully implemented and closely monitored, oil spills will happen, at the drilling platforms and during distribution. The risk is greatest in extreme weather, including hurricanes. Further, the refineries, pipelines and other associated infrastructure on land would spoil wetland and marsh ecosystems, which provide untold environmental benefits for Southern communities, including flood control and clean drinking water.
Even if we were to open all the nation’s coastal waters to drilling tomorrow, it would have “insignificant” effects on oil prices, according to the DOE’s Energy Information Administration. It would take at least 22 years to see any effects at all. If every drop of the estimated potential 3.8 billion barrels of oil off the entire Atlantic coast were pumped out, it would supply the country with just six months of energy.
The South—and the country—has too much to lose and too little to gain by opening up the Outer Continental Shelf to offshore drilling. SELC opposes drilling off the South Atlantic coast and is urging lawmakers to instead pursue the least costly, readily available, and most environmentally friendly solution by curbing demand through common sense measures such as increased energy efficiency, conservation, and development of clean, renewable energy.
SELC's position on offshore drilling (PDF, 7 pages)
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