What is Offshore Drilling Anyway?

Wondering what the big deal is about offshore drilling? Offshore drilling is the extraction of oil or other resources located in a body of water, usually the ocean. As simple as that may sound, the mechanical drilling process faces a number of physical challenges. Floating platforms, which collect and distribute the oil, must be substantially large. The following graphic shows various types of offshore drilling platforms.

 There is an immense amount of pressure on underwater machines from overlying water, requiring more energy and more frequent replacement of parts. Partly due to the stress on the machinery involved, oil spills during drilling, piping, or distribution can occur.

An oil spill in a body of water considerably distresses the ecosystem and the atmosphere. Oil floats on water, affecting organisms such as coral reefs and their inhabitants that live at the ocean surface. Floating oil volatizes into the atmosphere, where it causes further harm. Additionally, many oil-rich offshore areas, such as remote Alaska, are ecologically pristine. Even if an oil spill does not occur, routine activities and extraction fluids associated with drilling have the potential to pollute the local environment, possibly leading to wide-spread consequences, depending on the ecological importance of the area.

Due to the multitude of hazards associated with off-shore drilling, President George H.W. Bush enacted a directive in 1990, ordering “the Department of Interior not to conduct leasing or preleasing [of oil drilling] activities in places other than Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and limited parts of offshore Alaska until 2000.” This moratorium on offshore drilling was renewed in 1998 by President Clinton through 2012. Environmental damage and social disruption were cited as the main motivation for this moratorium.

Now, H.W.’s son, President George W. Bush, is pushing Congress to lift the ban on offshore drilling, reasoning that doing so will lower gasoline prices at the pump and reduce our dependence on foreign oil  UC Berkeley economist Robert Reich counters that ,

“When you consider that the oil we pump goes into a global oil market, offshore drilling makes no sense. We take the environmental risk, but we’d have to share the negligible price gains with …every other user around the world.”

This means that pumping would not only do nothing to decrease U.S. dependence on foreign oil, but it would actually put the U.S. at an economic disadvantage to other countries due to the inevitable environmental cost of drilling.

As far as President Bush’s assertion that offshore drilling will alleviate gas prices at the pump, the New York Times  cites a 2007 Department of Energy study that found that “access to coastal energy deposits would not add to domestic crude oil and natural gas production before 2030 and that the impact on prices would be ‘insignificant.’” 

Curbing energy demand through conservation and efficiency, and investing in a robust mass transit system in urban areas will do more to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and address the rising price of gasoline. What do you think? Do you support offshore oil drilling or investment in a clean energy future?