Houston Chronicle Endorses U.S. Offshore Drilling West, East, and Between (BP is ‘back to petroleum,’ not ‘beyond petroleum’)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 6, 2009The success of exploration and drilling efforts in the Gulf of Mexico convincingly makes the case for opening up the nation’s other offshore areas for drilling. Yes, that should mean offshore California and the East Coast.
There are no perfect choices in energy, but offshore drilling has proved friendlier to the environment than the alternative of bringing in foreign crude supplies via tanker.
– “Gulf Giant: BP’s Find in the Gulf of Mexico Reminds Us of the Need for Oil Bridge to Greener Future,” Houston Chronicle, September 4, 2009.
Kudos to the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle for stating the obvious: that neighborhood oil which provides government revenue instead of requiring government subsidy is better than importing oil; that expanded domestic offshore drilling is part of the solution, not the problem.
The environmental advantage of domestic offshore drilling was also noted in the editorial:
Spills of crude from the growing traffic of tankers transiting the globe pose a larger risk to the environment than do offshore rigs and the pipelines connecting them to onshore refining facilities. And much of the oil imported by this country comes from nations such as Nigeria that have a dubious track record in protecting the environment.
Other Reasons to Support Offshore Drilling
The Chronicle does temper its enthusiasm for the offshore solution to oil abundance:
Meanwhile, most serious policymakers acknowledge the need for a carbon-based bridge to get the world’s industrial economies to a new and greener day. Offshore drilling should be used to help construct that bridge.
There are two problems with this argument.
First, renewables have been the the “bridge” to fossil fuels, not the other way around. Most of mankind’s history was one of energy poverty–and 100% reliance on renewables. Then came something much better than burning wood and plants and depending on falling water: coal, oil, and gas. William Stanley Jevons explained the great energy transformation well in his 1865 book, The Coal Question.
And today, off-grid electricity supplied by solar panels is often the bridge fuel to modern forms of energy such as a diesel generator. Again, renewables are the bridge to forms of energy that are far superior (in terms of cost and reliability): oil, gas, or coal.
The second problem is that the time is rapidly passing for ‘solving’ the climate ‘problem,’ if one believes the alarmists’ math. Because of the long-lived atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), emissions reductions have less and less of an climate effect going forward. This is called the saturation effect, the less-than-linear relationship between anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcing and climate change.
“We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions,” stated NASA scientist James Hansen stated back in 2006. So if you are an alarmist, elephants such as the new BP find cannot be developed because fossil-fuel burning must fall significantly and now.
Home Jobs, not ‘Green’ Jobs
And then there is the homer argument in the Chronicle op-ed:
BP’s find will be brought to market by thousands of skilled hands and minds, many of whom are Houstonians and Texans. This is the resource that will construct the country’s bridge to a more secure energy future.
Fair enough–that will help the paper’s sagging circulation. And it is a good argument too–real jobs instead of government-dependent ‘green’ jobs that can lead to boom/bust cycles from political change. And by the way, the coal, oil, and gas ‘bridge’ will be for decades and even centuries so long as the ultimate resource can tap the master resource.
Appendix: Entire Chronicle Editorial
BP’s announcement of a “giant” oil find in the Gulf of Mexico about 250 miles southeast of Houston tends to attract the layperson’s attention. At least it gets ours.
We’re not at Spindletop anymore, Toto. This huge pool of oil — up to 3 billion barrels (4 to 6 billion barrels of petroleum equivalent total, including natural gas) — is trapped 35,000 feet below the Gulf floor in a geological area known as the Lower Tertiary trend. That’s nearly a mile deeper than Mount Everest is high. Or, as a graphic accompanying the Chronicle’s Page One story, “Major find — but oil far down and far off,” put it: equivalent to the distance from downtown to the 610 West Loop.
That’s deep. It will take years to reach and it will be an expensive job. A local expert in offshore development has mentioned 2020 as a good target date for start-up. And billions must be spent as engineers deal with the enormous depths of the wells and temperatures up to 250 degrees. On the other hand, the payoff could be enormous — a daily flow of crude of 300,000 to 400,000 barrels, or potentially half what comes from Alaska’s North Slope.
Already, the bloggers on both sides are lined up in heated debate over what this find means for the future of petroleum. Oil skeptics say the remoteness of the find and likely expense of extracting the crude only prove the necessity for moving beyond oil to other sources of energy. Oil optimists say it shows there is more oil to be found and that improving technology can and will help us find it as needed.
We agree — with both sides.
Tinderbox geopolitics in places where oil is found in abundance and concerns about global warming both argue compellingly for reducing the world’s dependence on carbon-based energy sources. Efforts to develop solar and wind alternatives on a large scale are and ought to be encouraged by the federal government. So should efforts to conserve. Reducing energy consumption is perhaps the most effective energy policy of all.
But those changes will take time, and must proceed in an orderly fashion. Meanwhile, most serious policymakers acknowledge the need for a carbon-based bridge to get the world’s industrial economies to a new and greener day.
Offshore drilling should be used to help construct that bridge. The success of exploration and drilling efforts in the Gulf of Mexico convincingly makes the case for opening up the nation’s other offshore areas for drilling. Yes, that should mean offshore California and the East Coast.
There are no perfect choices in energy, but offshore drilling has proved friendlier to the environment than the alternative of bringing in foreign crude supplies via tanker.
Spills of crude from the growing traffic of tankers transiting the globe pose a larger risk to the environment than do offshore rigs and the pipelines connecting them to onshore refining facilities. And much of the oil imported by this country comes from nations such as Nigeria that have a dubious track record in protecting the environment.
BP’s find will be brought to market by thousands of skilled hands and minds, many of whom are Houstonians and Texans. This is the resource that will construct the country’s bridge to a more secure energy future.