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Gulf Coast Oil Spill Jeopardizes Obama's Offshore Drilling Policy
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April 30, 2010 5:46 p.m. EST
Topics: renewable energy, politics, planning inquiries, environmental issue, environmental pollution, water pollution, interior policy, United States
Tom Ramstack - AHN News Correspondent
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) - President Barack Obama on Friday ordered an end to new offshore oil drilling leases unless owners of the rigs can prove they have safety equipment that would prevent oil spills like the huge one washing ashore on the Gulf Coast.
The accident also threatens to derail Obama’s policy announced March 31 that seeks to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil by increasing offshore drilling.
Several members of Congress are planning hearings on oil rig safety that could lead to new limits or regulations on offshore drilling.
“This may be the worst disaster in recent years, but it’s certainly not an isolated incident,” said a letter from a group of senators asking the chairmen of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to schedule hearings.
There have been 509 fires, at least two fatalities and 12 serious injuries on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico since 2006, the letter says.
The British Petroleum rig is spewing about 5,000 barrels of oil per day from the ocean floor off the Louisiana Coast after a massive explosion and fire April 20. Eleven workers from the rig are missing and presumed dead.
Obama told Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to report back to him within 30 days on new technologies available to prevent deepwater oil rig spills.
“We’re going to make sure that any leases going forward have those safeguards,” Obama said during a White House press briefing.
Last month, Obama proposed opening more areas of the East Coast and Gulf coastline to oil and natural gas drilling.
The first leases were likely to be granted for drilling along the Virginia coast as early as 2012.
Obama’s plan to expand offshore oil drilling was at least partly a concession to Republicans he was trying to persuade to support new clean energy and climate legislation.
The bill is being developed by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.). It would use incentives to reduce carbon emissions from oil and coal that contribute to global warming.
Any legislation that expands offshore drilling will be harder to pass now “because of the fear and panic that has been engendered as a result of this catastrophe,” Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Fla.) said in press interviews this week.
The accident is encouraging environmentalists to take a hard stance against the drilling.
Offshore oil spills jeopardize the commercial fishing and beachfront tourism industries worth an estimated $230 billion per year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We have an oil slick the size of West Virginia smothering marine life across the Gulf of Mexico and threatening to poison the fertile Mississippi Delta and the ecologically rich coastline along four states,” Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote in a New York Times blog. “And the best solutions our officials have come up with is to set it on fire. We have to do better than that.”
Policies that encourage clean energy production such as solar and wind power plants are included in the legislation being considered by Congress.
“It is time to pass the clean energy and climate bill,” Beinecke said.
Business groups and economists say the U.S. economy needs offshore drilling because clean energy alternatives are not practical.
“A fossil-fuel free future isn’t inconceivable but it is decades away,” wrote Samuel Thernstrom, co-director of the Geoengineering Project at the conservative American Enterprise Institute public policy foundation.
Until now, the climate bill has faced an uphill battle in Congress as conservatives criticized its costs for the U.S. economy.
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