On Wednesday, March 31, President Obama gave an energy speech advocating offshore drilling on the Atlantic Seaboard from the southern tip of New Jersey to Florida’s central coast. There is a 50–mile minimum distance from the shoreline, and in Florida the minimum distance is set at 125 miles. The total area availed for exploration along the Atlantic Seaboard is 167 million ocean acres. Other areas in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and near Alaska were also identified for oil and gas offshore exploration.

According to U. S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.), South Carolina and other Atlantic states would collect 37.5 percent of the revenues from offshore oil and gas.

Graham co–authored the climate and energy legislation with Senators John Kerry (D–Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (I–Conn.). The bill was supposed to be introduced in the U.S. Senate on Monday, April 26, but immigration legislation was given priority by the Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.). Graham announced on Saturday, April 27, he couldn’t move forward on the climate and energy bill with the immigration legislation getting in the way.

Meanwhile, there’s a blowout offshore Louisiana, the first major event of its kind since the 1969 blowout offshore Santa Barbara, California. 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 the California coastline next to Santa Barbara. Oil workers spent almost 12 days to control the leaking well.

But nothing like that has occurred since. And the safety precautions put into play following the Santa Barbara blowout implied preventive measures severe enough to declare 1969 the last year such an accident could happen.

Tuesday night, April 20, just a few hours

after The Columbia Star

Business Section had been sent to the printers, word came from 40 miles offshore Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico that Transocean rig Deepwater Horizon had suffered a blowout. The rig was under contract with oil giant BP PLC. Working on the rig deck, 11 crew members were scattered in the explosion and were lost. They are now presumed dead.

The rig was in the final stages of plugging and temporarily abandoning the well so that BP could return later to extract the crude oil,

according to the Houston

Chronicle. Crews were cementing and installing pipe–like production casing to secure the walls of the well.

After the explosion the rig sank, creating at the wellhead an oil spill emanating 1,000 barrels (42,000 gallons) of crude oil a day from the ocean floor 5,000 feet below the surface. If it takes up to several months to stop the spill, Louisiana sport fishing will be hampered, as will the state’s $2.4 billion per year sea food industry. Under a 1990 U. S. oil pollution law, BP has to pick up the tab for the clean– up.

Rig contractor Switzerland–based Transocean is gearing up its internal investigation, while the U.S. Minerals Management Service has its investigation well under way.

A couple days after the explosion, the White House expressed confidence in the country’s offshore drilling industry. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the explosion at an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was no reason to abandon plans to expand offshore drilling. At the time, Thursday, April 22, the wellhead at the ocean floor did not appear to be leaking. The leaking well was discovered Saturday.

One week after the explosion — by late Monday, April 26 — the thin oil sheen on the ocean’s surface measured about 80 miles by 42 miles, or 3,360 square miles. The oil sheen dissipates easily. But the thicker oil slick of an estimated 1,800 square miles is more than double Santa Barbara’s 800 square miles.

Graham and Kerry and Lieberman are expected to proceed with their climate and energy bill once the immigration issue is managed. In Graham’s bill there are $54 billion in federal loan guarantees to help utilities nail down financing for the next generation of nuclear plants. While searching for more oil, including offshore drilling, the energy sector would also gain incentives for wind and solar power, lessening the demand for imported oil.

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 by up to a third in 15 years, and create new jobs that are coming in the green economy.”

But the chances of an offshore accident are all too apparent. S.C. politicians, especially Gov. Mark Sanford, are slow to endorse exploratory oil and gas drilling 50 miles offshore due to the vulnerability of the state’s $18 billion tourism industry. On the other hand, with the recent blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, a more cautious offshore drilling industry would likely arrive in S.C. waters.

As reported by the

Houston Chronicle,

Chuck Kennecutt, professor of oceanography at Texas A&M University, doesn’t think the coast is so threatened: “This is far enough offshore that at least for the time being the likelihood of it washing up into the sensitive areas on the shore is probably fairly low.”