OPINION:
NEW ORLEANS
From within the elegant Restaurant August at the corner of Gravier and Tchoupitoulas streets here, the City That Care Forgot is quintessentially carefree. The chandeliers glisten, the patrons glow, and the oysters with truffle spoon bread could not be more delightful.
But about 40 miles south, a Delaware-size oil slick threatens to blacken the coast like a nasty-tasting, pepper-encrusted redfish. As New Orleans and its environs confront yet another undeserved sucker punch in less than half a decade, it’s time for serious oil and gas reform.
“We are starting to find out that we will see shortages of Gulf seafood in the next three days,” laments Crawford Leavoy, a manager at Restaurant August. “We try to focus on using local products from the waters of Louisiana, but because of this disaster, we will be unable to. … Restaurant August will start to support and serve seafood from the North Atlantic and North Pacific.”
Worries about petroleum-marinated seafood, oil-infused waterfowl and crude-battered beaches have chilled lawmakers’ feet about expanding ocean-based oil production.
Regarding President Obama’s plan to broaden offshore drilling, Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, told MSNBC: “I think that’s dead on arrival.”
This calamity could metastasize. Some forecasters warn that the Loop Current could drive the oil slick from the ruins of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig south along Florida’s west coast and around Key West. Once in the Gulf Stream, the oil spill would speed up the Eastern Seaboard, potentially fouling beaches from Miami to the Carolinas.
Such a fiasco surely would kill new offshore oil for a generation.
Today’s mess may grease the skids for a grand compromise: a red light for new offshore oil in exchange for green lights for onshore oil production and offshore natural-gas drilling.
True, this approach would overlook plentiful oil supplies beneath U.S. oceans.
“You have over four times more resources offshore,” says John Felmy, the American Petroleum Institute’s chief economist. In federal lands and waters, “There are about 21 billion barrels of oil onshore, mostly in Alaska, and 86 billion barrels of oil offshore.”
Some 4 billion barrels of untapped oil rest under Montana and North Dakota. Americans use about 7.3 billion barrels annually. While the United States would consume this deposit in just seven months, many similar reserves sit beneath American soil rather than below domestic waters.
Meanwhile, natural gas abounds, offshore and on.
“There are about 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore,” Mr. Felmy estimates. “You have 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas onshore. … You also have exciting new shale-gas supplies. The Marcellus Shale deposits in Pennsylvania and upstate New York are huge. There could be as much as 500 trillion cubic feet in Marcellus alone.”
Americans use about 20 trillion to 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas annually. Hence, Marcellus could represent a 25-year natural-gas supply. Existing offshore reserves could add 20 more years of natural gas to America’s energy menu.
Drilling also is much cheaper onshore than off. According to December 2009 Energy Department figures, from 2006 through 2008, major domestic firms spent $36.90 to locate and collect an average barrel of onshore oil. The equivalent offshore figure: $73.47 - almost precisely double.
It’s worth restating the obvious: Offshore natural gas does not spill. At worst, if a natural-gas rig exploded, the ensuing fireball might scorch a passing flock of sea gulls. The only onshore impact might involve sunbathers rising from their beach towels and asking, “What the hell is that?”
Offshore drilling will not end today, nor should it. But given its catastrophic potential, plus the immediate availability of cheaper and less environmentally calamitous substitutes, perhaps the left and right can agree, for once, to de-emphasize offshore oil while passionately embracing onshore oil and offshore natural gas.
This may be the best policy to keep the cares to a minimum and, as this city does so well, let the good times roll.
Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with Scripps Howard News Service.
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