Drill, Virginia, drill?
The debate about offshore oil exploration has landed nearly in Maryland's backyard. The Department of Interior today took the first step towards allowing drilling in the Atlantic Ocean off the Virginia coast - just a little more than 50 miles from Maryland's shore.
The agency announced it would seek expressions of interest in the 4,500-acre tract, with an eye to leasing it in 2011 if it passes an environmental impact review. Federal geologists estimate the area may contain as much as 130 million barrels of oil and 1.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. For more on the proposal, go here.
The offshore opening was created a few months ago in the midst of the nation's energy price fever, when President Bush and Congress collaborated to lift a longstanding ban on new drilling off the nation's coasts.
But the announcement drew immediate criticism from environmentalists, who questioned the location and the timing.
"This would be 50 miles off the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay,'' pointed out Michael Gravitz of Environment America. A catastrophic oil spill might wash into the bay, fouling wetlands and wildlife in the already struggling estuary. He also warned that ocean currents could carry any contaminants northward to Ocean City and the Delaware beaches. At risk, he said, would be the bay's beleagured crabs, Assateague Island's picturesque wild ponies and the mid-Atlantic's popular vacation resorts.
The risk makes little sense, Gravitz added, when you consider that all the oil and gas the federal government estimates might be found there over the 30-year life of the lease would only be enough to supply the nation's needs for a week or two at most.
He and others also pointed out that this move to boost offshore drilling by the Bush administration could easily be reversed by the incoming Democratic team. When gas prices were at their peak in late summer, Obama backed limited offshore drilling, but not as much as the McCain-Palin ticket advocated.
"It does seem they're in a bit of a rush to move this forward,'' said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
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I report on the environment and Chesapeake Bay. A native of West Virginia, I have focused mainly on Maryland's environment since moving here in 1983. Along the way, I've crewed aboard a skipjack in the bay, canoed under city streets up the Jones Fall from the Inner Harbor, and gone deep underground in a western Maryland coal mine. Recently, I have been covering the growth and development transforming the landscape. I love seafood, rambles in the country and good stories. I hope to share some here.
Comments
Graviz, what a joke. Typical NIMBY attitude. Yeah lets make the Gulf Coast region be the only ones to drill for oil and gas.
The technology for clean and environmentally friendly drilling is here.
While this is not meant to be a save all for our oil issues, it will be used as a transition to our independence of foreign oil. Think of it as a cow weening off of its mother, you can't just stop all at once or it will die. Couple domestic drilling with nuclear plants, wind, solar, and hydroelectric (including tidal) sources, we can become independent. BUT without domestic drilling and nuclear we have no chance.
Posted by: JB | November 13, 2008 9:52 AM
Don't call it "clean and environmentally friendly". It is neither. More accurately, it is "more clean and environmentally friendly than it used to be".
Whether offshore drilling is a good idea or not is up to debate. I personally think that there's just enough oil out there to kill the already weak political will to pursue alternative energy sources, but not quite enough to make a significant dent in fuel prices or forigen oil dependence. Nuclear power is a better "transition" choice.
Posted by: JC | November 13, 2008 12:16 PM
Wow, that map has Raleigh not anywhere close to where it should be, that's more like New Bern or Kinston.
Posted by: WC | November 20, 2008 3:03 PM