Offshore drilling bill passes house - CONTACT YOUR SENATORS!

[LeFlaneur]

On second thought.. I DID say earlier "channeling of the river thorough a canal system." It is really channeling by means of levies.

 

[captain]

I'm not confusing them; I'm lumping them together. Both were needed to make that area profitable for industry.

Refineries desired that land, as you say, for easy transportation by ship and barge but they could not have been built there (or at least not 300 or so) if the Mississippi were allowed to continue it's flood cycle and if the main channel of the river were allowed to change its course every so often as such rivers do. Enter the army corps of engineers.

So by that logic there are no public works projects that benefit the population in general worth doing if they allow industry to benefit also. Sounds like you were born 300 years too late

 

[maggs_the]

Diving on an oil rig is actually pretty neat. I suggest y'all try it. They tend to be FULL of flora and fauna. The rigs are also where the sport fishermen take their clients. These things are FAR from floating superfund sites.

oh yeah, absolutely!! one of the most spectactular dives in my limited (62) diving was an oil rig in the Texas Flower Gardens.. fantastic corals as well as abundant fish and even a huge turtle that called the rig legs home.. it was unbelieveably beautiful and i'm hoping to dive rigs off Pascagoula and Pensacola this summer.

 

[maggs_the]

...
Spillage, seepage, as well as all sorts of other garbage and pollution are a FACT of life for the folks that live on the coast of Texas in that uber-industrialized area. ...

I have also taken a dive trip to the Flower Gardens (which is beautiful, even though it has the largest rig in the gulf next to it), as well as a gas platform off of Freeport - on a trip by Al Mannica. All I can say is that I will never do that again. The depth was around 50 feet. Due to the pollution in the water, you could not see below 30 feet. Even if you WANTED to dive deeper than 30 feet, you were advised not to due to all of the trash and garbage at the bottom due to the rig.

Yes, there were some fish, as well as a SMALL artifcial reef created due to this - but the environmental impacts of oil and gas seeping from the rigs, as well as the trash, debris, and OTHER impacts that affect the gulf coast (such as increased water traffic), I cannot understand why anyone that calls themself a sport diver can agree with this?
....

oh my, are you kidding??? i was in the flower gardens last August on the MV Spree and not only was the oil rig dive the most amazingly beautiful dive, but the vis on the remaining dives was more like 80 feet at 60 and 70 feet down. the night dive was also incredible which i would never have done had vis been 30 foot (scary!). when were you in the flower gardens? was it possibly just after a storm and the bottoms were stirred up?? it's hard to imagine we went to the same Texas Flower Gardens.

 

[nolatom]

The rigs off Louisiana make some good diving, in good visibility. You all seem to just want this to stay in someone else's back yard, presumably mine.

Either drill where the oil is, or conserve like mad and don't use any at all, especially imported (both are unlikely). But everyone cries big crocodile tears about it while driving SUVs.

 

[captain]

I just watched a report on the news about a discovery on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico where oil and gas is naturally bubbling out of the Gulf floor. They estimated that there is as much oil and gas naturally seeping out in a year as there is being produced by all offshore wells in a year. Is it pollution if it occures naturally?

 

[pj5]

I grew up on Galveston Bay and still live in that neck of the woods. I can tell you that conditions there have improved greatly in the last 25+ years. The number of fish kills had already decreased drastically (to almost never) by mid-1990s. These days, the water actually looks bluish instead of brownish once in a while (I see it once or twice a week). But the basic in-water visibility has not changed appreciably: still can't see to your waist, much less your toes.

I have no illusions that Galveston Bay and the surrounding waterways will ever be a premier diving destination or that Galveston beaches will ever rival the beaches of Florida, California, or Hawaii. No matter how well Galveston Bay gets cleaned up, the water will never be clear and the nasty clay gumbo is never going to morph into pretty sand and coral. Between the Mississippi and all the silty rivers in east Texas, it just doesn't stand a chance. Somewhere between I-35 (runs through Austin and San Antonio) and the Texas East coast, all the rivers silt up.

