planet earth looks blue

Since the ban on outer continental shelf drilling has ended, and drilling isn’t a hot topic now that gas is down to $2/gallon, the US Interior Department thought it was a great time to lease 2.9 million acres of ocean to natural gas and oil companies.  And while environmentalists have their heads turned towards the west, they made this move off the coast of Virginia, just a month before the official end of Bush’s term.  One last hurrah for the oil president?  

Because of the skyrocket oil prices this year, Bush had repealed the presidential ban on offshore drilling that his father put in place.  And why did the former, wiser Bush ban drilling in the first place?  Because its a fools game.  Drilling will call up an influx of toxins into the ocean, releasing Neptune’s box of mercury, lead, and arsenic into the water, and into the blood stream of all life in the ocean, and eventually into the life stream of us land dwellers.  The seismic tests that the oil companies have to run  drive sea mammal life crazy.  Just this summer near Madagascar 100 whales beached themselves, leading Exxon-Mobile to actually suspend their drilling efforts there.  Where they leased the ocean in Virginia there are 300-400 North Atlantic Right whales left in existence who will be affected when they migrate through the area.  Aside from the environmental issues of putting our energy baggage on the ocean, there is the problem of cost.  One oil rig alone costs half a billion dollars at this point  because the demand is so high.  Not to mention the price of the infrastructure needed to build offshore, and then actually transport oil back to land is going to cost several fortunes.  In the case of the Virginia waters, this is all for a potential 130 million barrels of oil, and a little over a trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  In the US, we consume about 20 million barrels of oil a day.  So all that effort, money, and damage for six and a half days of energy independence.  

I wonder what could be done if the capital and manpower were put into developing real energy independence, instead of chasing a high that is never going to last.  And we know its not going to last; we know it going to hurt us in the future.  Sounds like the bad decision making of an oil-addict.  

The good news in all of this is that because it is so difficult, expensive and time-consuming to drill offshore, Obama has plenty of time to put in another presidential ban on offshore drilling.  So hopefully we can stop wasting our time on something worthless, and put our energies into innovation.  Maybe there’s that kid right now, in the seventh grade, with an open-mind, a great imagination, and the desire to change the world.  Wouldn’t hurt to invest a few of those energy dollars in his education.  

2008-12-21