Floridians protest offshore oil drilling

[IDemo]

Source: Reuters

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (Reuters) - Thousands of Floridians demonstrated against moves to allow offshore oil drilling on Saturday along the east and west coasts of the state in a protest dubbed "Hands Across the Sand."

Organizer David Rauschkolb said about 80 demonstrations took place at beaches from Pensacola on the northwest coast of Florida to Key West in the south and Jacksonville in the north.

"This issue is one Floridians care about, protecting our waterways and coastlines from the devastating effects of oil exploration," Rauschkolb said in a telephone interview. He owns a beachfront restaurant in Seaside, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Legislation to allow oil drilling off the Florida coast passed the Florida House of Representatives last year but was blocked by Republican Governor Charlie Crist and the state Senate.

Oil-drilling opponents fear the legislation may come up again in this year's legislative session. Supporters of offshore drilling say it is needed to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61C2LT20100213?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

[mudplanet]

1. More NIMBY psychology

[1monster]

2. So it is alright with you if the government allows oil drilling in your backyard?

We've killed enough of our oceans for a product that is killing our whole planet.

We would be better served if the money poured into oil exploration were poured into alternative energy exploration and delvelopment.

[420inTN]

4. Sure, they can drill in my back yard

That would mean that I get royalties from the mineral/oil rights.

Move over Jed Clampett.

[cuncator]

7. Not necessarily...

In Florida at least, the subsurface rights can be severed from the surface rights. Depending on your deed, the entity that owns those can maintain "rights of entry" which essentially means they can come and mine on your property whenever they feel like.

So, no see-ment swimmin' hole for you Jed.

[420inTN]

9. I'm not in Floriduh. eom

[mudplanet]

28. This is true in every state that I know of. When you buy real estate you

should pay attention to the mineral rights.

[Lorien]

23. It's all about the $$ for you people

health? Beauty? Respect for the natural world? Screw that! Gimme the CASH!!

[420inTN]

33. No, it's not about money.

It's about energy independence.

[Javaman]

44. LOLOLOLOL

do you honestly believe a pishky little well in anyone's yard is 1) about energy Independence? 2) going to help our energy picture? LOLOLOLOLOL

If you think allowing multinational oil corporation the right to drill in your yard and believing it to be "energy Independence", you are extremely ignorant. Check out what is currently happening in Montana with the gas wells. Just see how delited those home owners are, who thought like you, with their foul water. The gas companies have to truck water in to keep them happy. Let me clue you in on something, those homeowners aren't happy.

Energy Independence is being free from oil. I'm not even going to go in to the CO2, sulfar and heavy metals that are release anytime fossil fuel is burned. That should be enough for you to not want it.

And frankly, if you believe there is enough domestic oil to run our nation, stop listening to failin quitter and her bullshit, because there isn't enough and never will be.

If we subtract all the oil we import and run only on domestic oil, we would have to survive on about 1/5th of our current energy needs.

We produced roughly 5 million barrels a day (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbblpd_m.htm ) and we use roughly 20-25 million barrels a day. (same source). Even if we were to drill in alaska, it would produce virtually nothing for long term use. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002692315_webanwr19.html)

"A 1998 U.S. Geological Survey assessment still used today concluded it's almost certain there are at least 5.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil and possibly as much as 16 billion barrels (a 5 percent likelihood) beneath the refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain."

If we were to use that for only U.S. use, it would amount to about 200 days of oil. Kinda puts things in perspective huh? So lets say we, instead, use that oil along with what we are importing. Instead of using it for all our needs, we only use 5 million gallons of it per day, that would reduce our import to roughly 15-20 million barrels. You can do the math, that 200 days of oil runs out to 1000 days of oil. So instead of it running out in 200 days, we run out in just under 3 years. But we would still be importing and at the end of that time, we would once again fall short of our actual needs.

This is why drilling for oil is a colossally stupid idea. Instead we need to invest in sustainable energy sources.

Oil is finite, it will end. There will be a point were there will be no more. It will be gone or enormously expensive to extract (which we are approaching rapidly).

Understand now?

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Javaman]

48. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Oil from coal? LOL you are going to trot out that old method? It's incredibly costly. Do you even know what EROEI means??? LOL

Oil made from organic waste isn't drilling you fool, That's what you stated to begin with and now you are changing your story. LOL

You were okay with them drilling in your yard, yet when I point out your folly, you back track to wanting to create hydrocarbons from veg waste.

So what do you want? An oil well in your yard or organic oil?

LOL

You have no idea what you are talking about let alone keeping your arguments straight!! LOL

don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

[420inTN]

49. Re: "LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL"

>> "Oil from coal? LOL you are going to trot out that old method?" <<
Not really, I just used it as an example of alternative sources of oil other than pumping it from the ground.

>> "It's incredibly costly. Do you even know what EROEI means???" <<
"Energy Returned on Energy Invested". I never said it was cheap or efficient.

>> "Oil made from organic waste isn't drilling" <<
Never said it was.

>> "That's what you stated to begin with and now you are changing your story" <<
The original question to which I replied was "would you allow them to drill in your backyard?" to which I replied, "yes." I never said that drilling was the only solution or the only way to get oil.