As for refineries, I wish they would build some new refineries out here. They would be cleaner, safer and more efficient than the 1950-1970 dinosaurs that are out here now. I'm not sure if it is the cost of the newer technology or the hoops the companies would have to jump through to build new refineries that keep them from building more. I suspect the latter. So they just keep upgrading what's out here until it falls apart at the seams and they have to shut it down. Heck, someone has to have 'em in their backyard, might as well be us since we already have the refineries and the folks who know how to run them out here. I like having a car, air conditioning, lights, gas appliances, and other modern conveniences fueled by petroleum products. I'm not going to be a hypocrite and grouse about refineries in my backyard until I'm ready to give up the amenities they enable me to enjoy. I'd rather have them here than Mexico, South America, or the Middle East. At least here there's a reasonable chance the refineries will be relatively clean, and there's a lot less danger of disruption due to civil unrest.

Ditto for offshore platforms (for drilling or windmills or whatever else). And they have the added bonus of providing a reef-like habitat that attracts pretty marine critters. Maybe they would make for some decent offshore diving closer than the Flower Garden Banks and Stetson Banks.

I'm also one of those evil people that was all for putting in Bayport, too. Maybe I'm naive, but based on the progress I've seen in Galveston Bay, I'm confident that it's possible to maintain an additional port AND a healthy ecosystem in Galveston Bay. Besides, I think ports, refineries and estuaries/fisheries are the best use of the resources in and around Galveston Bay given what's out here and how it's been developed to date. Tourism was on the rise, but I think gas prices are killing it...meaning the "tourists" were probably just from the other side of Houston.

 

[N.CoastDiver]

Don't forget us Commercial Divers. More oil rigs means more jobs. Pray for hurricaines too.... Plus, the gulf of mexico is a barren wasteland anyways.

 

[rockjock3]

I would support higher taxes for lower mpg vehicles.....it has to go that way...it is totally fair, IMV.

High gas prices are the best thing that could happen, painful as it is. It has changed how my family lives, because it finally pinched. The pain must correlate to the usage---reality. We still have big rigs, but we drive them about half as much. if we had smaller cars, we could drive more.--this forces people to choose, up against the brick wall of reality.

Our love for nature and fish will not stop us from driving somewhere. The need to buy groceries and medical care will.

I would agree with this as well. I fully understand that there are people that actually buy the trucks and vans that need them. I have 3 kids and a minivan to tote them with all their stuff around. But, I also see that out of about every 10 people that own huge trucks and SUVs (F-series, Escalades, Suburbans, etc.) maybe 1 of them ever puts more than two people in it or ever tows anything with it. Those other 9 people have pristeene truck beds that have never seen cargo, trailer hitches that have never seen a hitch, fold down back seats that have never been folded down to hold anything and 4-wheel drive that has never been off road. These people buy these vehicles for one thing (status) and therefore if they are going to burn gas at a faster rate so that they can look cool then I see no problem with them paying more tax on those vehicles. That extra tax be an alternative fuel tax that can go to research new fuels.

 

[altitudemike]

As an oilfield consultant on a rig I have first hand knowledge on how things are done & can tell everyone a rig these days not like it used to be. Rigs now are running diesel electric motors & have vaccum sealed systems for any possible situation. The have BOP'S (blow out preventers) that have a back up system for the back up system. These men & women work hard to earn a living for thier families & just because they work in the oil/gas industry does not mean they are not environmentally concious. Most are even more so than average. Your average rig puts out less CO2 emmisions in a day than your local wal-mart. We can use ethanol as an alternate fuel source but methane remains a cleaner burning fuel. You can't blame SUV's when most of the emmisions come from manufacturing. But hey it's always easy to blame the oil company. They would not go after it if we did not use it faster than they can get it.