Wednesday, August 19, 2009
President Obama: America's Arctic Deserves Protection
The Surfrider Foundation is not active on issues in Alaska, but many of our partner organizations are and it's clearly a major center of the new oil drilling debate.
Check out this video from the Alaska Wilderness League
Friday, August 14, 2009
Oil Drilling Near Florida's Beaches is Not the Answer!
Surfrider Foundation joined with 16 other environmental organizations in July 2009 in sending the following letter to US Senators. Congress will again be considering risking the beaches and coastal economy of Florida by allowing new oil drilling close to shore when they return from their summer recess.
On behalf of the millions of members of our organizations, we are writing to oppose any legislation that would allow new oil and gas drilling off our coasts. Specifically, we ask that you remove language in American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 reversing the bipartisan agreement reached in the 2006 Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA). Our energy policy should promote responsible renewable energy, be based on sound science, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, Florida’s coasts are being sold to the highest bidder—the oil industry.
The risks to Florida's economy are great. Florida is dependent on its $65 billion-a-year tourism industry, which relies in large part on clean coastal waters and beaches for activities like swimming, boating and fishing. The risk of oil pollution -- from the drilling process, tankers and leaking or broken pipelines -- contaminating Gulf waters and washing ashore is real. The prevalence of hurricanes in this part of the country increases the threat of catastrophic spills. A spill in the eastern Gulf could potentially be carried by currents to coastal beaches, and to the Florida Keys.
Additionally the Eastern Gulf of Mexico houses a remarkable diversity of marine and coastal ecosystems, including coral reefs, mangroves, bays, estuaries, and tidal flats. The Gulf of Mexico is home to an abundance of marine wildlife, both in the shallow and the deep sea: from the surface where bluefin tuna spawn to the coral gardens which serve as nurseries for a variety of fish and other marine life. Increased oil development would threaten many of the habitats and structures that make the eastern Gulf so diverse.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee turned its back on Florida by agreeing to language that would allow drilling within 10 miles of Pensacola, and shrink the current 125-mile-wide buffer elsewhere along Florida's West Coast to 45 miles. In doing so, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is undoing an agreement made in 2006 to protect Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The 2006 GOMESA granted long-term protections until 2022 for Florida's Gulf Coast, in exchange for 8.2 million acres of drilling rights in previously-protected areas. In the absence of a moratorium on offshore drilling or other protections the Senate is setting a dangerous precedent with respect to the management of our oceans and marine ecosystems by going back on its agreement.
The Senate should create energy policy that increases investments in responsible renewable energy development consistent with the protection of wildlife and habitat, and that promotes energy efficiency and conservation, while creating jobs in new clean energy sectors, without putting our oceans and coasts and the economies they support at risk.
In the face of climate change, the continued extraction and burning of offshore oil and gas reserves makes even less sense. Global warming and ocean acidification threaten our ocean ecosystems, including low lying coastal areas, and coral reefs.
We urge you to uphold the commitment made by the Senate in 2006 to protect the treasured resources of Florida’s Gulf Coast, and to continue your efforts to move our nation away from the old and outdated energy policies of the past and toward a bright future of carbon-free energy, that maintains the health of our oceans and planet.
On behalf of the millions of members of our organizations, we are writing to oppose any legislation that would allow new oil and gas drilling off our coasts. Specifically, we ask that you remove language in American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 reversing the bipartisan agreement reached in the 2006 Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA). Our energy policy should promote responsible renewable energy, be based on sound science, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, Florida’s coasts are being sold to the highest bidder—the oil industry.
The risks to Florida's economy are great. Florida is dependent on its $65 billion-a-year tourism industry, which relies in large part on clean coastal waters and beaches for activities like swimming, boating and fishing. The risk of oil pollution -- from the drilling process, tankers and leaking or broken pipelines -- contaminating Gulf waters and washing ashore is real. The prevalence of hurricanes in this part of the country increases the threat of catastrophic spills. A spill in the eastern Gulf could potentially be carried by currents to coastal beaches, and to the Florida Keys.
Additionally the Eastern Gulf of Mexico houses a remarkable diversity of marine and coastal ecosystems, including coral reefs, mangroves, bays, estuaries, and tidal flats. The Gulf of Mexico is home to an abundance of marine wildlife, both in the shallow and the deep sea: from the surface where bluefin tuna spawn to the coral gardens which serve as nurseries for a variety of fish and other marine life. Increased oil development would threaten many of the habitats and structures that make the eastern Gulf so diverse.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee turned its back on Florida by agreeing to language that would allow drilling within 10 miles of Pensacola, and shrink the current 125-mile-wide buffer elsewhere along Florida's West Coast to 45 miles. In doing so, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is undoing an agreement made in 2006 to protect Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The 2006 GOMESA granted long-term protections until 2022 for Florida's Gulf Coast, in exchange for 8.2 million acres of drilling rights in previously-protected areas. In the absence of a moratorium on offshore drilling or other protections the Senate is setting a dangerous precedent with respect to the management of our oceans and marine ecosystems by going back on its agreement.
