Our lives revolve around oil. Oil brings food to our stores, comprises the fibers in our carpets and makes the plastic in our DVDs. With demand so high it’s no wonder attention has turned to supply, with some advocating the U.S. lift the ban against drilling for oil off its coasts. Is offshore oil drilling a golden opportunity, or would it only create a tidal wave of disaster?
Contrary to claims by the oil industry, there is no safe way to drill our coasts. Where there is drilling, there are oil spills. Each year U.S. drilling operations send an average of 880,000 gallons of oil into the ocean. Oil is toxic for most fish and other marine species. According to the National Academy of Sciences, cleanup methods can only remove a small fraction of oil spilled in marine waters. Even a medium sized spill can be a major economic disaster in coastal areas dependent on tourism or fishing as a major economic driver.
Offshore drilling operations are particularly vulnerable to storms. The Coast Guard estimates that during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, roughly 9 million gallons of oil were spilled. And the pipelines, development, and infrastructure that come with drilling scar beaches, disrupt marine life and undermine coastal tourism and fishing economies.
The places Big Oil wants to open to drilling have been deemed so special that Congress and consecutive presidents -- including George Bush, Sr. -- have protected them under an Outer Continental Shelf drilling moratorium since 1981. But in July 2008, President George W. Bush lifted that moratorium, leaving only one layer of protection for our coasts.
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