June 21st, 2008, 02:00 AM
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| Fact Checker
Join Date: Feb 2000 Location: MSU- E. Lansing, MI
Posts: 6,271
| Offshore Drilling: Fact Vs. Fiction
A recently released Congressional report produced by the House's Natural Resources Committee, found the following: - Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361 percent.
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In other words, more drilling does not mean lower gas prices. But if you still believe – as the President apparently does – that high gas prices are a simple matter of supply and demand (and not the result of oil company greed or price manipulation from speculators), then there are already vast tracts of land, leased and ready for drilling, that the oil companies are just sitting on.
| According to the Congressional report: - Onshore, there are 47.5 million acres of federal land leased by oil and gas companies, and yet those companies are only drilling on 13 million acres (34.5 million acres unused)
- Offshore, there are 44 million acres of land leased by oil and gas companies, but they are only drilling on 10.5 million acres (33.5 million acres unused)
- Which means, right now, without having to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or off the coast of Florida, there are 68 million acres of federal land – both on and off shore – that are ready for drilling but are sitting idle.
- According to the Bureau of Land Management, since 2004, oil and gas companies have received 28,776 permits to drill on public land, but only 18,954 have actually been used. Which means the oil and gas companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 permits.
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If the oil companies actually went ahead and drilled on all of the land currently available to them, it would generate an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil a day, which would nearly double the amount of oil produced within the United States.
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Originally Posted by John McCain "As for offshore drilling, it's safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston," |
Here again are the facts: - According to the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), hurricanes Rita and Katrina destroyed 113 oil platforms and damaged 457 pipelines.
- The MMS reported that the 2005 hurricanes caused 124 spills resulting in 741,000 gallons of petroleum from offshore rigs, platforms, and pipelines being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico.
- Last year, 3 million gallons of fuel oil were spilled into the Gulf after a double-hulled tanker hit a submerged oil platform that collapsed during Hurricane Rita.
Also, the rigs themselves are an environmental hazard. The Sierra Club,
compiling information from various federal agencies, notes that: - Routine offshore drilling operations dump thousands of pounds of "drilling muds" (containing heavy metals like cadmium, chromium, arsenic, and lead) into the Gulf of Mexico. The routine pollution can cause severe disruption to marine environments and health and reproductive problems for marine mammals and fish species.
- A single exploratory well dumps approximately 25,000 tons of toxic metals into the ocean.
- A single production platform can have between 50-100 wells and can discharge 90,000 metric tons of drilling fluids, wastes, and metal cuttings into the ocean.
- Offshore drilling releases "toxic brines" that are pockets of water that are trapped in the geologic pockets where gas and oil occur. This toxic brine contains NORMS (naturally occurring radioactive materials), cadmium, lead, and benzene. The petroleum industry admits that up to 1.5 million barrels of toxic brine are discharged into the Gulf every day.
http://cbs4.com/defedecolumn/offshore.drilling.fact.2.752174.html |
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