The Senate should create energy policy that increases investments in responsible renewable energy development consistent with the protection of wildlife and habitat, and that promotes energy efficiency and conservation, while creating jobs in new clean energy sectors, without putting our oceans and coasts and the economies they support at risk.
In the face of climate change, the continued extraction and burning of offshore oil and gas reserves makes even less sense. Global warming and ocean acidification threaten our ocean ecosystems, including low lying coastal areas, and coral reefs.
We urge you to uphold the commitment made by the Senate in 2006 to protect the treasured resources of Florida’s Gulf Coast, and to continue your efforts to move our nation away from the old and outdated energy policies of the past and toward a bright future of carbon-free energy, that maintains the health of our oceans and planet.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Oil interests sense weakness in California Legislature
by Amy Smart & Dan Jacobson in the Capitol Weekly:
Last week the state Assembly defeated a plan to drill off the coast of Santa Barbara. But the group behind this plan, a Houston-based oil company called Plains Exploration and Production, Co. (PXP), isn’t about to give up -- not when it has spent millions so far on PR and lobbying.
Wall Street investors, having heard that PXP’s lobbying efforts were able to get Gov. Schwarzenegger to reverse his position on drilling, have been pouring money into PXP. And the pressure is on PXP to push through its deal.
Later this month, PXP plans to resurrect the Tranquillion Ridge offshore oil drilling bill. Once again the company will blitz legislators with a hardball campaign and lobbying agenda.
While PXP (and the Wall Streeters who are betting on it) will make billions of dollars by tapping into a miniscule amount of oil (barely 10.13 billion gallons), millions of Californians will suffer.
The modern anti-offshore drilling movement gained significant steam after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. At that time, approximately 100,000 barrels of crude spilled into the ocean, contaminating 150 miles of coast as well as devastating delicate marine ecosystems and endangering wildlife. It provided a vivid image of how dangerous offshore drilling is.
Now sensing weakness in the Legislature, today’s oil industry hopes to capitalize on the current budget crisis and tempt lawmakers with big oil money. Offshore oil drilling is not a viable alternative. Drilling has been—and still is—a dirty and dangerous business.
For years oil companies have talked about environmental safety and improved technology. They used this argument in 1989, when oil tanker Exxon Valdez dumped 10.8 million gallons of crude into Alaska’s Prince William Sound; in 2005 when hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in 743,700 gallons of oil spilled; in 2007 when cargo vessel Cosco Busan hit the Bay Bridge and spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the San Francisco bay; and Wednesday, when a leak in a Texas oil rig spilled 58,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
According to recent reports drilling is dirty. Drilling a new well fills the surrounding ocean waters with thousands of gallons of lubricant containing arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, petroleum hydrocarbons, aluminum and other heavy metals. Air pollution from a single rig is equivalent to 7,000 cars each driving 50 miles per day.
And that’s not including the spills, which are alarmingly frequent: Federal agencies reported that between 2006 and the early part of 2009 there were over 2,069 oil related incidents involved in offshore drilling.
It’s important to remember why the California coast has been free from offshore oil drilling for 40 years. The coast defines California. It’s where we relax, swim, surf, sail and fish. It’s home to thousands of species of marine wildlife that use California waters for migrating, breeding and habitation. Our coast is worth protecting, and Californians know it.
With so much money on the line oil companies will try to use the recent PPIC poll as reason to open our coast to oil drilling. But what the numbers really indicate are years of aggressive and expensive PR and lobbying efforts—more than $17 million (lobbying alone) in California since the beginning of 2005. The truth is offshore oil drilling is a risky and imperfect solution, and has no place off our coast. Californians have no intention of selling out. The oil industry can spend as much as it wants on publicity stunts to manipulate public opinion, but we aren’t fooled.
We love our coast. It must remain clean and safe.
Last week the state Assembly defeated a plan to drill off the coast of Santa Barbara. But the group behind this plan, a Houston-based oil company called Plains Exploration and Production, Co. (PXP), isn’t about to give up -- not when it has spent millions so far on PR and lobbying.
Wall Street investors, having heard that PXP’s lobbying efforts were able to get Gov. Schwarzenegger to reverse his position on drilling, have been pouring money into PXP. And the pressure is on PXP to push through its deal.
Later this month, PXP plans to resurrect the Tranquillion Ridge offshore oil drilling bill. Once again the company will blitz legislators with a hardball campaign and lobbying agenda.
