Charlotte Sun: Slippery Oil Drilling Idea is Bad Policy
Editorial Board
Charlotte Sun
Apr 25, 2009
OUR POSITION: Why risk permanent damage to Florida's powerful brand: sunshine and beaches?
Florida's calling card is sunshine and beaches. Trading that for sketchy promises of oil and gas royalties and cheaper gas is a bad deal.
So red flags flew when a House committee approved, and oil industry lobbyists applauded, a suddenly introduced bill to allow the governor and Cabinet to approve oil drilling in state waters within 10 miles of Florida's coast.
The usual public scrutiny that bills, even specialty license plate bills, receive was completely absent. Even the Cabinet members who would be given the responsibility for drilling approvals seemed caught by surprise. A spokesman for Attorney General Bill McCollum said he was "open-minded" to the proposal, but later amended his reaction to "skeptical."
The incredibly flexible Gov. Charlie Crist, who campaigned against drilling in federal waters when he ran for governor, performed another policy twist in announcing his own open-mindedness. The House proposal, which was so stealthy that it has no Senate companion, would allow drilling even closer to Florida's beaches than the 10-mile federal boundary.
The House committee took a page from the playbook of former President George W. Bush, who signed an order lifting a 27-year-old ban on coastal drilling five days before leaving office. That measure galvanized drilling opponents who noted the irony of the fact that it came within days of the 40th anniversary of the nation's most disastrous drilling-related oil spill.
The 1969 Santa Barbara spill covered 800 square miles of ocean waters and 150 miles of shoreline with 3.2 million gallons of oil. Corpses of dolphins, seals, fish and birds washed up on the state's beaches and triggered a wave of stricter regulation of oil drilling. Nonetheless, more than 50 spills, some up to 20,000 gallons, have occurred off California since, according to the California Legislature's Coastal Caucus.
We understand the change in popular sentiment that makes it more politically palatable to consider allowing drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The potential revenue oil royalties would generate are a tempting lure during a fiscal crisis.
But oil and gas companies have thousands of active leases on millions of acres of federal land (including seabeds) that they are not exploiting, or even exploring. Oil companies have deactivated more than half of their exploratory rigs in the country since last year in response to lower prices and falling demand for gas and oil, according to Baker Hughes, Inc., a Houston-based oil and gas industry analyst.
Drilling proponents are exploiting a misconception that drilling in coastal waters will lower the cost of gasoline for American motorists. Studies by government agencies, industry trade groups and environmental organizations all concur the potential savings is pennies per gallon. But since oil is sold on the global market, not steered toward the producing country, those savings aren't a certainty.
When a proposal pops up toward the end of a legislative session, your eyes aren't the sense you need to know if it's a good idea. The smell gives it away. Sneaky political tactics that risk our most valuable asset just plain stink.