>> "You were okay with them drilling in your yard" <<
Yup. Still am.

>> "yet when I point out your folly, you back track to wanting to create hydrocarbons from veg waste. " <<
I didn't backtrack at all. My mentioning of oil from coal or organic waste was only in response to your statement that oil was finite. I was merely pointing out that drilling wasn't the only source of oil.

>> "So what do you want? An oil well in your yard or organic oil? " <<
Both. Ideally, I'd like to see more oil produced from organic waste. That would give us the double benefit of more oil and less landfill waste. However, if I owned land that sat above an oil reserve I wouldn't be opposed to leasing the rights to drill on my land. Just as if I had land in a windy area I wouldn't be opposed to using it as a wind farm, or using sunny land for solar energy generation.

>> "You have no idea what you are talking about let alone keeping your arguments straight!" <<
Sorry, but I can have more than one discussion at a time with more than one point at a time.

>> "don't bring a knife to a gun fight. " <<
I didn't realize this was the O.K. Corral (or Prohibition era Chicago). I thought this was a discussion board. Please forgive my naivete.

[Name removed]

50. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mudplanet]

13. Well, as a matter of fact, the govt. allowed oil drilling in "my back yard" most of my life

and it had so little to do with the "destruction of the oceans" that it hardly mattered.

I agree that we should invest in alternative energy sources but we'll need oil in the transition period. Floridians have enjoyed and continue to enjoy cheap oil and the car without bearing any of the expense. They drill offshore on the rest of the planet with limited impact but Floridians are unwilling to bear their share of the cost.

The fact is that the destruction of the oceans can be attributed for the most part to overfishing and run off (from streets, sewage, development that causes erosion, bad farming practices) and considerably less than 10% of oil pollution of the oceans is from oil production.

Floridians aren't concerned that the world's oceans are being polluted, they're concerned that their beaches may be polluted, yet they evidence practically zero willingness to cease driving, building bigger and better highways, and destroying wetlands. It's ok to drill offshore in California, Texas and Louisiana, but not here in Florida.

NIMBY

[scentopine]

16. I have to agree - this is pure NIMBY, they are worried about property values...

that's why they moved to Florida; a most Republican state and land of affluence. They don't give a damn about pollution. They don't want to look out their backyards and see an oil derrick, or wind turbine or anything that interrupts the ocean view - that's something for poor people. They'll happily sing the praises of Sarah Palin as she lays Alaska to waste just as long as its not in their backyard.

I don't blame them for not wanting an oil well in their backyard, of course. I do blame them for supporting policies that they now say shouldn't apply to them.

Drill baby drill. Hoisted by their own petard.

[AlienGirl]

24. Florida is a blue state now, and MoveOn was involved in organizing this, as was Sierra Club

Not a GOP-sponsored event.

Tucker

[1monster]

32. Oh. So the fact that your part of the country has been severly damaged by oil drilling means

that, instead of trying to repair that damage, we should destroy other parts of the country too?

I don't live on the ocean, but I live near natural bird rookeries that would be harmed, I live within five miles of mangrove estuaries that have already been seriously violated by the over building of predator developers who also tore out sand dunes on barrier islands. I've seen another natural rookey with thousands of birds of all different kinds torn down within a few days to the clear cutting mainia that grips the builders of today so that a hospital could add a new wing and use the rookery as a retention pond. I watched in despair as more and more those birds, bewildered and traumatized, clinging to the fewer and fewer trees left in the habitat, were driven out by bulldozers and other earth movers.

The beaches? They barely exist anymore. The same beaches that used to stretch out at least a half a mile at low tide have a very narrow stip of beach at high tide now. That wasn't just natural erosion. It always seems that when the dredging occurs, the next northeaster took out a stretch of dunes, and when they were gone, a chunk of beach.

We ALL pay when irresponsible practices are policy.

And by the way, I drive a car tht gets thirty-four miles to the gallon and put less than 5,000 miles on that car annually.

[naaman fletcher]

18. So the whole coast of Texas and Louisian is dead? /nt

[1monster]

34. Not the whole coast, but a pretty damned big piece of it according to these:

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is an area of hypoxic (link to USGS definition) (less than 2 ppm dissolved oxygen) waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Its area varies in size, but can cover up to 6,000-7,000 square miles. The zone occurs between the inner and mid-continental shelf in the northern Gulf of Mexico, beginning at the Mississippi River delta and extending westward to the upper Texas coast.

http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/

Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' to grow dramatically due to federal biofuel mandate
A new study says efforts to shrink the massive, oxygen-depleted dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico will be stifled if the U.S. continues to increase its biofuel production.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-to-grow-dramatically-due-to

What is hypoxia?


Hypoxia, or low oxygen, is an environmental phenomenon where the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the water column decreases to a level that can no longer support living aquatic organisms. Hypoxic areas, or "Dead Zones," have increased in duration and frequency across our planet's oceans since first being noted in the 1970s.

