The Spill Is Gone, So End Drilling Ban
Posted 06:38 PM ET
Energy: Now that the nation's newspaper of record has told us there is "little additional risk" from the Gulf oil spill, maybe the government can give us our offshore oil industry back. We could sure use it.
Heeding White House aide Rahm Emanuel's now-famous dictum — "never let a good crisis go to waste" — Democrats wasted little time in moving on major legislation after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In the process, they created a government-made disaster the impact of which may be felt far longer than the oil spill itself.
In Congress, they used the disaster to push for a tax-raising, job-killing "energy bill." And in the White House, they imposed a six-month moratorium on oil production in the Gulf. Congress' energy bill is dead — for now. But the moratorium remains in place.
Now, according to the New York Times, comes the revelation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which led a group of agencies in studying the BP oil spill, that "three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm."
In other words, after the nonstop televising of the Deepwater Horizon well gushing oil and gas 5,000 feet below the ocean's surface for weeks on end, our top government experts can find maybe 1 million barrels of oil — or roughly 42 million gallons.
To put that in perspective, that's less than the amount of oil — about 47 million gallons — that naturally seeps each year from the ocean floor off the coast of North America, according to the National Research Council. This is great news. Yes, the BP leak is still a problem, but not the "worst environmental disaster ever," as some claimed. Not even close.
Even so, Democrats in Congress and President Obama didn't wait for more information before punishing the oil industry — guilty and innocent participants alike — after the spill.
It's not hard to see why. Shifting into crisis mode gave Democrats cover to indulge their preoccupation with killing off our oil industry while trying to force Americans to use highly expensive and wasteful "alternative" energy sources — wind, solar, biomass — which aren't even viable yet as substitutes for fossil fuels. Will they now undo the damage?
Energy Secretary Ken Salazar recently toured rigs in the Gulf to see how long the moratorium needs to be kept in place. As quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Salazar asked rig operators if they could "guarantee" there would be no blowouts. The answer, of course, is no. No business can "guarantee" a perfect safety record. It can only take reasonable precautions.
Salazar seems unaware that with the exception of BP — whose many safety lapses were reported to the U.S. government, which did nothing about them — the oil industry is a model of safety.
In short, the oil blowout is a disaster all right — but one made in Washington, far from the Gulf.
Given all this, we believe it's time to end the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf, and the needless economic suffering it has caused.
The health of the Gulf region's economy depends on it. A study by economist Joseph Mason of Louisiana State University has found that the six-month drilling moratorium will cost the Gulf region $2.11 billion in economic output, almost 8,200 jobs, half a billion dollars in wage income and almost $100 million in tax revenues.
Meanwhile, the Democrats' infantile preoccupation with eliminating the fossil fuel industry has started to hit the U.S. economy hard.
Anyone notice that, after the oil spill and Obama's moratorium, oil prices have again spiked to above $82 a barrel?
When oil got that high during the Bush years, America's mainstream media covered it nonstop, even suggesting that the president was in the pocket of the oil industry.
No such suggestions today. Nor do they link the continuing rise in oil prices with America's foolish refusal to develop all its oil sources — including the 120 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Offshore Coastal Shelf and Alaska, and the literally trillions of barrels of oil and gas in shale deposits across the U.S.
One of the main triggers of our deep downturn two years ago was $100-a-barrel oil. To keep prices reasonable, we need more oil — it's that simple. If by our inaction we let a sudden jump in oil prices tip us into recession again, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. |
