Oil rig - by Tsuda, Creative Commons: http://sc.org/2EOBHir
Last week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) conducted an offshore lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. The lease sale was considered a disappointment, receiving bids for only 1 percent of the tracts up for auction and generating just $3 million more than the administration’s last lease sale, which brought in 40% less than they’d hoped.
The Gulf of Mexico has been the epicenter for offshore drilling for decades. At a time when Donald Trump and Ryan Zinke are proposing opening almost all of America’s shores to offshore drilling, they are not even able to muster up enthusiasm in the Gulf of Mexico, even after Secretary Zinke slashed royalty rates for shallow water drilling in hope of attracting more interest. Every acre not currently under a moratorium was offered to lease and yet companies were not enticed. How does Secretary Zinke think a lease sale would do in the Atlantic Ocean, which currently has no offshore drilling infrastructure and hasn’t even been considered for leasing since the 1980s? How about in the Pacific Ocean, which has not had a lease sale since the 80s either, and where the public and elected officials are strongly opposed to drilling, in part because of two major oil spills off their coast?
Or take the Arctic Ocean, which was famously home to one of the offshore oil industry’s most embarrassing failures. When Shell tried to drill the Arctic in 2012, they crashed their oil rig during a winter storm and ran their icebreaker aground in 2015. After wasting more than $7 billion on their Arctic disaster, Shell ended their exploration citing “disappointing” results from the well they drilled off the coast of Alaska. Soon after Shell’s misfortune, most other companies ended up relinquishing their leases as well.
These are the areas that the Trump administration would like to open for leasing once again, as part of a shortsighted energy policy that is designed to rob us of our public lands and waters. Whether it is onshore or offshore, our shared natural resources are under attack.
Given the widespread public opposition to his offshore drilling plan and industry’s tepid interest, it is abundantly clear that we do not need to risk more of our public lands to feed the oil and gas industry and that we should be transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Ryan Zinke’s offshore drilling plan has united Democrats and Republicans in opposition. Up and down the coasts, communities have passed resolutions against offshore drilling. That’s because it does not make sense to risk a multi-billion dollar fishing and tourism industry in the hopes of further enriching a few big oil companies.
Our oceanic resources are too precious to contaminate with oil spills and damage with seismic airgun blasting. Even if drilling does not commence, the seismic blasting that would be required before any well is drilled threatens marine mammals and fisheries. Imagine blasting up and down our coastlines, disrupting fisheries and killing endangered marine mammals, only to have oil and gas companies show little interest in drilling those new areas. If they are drilled, the risks are even greater, subjecting our coasts to the daily threat of toxic pollution and devastating oil spills.
Secretary Zinke had called the recent Gulf lease sale a “bellwether” of industry interest for offshore drilling. It is time to tell Secretary Zinke and the rest of the administration that areas offered up to lease should be shrinking, not expanding, and that the fierce national opposition to offshore drilling should be the bellwether he needs to protect our coasts.