While PXP (and the Wall Streeters who are betting on it) will make billions of dollars by tapping into a miniscule amount of oil (barely 10.13 billion gallons), millions of Californians will suffer.
The modern anti-offshore drilling movement gained significant steam after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. At that time, approximately 100,000 barrels of crude spilled into the ocean, contaminating 150 miles of coast as well as devastating delicate marine ecosystems and endangering wildlife. It provided a vivid image of how dangerous offshore drilling is.
Now sensing weakness in the Legislature, today’s oil industry hopes to capitalize on the current budget crisis and tempt lawmakers with big oil money. Offshore oil drilling is not a viable alternative. Drilling has been—and still is—a dirty and dangerous business.
For years oil companies have talked about environmental safety and improved technology. They used this argument in 1989, when oil tanker Exxon Valdez dumped 10.8 million gallons of crude into Alaska’s Prince William Sound; in 2005 when hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in 743,700 gallons of oil spilled; in 2007 when cargo vessel Cosco Busan hit the Bay Bridge and spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the San Francisco bay; and Wednesday, when a leak in a Texas oil rig spilled 58,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
According to recent reports drilling is dirty. Drilling a new well fills the surrounding ocean waters with thousands of gallons of lubricant containing arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, petroleum hydrocarbons, aluminum and other heavy metals. Air pollution from a single rig is equivalent to 7,000 cars each driving 50 miles per day.
And that’s not including the spills, which are alarmingly frequent: Federal agencies reported that between 2006 and the early part of 2009 there were over 2,069 oil related incidents involved in offshore drilling.
It’s important to remember why the California coast has been free from offshore oil drilling for 40 years. The coast defines California. It’s where we relax, swim, surf, sail and fish. It’s home to thousands of species of marine wildlife that use California waters for migrating, breeding and habitation. Our coast is worth protecting, and Californians know it.
With so much money on the line oil companies will try to use the recent PPIC poll as reason to open our coast to oil drilling. But what the numbers really indicate are years of aggressive and expensive PR and lobbying efforts—more than $17 million (lobbying alone) in California since the beginning of 2005. The truth is offshore oil drilling is a risky and imperfect solution, and has no place off our coast. Californians have no intention of selling out. The oil industry can spend as much as it wants on publicity stunts to manipulate public opinion, but we aren’t fooled.
We love our coast. It must remain clean and safe.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Miami Herald Says: Keep Florida safe from offshore drilling
OUR OPINION: Protect Florida's beaches and fisheries from pollution threats
When the Florida House of Representatives this spring passed a bill to allow oil and gas drilling three miles off Florida's coast, Senate President Jeff Atwater called the measure ``dead in the water,'' and it went nowhere. This left intact no-drilling zones 125 miles off the Panhandle and 235 miles west of Tampa.
But drilling fever is spreading in Florida -- to the state's peril.
Mr. Atwater, a North Palm Beach Republican, has one more year heading the Senate. Meantime, his designated successor, Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Indialantic, plans to co-author a new drilling bill with incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park.
The new measure would allow the Florida Cabinet to issue oil leases five to six miles offshore. The motivation, the lawmakers say, is money. A Daytona Beach group of oil companies commissioned a study by Orlando economist Hank Fishkind that suggests the state could reap $2.4 billion a year from drilling. Also, two proposals in Congress would encourage cash-strapped states to increase offshore drilling by giving them a cut of the profits -- 37 percent in one bill.
Both measures are dangerously short-sighted. While drilling techniques have improved when it comes to environmental risks, pollution threats remain from transporting oil. Pipelines can leak; tankers can founder on reefs. It isn't just Florida's beaches at risk but also its fisheries.
Two rays of hope for protecting Florida are our gubernatorial candidates -- Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum and Democrat Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink. Both oppose drilling any closer.
Florida's tourism and fisheries industries deserve the utmost protection.
When the Florida House of Representatives this spring passed a bill to allow oil and gas drilling three miles off Florida's coast, Senate President Jeff Atwater called the measure ``dead in the water,'' and it went nowhere. This left intact no-drilling zones 125 miles off the Panhandle and 235 miles west of Tampa.
But drilling fever is spreading in Florida -- to the state's peril.
Mr. Atwater, a North Palm Beach Republican, has one more year heading the Senate. Meantime, his designated successor, Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Indialantic, plans to co-author a new drilling bill with incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park.
The new measure would allow the Florida Cabinet to issue oil leases five to six miles offshore. The motivation, the lawmakers say, is money. A Daytona Beach group of oil companies commissioned a study by Orlando economist Hank Fishkind that suggests the state could reap $2.4 billion a year from drilling. Also, two proposals in Congress would encourage cash-strapped states to increase offshore drilling by giving them a cut of the profits -- 37 percent in one bill.
