Obama’s plan

The Obama administ rat ion’s new plan for offshore oil explo- ration and drilling through 2017 includes the Atlantic Seaboard, but drilling is banned from New Jersey north and from the central coast of Florida south, according to a speech by President Obama at Andrews air base outside Washington on Wednesday, March 31. What remains available for drilling between Florida’s central coast and New Jersey is more than 167 million ocean acres. From Mexico to Canada, where there is no support for offshore drilling and where recoverable oil is probably not expected to be found in quantity, the entire Pacific Coast is also banned.

Obstacles, though, still lie in the way south of New Jersey: environmental studies, air permits, earthquake studies and other environmental studies. Once past the environmental obstacles, then the applications for drilling permits can proceed.

One permit already well under way is concerned with drilling 50 miles off the Virginia coast, but that won’t start until 2012, the soonest possible time.

Risk

S.C. Governor Mark Sanford is not wholeheartedly in favor of drilling, shar ing a fear of spills with manycoastal residents and developers. He worries if new energy reserves and drilling industry revenue outweigh the risks to an $18 billion tourist industry, even if the offshore rigs cannot locate any closer than 50 miles offshore.

The last major oil spill off American shores was near Santa Barbara in 1969. After 41 years, the spill still resonates with the anti–drilling forces. In late January and early February 1969, more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil bubbled to the surface and was spread into an 800 square mile slick, marring 35 miles of coastline. Oil workers spent almost 12 days to control the leaking well. All told, the deaths of 3686 birds were attributed to the spill.

Reportedly, inadequate protective casing was at fault. Union Oil, the failed platform owner/ operator, had been given permission by the U.S. Geological Survey to fall short of a fail–safe accommodation. Beyond California’s three–mile coastal zone, Union Oil’s offshore rig did not have to comply with state standards, which at the time were far more rigid than the federal government’s.

With federal standards well above what failed at Santa Barbara 41 years ago, the potential exploration and drilling activities off the S.C. coast still manages to ignite fears and protests as if Charleston were the next Santa Barbara.

Early signals

Issuing fair warning to the foes of offshore drilling, President Obama long ago laid it out on the campaigntrail in the second presi- dential debate: “I believe in the need for increased oil production. We’re going to have to explore new ways to get more oil, and that includes offshore drilling. It includes telling the oil companies, that currently have 68 million acres that they’re not using, that either you use them or you lose them.” And in his State of the Union address, Obama said that weaning the country from foreign oil required “tough decisions about opening new offshore

areas for oil and gas development.”

Legislation

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) heard Obama loud and clear then. And Sen. Graham sees the real possibility of bringing the offshore industry to South Carolina, marshaling his in–state pro–drilling forces ahead of Florida’s divided politicians led by U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D–Fla.).

Inside the U. S. Senate, Nelson has issued a statement against offshore drilling, saying he and nine fellow Democrat senators cannot support an expansion of offshore drilling.

Graham openly thanked Obama for his March 31 speech and for taking “baby steps” on the path to offshore drilling, according to the

Greenville News. In his climate and energy legislative proposal, authored jointly with Sens. John Kerry (D–Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I–Conn.), Graham is trying to connect a nuclear energy renaissance with an expansion of offshore drilling, lessening the demand for oil while searching for more oil, both at the same time and both under the same legislation. Wind and solar energy are also included as Graham’s targets for increased incentives. As Graham put it, “...but we hope to have something to roll out by the end of April. It’s a bill that will get us on the path to energy independence, reduce our foreign oil dependence by up to a third in 15 years, and create new jobs that are coming in the green economy.”

Graham sees South Carolina sharing in the revenue from successful offshore drilling, collecting “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

How much?

Offshore exploration is one thing, but succ essful extrac- tion is the bottom line. How much oil and gas is out there? Ben Cahill, a manager at PFC Energy was interviewed on the PBS program “All Things Considered” on March 31 soon after Obama’s Andrews air base speech. Cahill said in answer to the question about what could be possibly waiting just over the 50–mile limit offshore the Mid– Atlantic and South Atlantic states, “The Mid– Atlantic and South Atlantic states offshore of Virginia–Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina — those are areas where there’s really been very little exploration, to none at all. So it’s much more difficult to say what might be there.”

The Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior suggests the Carolina Trough, a basin in the Atlantic Ocean running along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, could contain more than 100 million barrels of oil and maybe 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Pro–drilling supporters like to argue those estimates could be low, way low, and the gamble to drill for what might be much more is worth the risk.

As of April 20, according to the Myrtle Beach

Sun News, seven companies have already applied for permits to explore for oil and natural gas along all or part of the Southeast coast, including South Carolina in each of the seven cases. The general public appears to be cheering on the seven companies. In a national Pew survey in February, the latest on the subject, 63 percent of Americans favor expanded offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters.