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Published online 12 September 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1106
News: Briefing
Offshore drilling: black gold?
The US debates how much it wants to explore for oil and gas at sea.
Next week the US Congress will consider energy legislation allowing for the expansion of offshore drilling, long restricted by both congressional and presidential moratoria. In exchange for this boon to the oil and gas industry the legislation would repeal tax incentives the industry now enjoys, putting the money instead into renewable energies.
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Mr. Tollefson, I applaud your article for its objectivity which is so sadly lacking in so very many publications these days. I would add to the discussion by pointing out that we do not know where "most of the oil" is in US waters. Oil exploration is a very expensive process and no one is fool enough to spend hundreds of millions of dollars looking for resources they will not be allowed to develop. They look at the North Slope and the Gulf because that is where drilling is allowed. I would remind you of the analogy of the man looking for his car keys under the only local street light. If you ask him, "Are you sure you lost them here?" He will say, "No, but this is the only place where I have a chance to find them." (And, no he doesn't have a flashlight!) No one thought there was oil in the North Sea but it was where they could look. No one thought there was oil off Brazil, but it was where they could look. Those and many other fields are making their surrounding countries rich-very rich in some cases.
It is imperative that major national economies be crippled - Montreal, Kyoto, oil production - so they do not steal wealth from poor nations who live off demanded charity (taxation of productivity within major national economies). Social activism is about process not product. "Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." George Orwell, "1984"
Wow - Jeff Tolleson's facts on this article are so far off they would be laughable were this situation not so dire. The most shocking error is Tolleson's assertion that only 1.3 million tons of petroleum products make their way into our world's oceans. In fact, according to NASA the actual number is closer to 6 million tons, or .25% of the world's total oil production. http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceancolor/shuttle_oceanography_web/oss_122.shtml As well, the notion that increases to offshore drilling would provide "11 years" is so out of whack, I can't believe you were even able to come up with this number. According to the United States Geological Survey, the best case scenario for extraction is 920 days...18 months...at our current rate of consumption. For anyone interested in finding out the ACTUAL FACTS about offshore drilling, go www.NotTheAnswer.org.
Matt, you need to read on down the page because your comparing apples with bananas. They go on to say, "The greatest volume of petroleum products dumped into the ocean is carried there by rivers. It represents more than triple the quantity coming from all tankers and other ships. Oil and other petroleum products are discharged into rivers and the ocean by many industrial enterprises, including oil refineries and oil storage installations, The quantity of petroleum products dumped each year into the sewage network by gasoline stations twice exceeds the amount resulting from ship disasters." Your dribbling gas on the ground at the gas station is a bigger problem than tanker spills at sea when you multiply the dribbles by the number of people dribbling!