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Why should we care about offshore drilling?

Sep 21, 2006

What happens when offshore drilling goes bad.

Florida's coasts are beautiful beaches and fragile dunes, estuaries, mangrove and marshy wetlands. They give us protection from storms, more than $50 billion in tourist revenue, and marine habitat for fish and wildlife. That's what's at risk from oil drilling and seismic investigations off our coast. Here's a summary from the Sierra Club's National office about the after effects of Katrina on Gulf oil rigs.

During and after Hurricane Katrina:

• 19 drilling rigs were torn from their moorings and set adrift
• 13 rigs were seriously damaged or destroyed
• 7% of annual Gulf oil production and 5% of annual natural gas production was lost from the 2005 overall production amount
• 9 to 12 pipelines shut down or were operating at less than 100%
• 593 platforms and 64 rigs remained evacuated a month after the storm hit
• 8 million barrels of oil to spill into the Gulf

This won't be the last time that a storm affects Gulf oil production. Florida has too much at risk to encourage oil drilling off its coasts. Our coastal history, tourist economy and natural heritage could wash away with a single big oil spill affecting us for many decades in the future.

Our Senators tried to fend off this type of activity for good with the Permanent Protection for Florida Act of 2006. This bipartisan bill proposes to grant permanent protection through a statewide exclusion zone. It would protect Florida's panhandle beaches from new leasing, exploration, seismic inventories.  It would cancel and compensate for existing leases.  It would enact a 150 mile buffer off Florida's east coast for the first time ever.

Unfortuantely, that bill was forced off the table, and it looks like the best our senators can hope for is a compromise. Contact your representative in Congress NOW and let them know how you feel about this issue!