Offshore drilling bill passes house - CONTACT YOUR SENATORS!

[Kiefer]

True, there are jobs that pay well outside of Oil and Gas, do they make a six figure income without a high school diploma as they do in Oil and Gas? I don't know myself, but I would say most construction type jobs pay pretty well don't they?

This suggests we need jobs from Oil and Gas so we do not need a high school education and can make good money.

Oil and Gas has enabled rulers in the Middle East to keep their people under educated and their countries undemocratic. That's why they come to the US for their education.

More education not oil...

 

[scubapro50]

Building oil rigs offshore not only increases the number of spots we can dive but greatly helps the enviroment. The offshore platforms will draw sealife in many forms. I've seen large schools of fish swimming around rigs that otherwise wouldn't be there. By expanding the area we can drill on not only decreases the number barrels we have to import but help creates jobs both in construction and in personel needed to run these offshore cities. I have been diving oil rigs for over 30 years and weighting all the concerns it better to have them than not. Anyone who doesn't think we need the additional supply needs to park his car for about a month and see how he likes living without it. Yes we need to develope other forms of entergy but why not use what we have now untill those other forms are afforable and available.

 

[LIVES4SHARKS]

How many oil rigs have caused envionmental catastrophes? Plus can you really see them from offshore? I can't, just twinkling lights at night. Again, there are countries off our shores already drilling. So again, where has the environmental impact been?

Just curious.

Carolyn:shark2:

 

[H2Andy]

the solution is not to increase our dependence on oil but to ween ourselves from oil

drilling more is just digging a deeper hole from which we'll eventually have to climb

let's put all that money and resources into developing viable alternatives to oil

 

[scubapro50]

I haven't dived the rigs off Galveston in about 25 years. At one time back in the 60's we could run out to the 12 mile rigs and still see Galveston. You need to go 40 or 50 miles out or more to get really good water these days. The overall problem is the way the Gulf is shaped ...... like a bowl. The water close in is shallow and murkey ..... nothing you can really do about it. When you add in the heavy run off from the large citys like Houston, the ship channel and other industries in the area it gets worse. I can recall my father bringing in buckets of oysters from galveston bay in the 1950s but today you would have to be nuts to eat them with all the heavy chemicals they contain. I live in Port Arthur and we can still run about an hour offshore to various rigs and small wrecks that have a lot of sealife around them. Going down south toward Corpus you get much better water. Several ships have been sunk in recent years and they are great for diving. The rigs going toward Mexico off the beaches of south texas are great to dive. I can't think of any major problems that has not been huricane related and even then there wasn't a major oil spill like the Exxon tanker in Alaska.

 

[Kiefer]

How does the oil get off the rigs? Is there no increased possibility of a spill during that process?

 

[WarmWaterDiver]

The oil and gas produced at offshore rigs normally moves via pipeline to onshore. Today's technologies on blowout preventers, SCADA data communication systems monitoring flow in vs. flow out of pipelines, pipeline pressures, etc. minimize releases in the event of a pipeline mishap.

Hurricane Ivan created a giant underwater mudslide that severed hundreds of such lines, it took over a year for boats with specialized equipment to locate, then reconnect, all these lines. Anyone who watched the documentary series 'Oil, Rigs, and Sweat' should have seen glimpses of this.

Look at how much Gulf of Mexico production temporarily ceased due to Ivan, then compare to no oil found released to the environment.

Hurricane Ivan Oil & Gas Facilities Remediation Solution

Producers, government study lessons from Hurricane Ivan

No reports of oil slicks, oily beaches, etc. from Ivan that I recall - mute testament to how well these systems work today.

I remeber as a teenager in South Texas when Ixtoc 1 occurred. Blatant stupidity on not capping the well outside of US waters in the Bay of campeche. Bad damage in the Laguna Madre from oil intrusion - this has never happened since. I'll bet scubapro50 remebers this too. Containment booms could have been put in place but weren't.

Ixtoc I - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Imported oil, brought to us via tankers and supertankers, are far more vulnarable to spills, and I don't remeber tar on Padre Island beaches until the rapid rampup of imported oil in the 70's. There have been less than scrupulously operated ships over the years with a 'catch me if you can' attitude toward the residues left in the tankers after offloading.

#07-171: 03-21-07 Tanker Company Sentenced for Concealing Deliberate Vessel Pollution

More domestic production vs. continued or ever increasing imports reduces the risk significantly, easily seen in these records.

 

[Laustimus]

Enough to Make Us Energy-Independent?

How much oil and natural gas is there offshore? No one really knows. According to estimates from the Interior Dept.'s Minerals Management Service (MMS), the U.S. has roughly 18 billion undiscovered and technically recoverable bbl. of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Eric Potter, associate director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, says that if these areas are opened up now, by 2025, 1 million additional bbl. per day could potentially be added to the market. Using International Energy Agency demand forecasts, by 2030 this production would equal less than 5% of U.S. daily consumption, and less than 1% of global daily consumption. "It would certainly help," says Potter. "But it won't make us energy-independent."

Less then 5% of the US's consumption *YAWN*.

I don't have much of an opinion either way, but people better stop thinking drilling is going to drive prices down on oil here and get us to stop depending on foreign oil.

 

[Kiefer]

"Growing oil spill could eventually foul South Florida beaches" - Miami Herald

Growing oil spill could eventually foul South Florida beaches - Environment - MiamiHerald.com

No Drilling! Period!

 

[Kiefer]

Until that alternative fuel technology develops, somebody is going to drill and do you really want it to be the Chinese in our gulf of Mexico?

Growing oil spill could eventually foul South Florida beaches - Environment - MiamiHerald.com

Enough said?