Why do Virginians want to drill off their own coast?

[marmar]

from Grist:


Why do Virginians want to drill off their own coast?
By Ben Adler

You might think that anyone with a television set would oppose offshore oil drilling, at least anywhere near her home. Watching the devastation wreaked on the Gulf Coast by the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill would not make drilling in your state’s waters look very appealing. (In case you’ve forgotten, the toll of that disaster included 11 deaths, 4.9 million barrels of oil released into the ocean, dead and damaged wetlands and marine life, and economic losses that are literally incalculable but reach into the tens of billions by any estimate.)

But look at Virginia, a swing state that has recently elected two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor, and been carried twice by President Obama. Most Virginians believe in anthropogenic climate change, want to address it, and prefer candidates who share those values.

And yet, paradoxically, they support offshore oil drilling right off their own coastline. An October poll conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute found 67 percent of Virginians support offshore oil drilling. The headlines it generated, however, are a bit misleading. The poll questions were phrased to guide the respondent to the oil industry’s position. (For example: Do you agree with this statement: “Increased production of domestic oil and natural gas resources could help strengthen America’s energy security”?) And the poll does not specify offshore drilling along Virginia’s coast, just in the U.S. generally.

Nonetheless, there is at least plurality support for offshore drilling in Virginia waters, and the state’s elected officials are on the same page. Both of Virginia’s senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, favor drilling off the Virginia coast. They have even cosponsored a bill that would open Virginia’s Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration, previously cosponsored by Kaine’s predecessor, Jim Webb. Outgoing Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell was such an ardent proponent of drilling that he traveled in May 2010 to an oil industry-sponsored conference in Houston to tout the benefits of offshore drilling while Deepwater Horizon was still gushing. ..........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/climate-energy/why-do-virginians-want-to-drill-off-their-own-coast/

[Harmony Blue]

1. The general public believes

that off shore drilling will have an immediate positive impact on their local economy. But ti is a ploy and not true at all because the true cost or return on this endeavor will take more than 30 years to be fully realized. Alternatives like green energy can provide a local return far more immediately at the fraction of the cost. Oil rigs take a lot of time to construct (not an exaggeration) and mapping the geomorpology and finding a stable area to build the rig takes time too. And then establishing support systems to sustain the rig (eg power sources).

[tina tron]

2. Virginia Democrats = Center right Republicans

Virginia politics is still in the antebellum days.

[virgdem]

4. This Virginia Democrat is a true, progressive democrat...

and I'm dead set against drilling off the coast. I live about 10 miles from the coast and any disaster like the one in 2010 would be a killer to the tourist industry as well as the Navy, where the largest Naval base on the east coast is. There is absolutely no upside to drilling off the coast given how lax the oil industry is concerning drilling.

[FarCenter]

3. It is unlikely that they will find any oil out there

Most off-shore oil fields are extensions of on-shore fields. For example, the Santa Barbara channel is an extension of the fields in California under Los Angeles, the Gulf of New Mexico is an extension of the fields in Texas and Louisiana. The oil off shore of the Canadian Maritimes is unusual in that regard, but Nova Scotia does have extensive coal deposits.

It not at all probable that there are significant fields off the east coast.