MYTH: Drilling offshore will lead to ocean spillage, damaging wildlife and beaches.

FACT: In fact, virtually all of the pollution and “spillage” comes from large tankers transporting oil from other countries and natural seepages. Thus, drilling for our American oil would actually reduce the risk of oil pollution by reducing the number of international oil tankers entering our ports.

Offshore spills have occurred, but offshore drilling companies have an exceptional record of preventing spills and minimizing environmental damage, due primarily to technological innovation. Norway, which is a major exporter of oil and acquires all of it from offshore, also has an outstanding record of drilling in the sea, and there’s no reason why we would take fewer precautions than the Norwegians. Everyone promoting offshore drilling wants to do it in compliance with environmental safeguards, which in the United States are some of the most stringent in the world.

This is unlike other nations, such as China, which announced a partnership with Cuba in 2006 to start drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. That nation’s dismal environmental record should force Congress to make a decision: Do we let another nation drill for oil near us and risk major environmental catastrophe, or do we do it ourselves with better environmental protection?
newt.org...

Originally posted by RRconservative
reply to post by Kaytagg

---

I guess common knowledge isn't that common anymore. Here you go.....

www.universityofcalifornia.edu...

Twenty years ago, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was exiting Alaska's Prince William Sound when it struck a reef in the middle of the night. What happened next is considered one of the nation's worst environmental disasters: 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the pristine Alaskan waters, eventually covering 11,000 square miles of ocean.
Now, imagine 8 to 80 times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident.

Illustration of what happens
to oil, from seep to plume
According to new research by scientists from UC Santa Barbara and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution , that's how much oil has made its way into sediments offshore from petroleum seeps near Coal Oil Point in the Santa Barbara Channel.

petroleum seeps near Coal Oil Point off Goleta, Calif., in the Santa Barbara Channel, release some 20 to 25 tons of oil daily

***

Originally posted by JulieMills
reply to post by Kaytagg

---

so what are you saying? it seeps out naturally so therefore don't drill for it?
meanwhile California is handing out IOU's and coming to Washington with hat in hand begging for a bailout.....

do you know the definition of insanity?

The Coast Guard documented more than 239,000 oil spills across the gulf between 1973 and 2001. In one study of the area where Chevron wanted to drill, the Minerals Management Service predicted that over the next 40 years there could be up to 870 spills of 2,000 gallons or less, which "is expected to result in small pollution events that could temporarily affect the enjoyment or use of some beach segments."

When the rigs first drill into the ocean floor, the crews use fluids called "drilling muds" which include toxic substances including barium, chromium and arsenic. The EPA found that such discharges into the eastern gulf would "introduce significant quantities of contaminants to these relatively pristine waters."

In 2002, the Mobile Press-Register tested grouper and other fish caught around Alabama's offshore rigs. They contained so much mercury that they would not be acceptable for sale to the public under federal guidelines. The source: the drilling muds, which left mercury in the sea-bottom in concentrations as high as that found at Superfund sites.