LAT: Senate Panel OKs Coastal Oil Survey

[DeepModem Mom]

Senate Panel OKs Coastal Oil Survey
Lawmakers are expected to try to pull the study from the energy bill, fearing it could lead to ending a freeze on new offshore drilling.

By Richard Simon, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — A Senate panel Thursday backed a study to determine how much oil and natural gas lies off the coasts, a step critics warned could lead to weakening the decades-old ban on new offshore drilling and complicate President Bush's efforts to overhaul national energy policy.

The survey of offshore energy resources — along with a controversial measure to give federal regulators final say over the location of coastal terminals to receive liquefied natural gas imports — have emerged as issues as an energy bill heads to the Senate floor....

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A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is expected to try to strip the bill of the inventory of offshore gas resources....Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), recalling his immigrant past, said: "I have a real aversion to inventories, because I have a memory as a child in Cuba that preceding the confiscation of property by the government, they inventoried it first. So I have always taken a little bit of skeptical view about a benign inventory."...

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Richard A. Charter, co-chairman of the National Outer Continental Shelf Coalition, an environmental advocacy group, said an inventory could damage fish and other marine life because of explosive sonic blasts of air used to gather a seabed's geologic profile.

But Jeff Eshelman of the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America said: "For too long, the debate about offshore drilling has been too heavy on emotions and too light on facts. The inventory will finally give policymakers and the public an actual accounting of the nation's offshore oil and gas reserves. We deserve this kind of information to make the best, most rational decisions for the nation's future energy needs."...


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-energy27may27,0,2825334.story?coll=la-home-nation

[mike_c]

1. get ready for the last gasps of petroleum dependence....

People will ultimately offer to cook down their grandmothers to hydrocarbons to keep the energy rich lifesyle going. Pristine coasts and arctic wildlife refuges? They're small potatoes. Gotta feed the beast....

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

2. Yeah, well..San Diego, Newport, Huntington

Santa Barbara..etc..all vote Republican. Why do they hate America?

[MisterP]

3. one Capitol Repub said that nothing must get in the way of exploitation

oil at all costs!

[confludemocrat]

4. Part of executing strategy for far right dominance

Step 1 Exploit every possibility to favor big oil-1a remove all barriers to this.
Step 2 Pervert bipartisan consensus about energy independence to achieve advantage to oil companies.
Step 3 Behind closed doors and in secret demand (if needed to actually demand) money to elect more right wing pirates.
Step 4 Get far-right wing lock steppers elected by a blizzard of lying campaign adds or for teams of rabid right wing lawyers endlessly contesting close elections they lose.
Step 5 Proceed to break down every element of democracy and civil society they can.

[rustydad]

5. Well,

I live in Santa Barbara and was here in 1969 when the Union Oil platform blew out and spilled thousands of barrels of oil into the ocean. It was quite horrible. I also am an environmental activist and surfer. Yet I cannot reconcile the fact that many environmentalist drive gas guzzler cars and trucks, refuse to use mass transportation, and in general are as wasteful of oil use as everyone else. Offshore oil wells are as safe as on-land oil wells. Technology has been perfected and blowouts are highly unlikely. It is far more likely to have a catastrophic oil spill from a tanker accident. Shipping oil from the ME in tankers is far more dangerous that drilling off our own shores. Shipping oil from the ME has cost the US over 1600 dead soldiers and over 10,000 seriously wounded in Iraq. Unless one rides a bike I think they should really think hard on opposing offshore oil extraction. Think hypocrisy. Bob

[heidler1]

6. I lived in San Luis Obispo for 10 years and most were against off shore

oil drilling, but it seemed strange to me that house prices were always higher in Santa Barbra. Which would indicate that drilling had little effect on the area.

[rustydad]

7. Drilling

Drilling has had no effect on home prices or anything else here in Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara environmental movement was in large part a reaction to the Union Oil blowout in 1969 and to this day is dead against oil drilling on or offshore. Eventually when the effects of Peak Oil start to really kick in every source of oil on or offshore will be exploited. Offshore drilling will resume before the end of the decade. Bob

[heidler1]

8. Thats what I think, too.