Comment & Debate
“Our view on energy dependence.” USA Today Editorial. April 2, 2010: “Some of the most ironic objections come from those who say offshore exploration will destroy beaches and coastlines, citing the devastating 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska as an example. The last serious spill from a drilling accident in U.S. waters was in 1969, off Santa Barbara, Calif. But tankers like the Valdez continue to carry the imported oil we’re ruinously addicted to and have gone aground more frequently, more recently and far more disastrously.”
Roland Guidry, Louisiana’s oil spill coordinator, citing new technology when saying in July of 2008: “Offshore drilling is the safest way to go. Those guys don’t spill oil.”[1]
Deroy Murdock. “Offshore oil drilling — cleaner than Mother Nature.” Seattle PI. July 24th, 2008: “U.S. offshore oil drilling is not perfectly tidy. It’s only 99.999 percent clean. Indeed, since 1980 — as MMS figures indicate — 101,997 barrels spilled from among the 11.855 billion barrels of American oil extracted offshore. This is a 0.001 percent pollution rate. While offshore drilling is not 100 percent spotless, this record should satisfy all but the terminally fastidious.”