Comment & Debate
James Hackett, president & CEO of Anadarko Petroleum, on energy issues, said in an interview with Larry Kudlow, “[We’ve] got a world class project that is the deepest producing well in the history of the world. It’s providing clean, natural gas to America, about 1.5 percent of all of our gas supply. Everyday it’s being provided from a football field and a half sized environmental footprint, a two-hour flight away from the shoreline. So it’s not in any visual contact with any human being. These platforms have gone through 200-year hurricanes, back in 2005, without any environmental consequences. It’s a bit of a fiction hoisted on us by people who don’t know better.”[1]
Deroy Murdock. “Offshore oil drilling — cleaner than Mother Nature.” Seattle PI. July 24th, 2008: “Hurricanes are manageable, since oil lines are capped not at the surface, but at or beneath the ocean floor. Even if oil platforms snapped loose and blew away, industrial seals restrain potentially destructive petroleum hundreds or even thousands of feet below the waves. Thus, 3,050 offshore structures endured Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in August and September 2005 without environmentally damaging petroleum spills. While 168 platforms and 55 rigs were destroyed or seriously damaged, the oil they pumped remained safely entombed, thanks to heavy underwater machinery.
As the U.S. Minerals Management Service concluded, “due to the prompt evacuation and shut-in preparations made by operating and service personnel, there was no loss of life and no major oil spills attributed to either storm.”