Both measures are dangerously short-sighted. While drilling techniques have improved when it comes to environmental risks, pollution threats remain from transporting oil. Pipelines can leak; tankers can founder on reefs. It isn't just Florida's beaches at risk but also its fisheries.
Two rays of hope for protecting Florida are our gubernatorial candidates -- Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum and Democrat Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink. Both oppose drilling any closer.
Florida's tourism and fisheries industries deserve the utmost protection.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Breathing Easier in CA; Coasts Still Threatened in FL
California dodged an oily bullet over the weekend when the State Assembly rejected Governor Schwarzenegger's proposed end-run around the State Lands Commission , who had voted down a new offsore oil drilling project off Santa Barbara in February.
Meanwhile, the coast of Florida is still in jeopardy from proposed new oil drilling as Senators from Louisiana and Alaska have introduced legislation to allow drilling close to the coast in exchange for a cut of the oil drilling revenues.
How much is an oily beach worth to you? Not much. How about a clean beach? Priceless.
Meanwhile, the coast of Florida is still in jeopardy from proposed new oil drilling as Senators from Louisiana and Alaska have introduced legislation to allow drilling close to the coast in exchange for a cut of the oil drilling revenues.
How much is an oily beach worth to you? Not much. How about a clean beach? Priceless.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Gov. Schwarzenegger Flip-Flops on Offshore Drilling in California
Desperately searching for ways to address his state's budget woes, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has made an about-face, and is now calling for new offshore drilling along the state's coastline.
After years of publicly opposing offshore drilling, Schwarzenegger is now seeking to open up the Tranquillon Ridge area off the Santa Barbara coastline for new offshore oil drilling. In January the California’s State Land Commission rejected a plan to open up the area for drilling by a 2 to 1 vote. Undaunted, Schwarzenegger now wants to bypass the Lands Commission and take the matter directly to the state legislature in Sacramento.
Must be nice to make up the rules as you go along...
After years of publicly opposing offshore drilling, Schwarzenegger is now seeking to open up the Tranquillon Ridge area off the Santa Barbara coastline for new offshore oil drilling. In January the California’s State Land Commission rejected a plan to open up the area for drilling by a 2 to 1 vote. Undaunted, Schwarzenegger now wants to bypass the Lands Commission and take the matter directly to the state legislature in Sacramento.
Must be nice to make up the rules as you go along...
Monday, July 6, 2009
The ugly truth of offshore drilling
There are a lot of myths about what offshore oil drilling will and won't do.
Over the holiday weekend Dr. Enid Sisskin* wrote a great opinion piece for the Pensacola News Journal highlight the myths and realities surround offshore oil drilling. It reads a lot like our Myths and Truths FAQ.
Here are Dr. Sisskin's:
Myth: With the new technology, drilling is so safe that there's no threat of pollution and spills.
Reality: Drilling for oil or gas offshore is a dirty, polluting business from beginning to end. From initial seismic exploration, associated with mortality of ocean life, through the exploration and production process and pipeline placement, to the explosive removal of rigs, every aspect of drilling contributes to environmental degradation.
Even with the newest technologies, oil companies still legally pollute by dumping drilling muds, cuttings, produced waters, drainage and workover fluids into the water every day. These toxic wastes contain heavy metals, carcinogens, solids, sanitary wastes, biocides, radioactive material and more.
Each platform also legally spews tons of nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds and particulates yearly, which pollute the air and contribute to climate change.
And every year there are numerous oil spills, blowouts, fires and other accidents. The latest government environmental documents predict at least one major spill a year.
Myth: There was no oil spilled or rigs damaged during the hurricanes of the last few years. That was claimed so many times that even government officials repeated it.
Reality: More than a million gallons of oil and other petroleum products were spilled into the Gulf, 378 rigs and platforms were damaged or destroyed, and some are still leaking today and may continue to leak for up to 10 years.
Myth: Most of our oil resources are off-limits to exploration, and we don't produce much oil in this country.
Reality: More than 79 percent of estimated U.S. oil reserves are in areas available to exploration. More than 68 million acres are currently available to drill, including 8 million acres opened by the compromise bill of 2006. Since 2001, the number of drilling permits issued has tripled. The United States is the third-largest oil producer in the world, producing over 7 million barrels of oil a day.
We consume 21 million barrels a day; it isn't our production that's the problem, it's our consumption.
The cruelest myth: If we are willing to risk our economy, environment and military presence to allow drilling near our shores, gas prices will decrease substantially.
Reality: According to the Energy Department, if we were to open every area for exploration that has any oil, at the peak of production, gas prices might decrease by a few pennies at most.
Read the whole piece here.
*Enid Sisskin, PhD, is chair of the Unite Escambia Environment Solutions Team and adjunct professor of environmental health at the University of West Florida
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