Pensacola News Journal: Drilling in the Gulf Will Threaten Florida Coastlines
Editorial Board
Pensacola News Journal (subscription required)
Jun 11, 2009
We understand the hard truth that as long as there is oil and natural gas buried in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, there will be a struggle to decide whether to drill for those valuable resources. Nevertheless, we are deeply troubled by a Senate committee's approval to open the eastern Gulf to oil and gas drilling within 10 miles off Pensacola's coast.
Opening our coasts to destructive drilling would do little to lower gas prices or make us more energy independent. What it would do is threaten our beaches with pollution and oil spills and could adversely affect our multi-billion tourism and fishing industries.
Congress last year ended a 25-year drilling ban that had prevented energy development along 85 percent of the nation's Outer Continental Shelf from New England to the Pacific Northwest. But the eastern Gulf region remained off limits under the 2006 law.
But this week the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee added a provision onto an expansive bill that would radically reduce no-drilling zones in the eastern Gulf to 10 miles off the Panhandle and from 235 miles down to 45 miles off Tampa and coastal communities to the south.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has vowed to fight the move and restore the state's 125-mile minimum buffer zone of protection against offshore drilling.
He's absolutely right in his assessment that opening the Gulf to drilling could hamper military flight training in a weapons range that stretches across the Gulf and do little to ease our dependency on foreign oil or reduce gas prices.
The harsh reality is that Florida's beaches and coastlines are vital recreational, economic and ecological treasures that will be polluted by an increase in offshore oil drilling. Any coastline threatened by offshore drilling could devastate our economy that relies so heavily on tourism.
Instead of advocating for expedient and environmentally harmful ways to meet the nation's oil demands, we need a comprehensive and sustainable energy plan that includes energy conservation.
Florida's economic and environmental health depends on keeping oil and gas drilling away from its coastlines.