Offshore drilling could bring Florida prosperity
David Batt, Director of Consumer Energy Alliance of Florida, submitted the following Op-Ed to several Florida publications on March 25, 2008.
Offshore drilling could bring Florida prosperity
The economic prosperity and national security of our country dictates that the distortions and false assertions about offshore oil and gas production be challenged. Many Floridians are already letting it be known that they have had enough of this political demagoguery. The Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Thomas wrote on January 31, 2008 “It’s the perception of offshore rigs, not any real hazard they present, that’s a problem”. Thomas added “we are pandering to coastal counties, environmentalists and editorial boards about a non existing threat”.
The facts support such a statement. There has not been a problem on the beaches in this country from offshore drilling for 38 years and the technology to control any potential problem is light years ahead of where it was then. Also, that spill at Santa Barbara, California was from a well only 6 miles off the coast. No one is proposing drilling any where near that close to Florida. A great example of how the industry and the government know how to conduct offshore production in an environmentally sound manner is what happened during hurricane Katrina. When that storm was a category 5 plowing through the offshore production facilities in the central Gulf, it destroyed 113 platforms and damaged 457 pipeline segments yet, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) press release of May 1, 2006, “no shoreline or wildlife impacts were noted”.
The real concern for Florida should be what is happening to the cost of fuel to bring the tourist to Florida. We are seeing more and more statistical proof that the high prices are affecting the number of visitors to our state and that in turn is affecting sales tax receipts.
At a time when the state’s coffers are shrinking, our policy makers should be looking at ways to hold down the costs of energy. They might also look down the road to the day when Florida could reap the financial rewards of royalty revenue from oil and gas production off our shores. The states of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas will be drawing revenues from recently announced record-breaking $3.7 billion oil and gas leases located 125 miles south of the Florida Panhandle, however, Florida will not profit from the deal under a 2006 agreement that specified how far such drilling must be from our coast.
Another major economic concern for our state is the high cost of generating our electricity. Now that the policy makers have ruled out new coal fired power plants, natural gas will increase dramatically as the needed feedstock for such production. The state currently produces about 37 percent of its electricity from natural gas and the prediction is that by 2015, electricity prices will be 26 percent higher because of the new state policy. Natural gas reserves are abundantly available in nearby Gulf waters, but are currently blocked by the offshore drilling ban.
One final concern often voiced by misinformed drilling opponents is the issue of providing an adequate buffer for military training. Such activity must be protected and the vast areas that are set aside for that purpose should continue to have first priority to assure our defense needs. However, it is important to note that our nation needs more domestic production of oil and gas to ensure adequate supplies of those essential commodities for military use. For years the oil and gas industry secured U. S. Government sanctioned leases in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico with lease stipulations that created “drilling windows” allowing both activities to take place simultaneously when appropriate and requiring lease holders to give priority to military testing operations when deemed in need by the military..
One example of the use of such “windows” was the exploration of a small section of Destin Dome areas south of Panama City where American companies invested more than 100 million dollars exploring for oil and gas. In fact, a huge discovery of clean burning, much needed natural gas was discovered in that area and sits unproduced because of political action which lead to a buy back of much of the lease area about 30 miles south of our coast. Fortunately, some of those leases remain in private hands and production of natural gas could begin in a year or two if our politicians gave the OK. Much of the production could take place with sub sea completions that the military would find no more problematic than the Gulfstream pipeline which traverses from Mobile to Tampa Bay supplying natural gas to Florida largely from Gulf production. The Gulfstream pipeline construction project took place a few years ago and required industrial presence for many, many months in the significant military testing area.
We must stop the pandering and encourage our elected officials to listen to the 63 percent of Floridians who recently responded to a poll saying that drilling should be allowed off the coast of Florida. The old tired cliché that the U.S. “won’t ever drill its way to energy independence” just doesn’t stand up. The 1.5 million barrels per day of oil from central and western Gulf of Mexico waters is equivalent to our imports from Saudi Arabia. According to conservative estimates from the MMS there are about 52 billion barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off the lower 48 states.
Our economic and national security is at stake and the increased domestic production is needed now. It is possible to protect our environment and tourism if we work at this in a calm and reasoned manner. The Consumer Energy Alliance of Florida, a new and rapidly growing statewide coalition of businesses and organizations supports the improved utilization, conservation and diversification of all domestic energy resources from nuclear to new and improved alternative sources, but to better bridge the time gap in reaching maximum benefit of such production, CEA Florida believes it is imperative that increased domestic oil and gas production be the immediate goal. All Floridians should let our elected officials know we support this goal and we want them to take action to implement such policy to help hold down the skyrocketing cost of energy. It will not happen unless we make our voices heard now.
