Is more offshore drilling the right answer for nation's worsening energy crisis?

The U.S. House of Representatives this week voted to end a 25-year-old ban on oil and natural gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The Senate is expected to follow within a few days. However, there are some concerns that allowing new drilling will adversely impact the environment, coastal tourism and will not help lower petroleum or natural gas prices anytime soon.

Both of our presidential candidates, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, support offshore drilling, although to different degrees. McCain fully supports lifting the ban and increasing offshore drilling. The Washington Post reported that McCain earlier this week said, "We must embark on a national mission to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. We have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. . . . It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions.”

In McCain’s presidential campaign eight years ago, he took the opposite position regarding offshore drilling. And, since becoming the GOP nominee in March, McCain has presented himself as a friend of the environment by touting his plans to combat global warming and his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the Everglades.

Environmental groups across the country now are criticizing McCain for backing the repeal of the ban. “It’s disappointing that Senator McCain is clinging to the failed energy policies of the past,’ Tiernan Sittenfeld, legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters, told The Washington Post. The Sierra Club’s political director, Cathy Duvall, said McCain had been portraying himself as a “friend of the environment,” casting himself far away from the way President Bush seems to view the environment and the impact offshore drilling would have. Duvall told the Post that McCain “is using the environment as a way to portray himself as being different from George Bush. But the reality is that he isn’t.”

Meanwhile, Obama was charged with flip-flopping on his views regarding offshore drilling. According to various newspaper reports, Obama said he would be willing to compromise on his position against offshore oil drilling, but only if it were part of a more overarching strategy to lower energy costs.

“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama told The Palm Beach Post. Obama added that he would not support a plan that “suggests this drilling is the answer to our energy problems.”

There has been some discussion among environmentalists, politicians and oil producers that even if offshore drilling begins immediately, it would not help reduce natural gas or oil prices for at least a decade. The Chicago Tribune reported that even if the ban on offshore drilling is lifted, drilling might not necessarily happen. But, the Tribune said, lifting the ban could mean the U.S. Department of the Interior may issue drilling leases in Atlantic waters by 2011.

The issue of offshore drilling now is front and center in the race for president. The issue almost has become more a political one than an environmental one. Part of the reason for that could well be that even amongst scientists, there is some disagreement about the environmental impact offshore drilling may have on marine and land life. More likely, the reason offshore drilling has become of such paramount importance in this election is that taxpayers are hurting. We’re hurting at the pump and we’re hurting at home as temperatures start decreasing and we start thinking about having to turn on the heat. Both candidates think they have the right answer, but with the presidency on the line, one wonders if McCain and Obama are thinking about the drastic impact offshore drilling will have on our lives.

According to a 2000 report titled “A Survey of Offshore Oilfield Drilling Wastes and Disposal Techniques to Reduce the Ecological Impact of Sea Dumping,” by Jonathan Wills, M.A., Ph.D., “Most of the major ingredients of drilling fluids have a low toxicity to marine organisms. A few specialty chemicals sometimes added to drilling fluids to solve certain problems are toxic.” Those “specialty chemicals” include diesel fuel. The same report goes on to say that some of the water-based drilling fluids already being used on the U.S. Continental Shelf include mixtures of clays, barium, chromium, lead and zinc, often at levels that are “substantially higher” than those usually found in natural marine sediment.

The report also says that “the composition of drilling fluids is so variable and the circumstances of their use so different that there is an extremely wide range of concentrations that cause different toxic effects, ranging from the practical absence of toxic effects to lethal toxicity.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council surveyed the adverse effects of offshore drilling and reported that, “Offshore drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) could do serious, irreparable damage to our oceans, coastal communities, and marine life,” including, but not limited to damaging coastal lands, economies and communities.

“Offshore oil and gas operations have detrimental effects onshore. These operations require roads, pipelines, and processing facilities to be built on America’s beaches, wetlands and coastal areas,” the NRDC report states. “Current drilling projects in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico have destroyed more wetlands than exist between New Jersey and Maine. These activities hurt local communities and damaged economies that depend upon these resources for tourism, coastal recreation and fishing.”

The NRDC report further states that fish and marine life consumed by humans possibly could be contaminated by “huge quantities of waste that contain toxic and radioactive pollutants.” Some of those pollutants are mercury, lead and cadmium. Cadmium is known to cause cancer and is largely used in batteries and pigments for plastic products. Other pollutants left in the water by offshore drilling include radium, an extremely radioactive material, as well as other toxic chemicals such as benzene, arsenic, lead, radium, naphthalene, zinc, and toluene. Naphthalene is best known as the primary ingredient of mothballs, while toluene is widely used as an industrial feedstock, but also as a solvent. Toluene is also used as an inhalant drug for its intoxicating properties.

One must think: If these chemicals are in the water, where we swim and fish, they must be in the marine life we eat. But the health hazards don’t stop there. The NRDC report states that emissions from drilling an average “exploration well,” which may or may not produce oil or natural gas, includes “50 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx), 13 tons of carbon monoxide, six tons of sulfur dioxide, and five tons of volatile organic compounds.” Drilling from an operational well includes 50 tons of NOx, 11 tons of carbon monoxide, eight tons of sulfur dioxide and 38 tons of volatile organic hydrocarbons. The most common VOC is methane, which is the primary component of natural gas. There also are artificial VOCs, including paint thinners and dry cleaning solvents.

If that’s not enough to make your flesh crawl and ponder a life without natural gas and oil, consider this: The seismic surveys used to determine if oil or natural gas is present can seriously affect gray whales, sperm whales, beaked whales and bowheads, and can injure fish at substantial distances. “Fish are particularly vulnerable to hearing loss that can significantly threaten their survival. Many fish, including salmon, which are endangered in portions of the United States, have swim bladders that can rupture when exposed to intense sounds like those emitted through these types of surveys,” according to the NRDC. Bony fish like salmon have “swim bladders” to help them maintain buoyancy in the water. The swim bladder is a sac inside the abdomen that contains gas. Oxygen makes up the largest percentage of gas in the swim bladder, while nitrogen and carbon dioxide make up the rest. So, if a salmon’s swim bladder ruptures, it is possible that the fish next to will absorb some of those gases, and those gases would be in the salmon you eat.

All of this may be a bit boring, but it is information that must be considered with the doors to more offshore drilling about to open. And while the above information is important — if not a bit frightening — even more so is the possibility of more oil spills.

Between 1981 and 2005, there have been more than 180 large oil spills in the Outer Continental Shelf, each spewing more than 2,100 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the NRDC. And as storms and hurricanes have intensified so have the number of oil spills. The NRDC reports that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita alone resulted in 125 spills of oil products from drilling platforms and rigs, as well as pipelines on the OCS. Those two spills sent some 685,000 gallons of oil products into the water. The cost to clean up the Katrina spills far exceeded $150 million, according to a Homeland Security report.

The question is, then, is offshore drilling the answer to the nation’s fuel woes? If the first drilling leases aren’t even going to be handed out for three years, how will lifting the ban on offshore drilling help us now, today, when we fill up at the gas station or heat our homes? One must wonder if lifting the ban is simply a political move to make it seem like the government is stepping in to help, or is this really going to help? One also must wonder how much is this going to cost us in dollars and cents, and would investing in alternative energy sources be less costly, less harmful, and more sustainable?

Right now, there’s not much the average Joe or Jane can do about the ban; it’s in the government’s hand. But every Joe and Jane in these United States can take a stand, either for more offshore drilling or against it, by contacting his or her senators and representatives, and by voting on Election Day.

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Copyright 2009 Bulldog News Services