The largest hypoxic zone currently affecting the United States, and the second largest hypoxic zone worldwide, is the northern Gulf of Mexico adjacent to the Mississippi River.

http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/

on edit: added url.

[naaman fletcher]

38. I That is a result of drilling? it didn't seem to say so. /nt

[cuncator]

3. Preferably not in anybody's back yard

It's not a question of being in someone's yard or not, we need to break our dependence on petroleum in general. But ruining the coastline and entire economy of Florida for generations to recover a minimal amount of oil located closer than 125 miles of shore would also be remarkably shortsighted of us.

[Frances]

5. In my brother's case, it would be in his front yard

But my brother still supports W so I would guess that he is against the demonstrators.

[mudplanet]

14. Great. Let's start reducing our dependence on pertroleum. But until

then where do we get our oil.

The idea that drilling for oil offshore will "ruin the coastline" is complete bullshit.

They drill offshore in Texas all up and down the coastline and you'd have a hard time finding any evidence of it along the coast. You can drive down the beach in Padre Island for a hundred miles and not see an oil spill or an oil rig.

[DeadEyeDyck]

25. you are right

the Chinese are drilling off of Florida. They are effectively saying, "If you don't want it, we will take it. And then we will sell it to you". Of course, if they have a spill, do you think they will care?

[liberal N proud]

39. Its not in my backyard and I am against it.

Can we for once think about the environment?

[Mojorabbit]

42. We make a lot of money on

tourism and fishing and our beaches are a big part of that. One oil spill would ruin our beaches. IT is not worth the risk. I would have been there myself if my hubby had not woke up with a stomach bug.

[LeftHander]

51. hypocrites...drill baby drill in Alaska...but not in my back yard.

If they oppose having the drilling messing up their man made lagoons and the paint on the dock princess then they should care about drilling in very environmentally sensitive areas like....I don't know...like ALASKA...!!!

I am all for them protect the environment....but be consistent....

[lib2DaBone]

6. They'll pump the oil in Florida, pollute the beaches.. and ship the oil to China...

You can't argue with free trade.. any good free-trader knows that oil is going to go to the highest bidder. Which means that oil extracted in Florida will be shipped to China and benefit only the Banksters.

People in Florida enjoy their clean beaches. If they are not going to benefit, why should they allow the oil companies to rape the environment?

The oil companies will win.. because of Jeb Bush and his oil leases.. but at least people can fight.

Democracy.. what a concept, huh?

[DeadEyeDyck]

26. agreed

[Oceansaway]

8. what happened to drill baby drill ?...n/t

[hollowdweller]

12. Really. A GOP Gov blocking offshore drilling??

I thought that to the republicans offshore drilling was the next best thing to sliced bread.

[2Design]

10. are these the tea people ?

[IDemo]

11. Nope

The Teanuts would have been been chanting "drill baby, drill" and carrying LOL misspelled signs.

[givemebackmycountry]

15. WOW

This is one fucked up thread.

[Edweird]

17. Our economy is almost completely based on tourism. Tar on the beaches would kill that.

Anyone that lives here and supports offshore drilling is a moron.

[naaman fletcher]

19. What makes you think drilling will produce tar on the beaches? /nt

[Lorien]

21. Past experience. nt

[naaman fletcher]

22. where?

Lot's of people on Texas beaches.

[mbperrin]

35. Tar, too. South Padre Island tar ball cleanup nears end

http://coastguardnews.com/south-padre-island-tar-ball-cleanup-nears-ends/2009/07/25/

Brownsville, Texas – Clean up efforts continued Saturday in the removal of tar balls that washed ashore on beaches near South Padre Island July 23, 2009. It is estimated that more than 2,500 gallons of tar have been recovered, and clean up efforts are expected to end Saturday.

The U.S. Coast Guard, Texas General Land Office, Texas Parks and Wildlife, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife crews have been working together to clean up the oiled beaches.

Chemical Response and Remediation Contractors (CRRC) was contracted to conduct the clean up.

CRRC dispatched a crew of more than 10 workers Saturday to clean up remaining oiled areas on Boca Chica beach.

There was one report of a dead and oiled bird.

There have been no reports of injury to people and no adverse impact to fisheries.

The source of the oil spill is under investigation.



You want to drill, you're going to get some mess. I've lived in the oilpatch my entire life and worked in it for two decades. Let's at least be honest about that. That's why I get a chuckle from those opposing windpower over the false issue of bird kill. There are huge wind farms here, and I have never seen a dead bird at the base of one of the towers. Dead birds in the reserve pits of drilling and workover pits? You bet. They see the reflection from above, land, and are stuck in the "mud" and crude (which reads as tar to most folks.)

[mudplanet]

27. You find tar on Carolina beaches, not Texas beaches.

I'm all for preserving nature and the earth, but this is a completely false issue. The only place you'll find evidence of oil production on Florida's coast is at a couple of ports where you'll find the infrastructure to support it in the form of ships and barges, and at one or two points where pipelines come ashore.

The best diving in the Gulf of Mexico is at the oil rigs, which act as reefs for the fish.

The irony of the situation is that Floridian's must be the least environmentally sound people I've ever run across. If they were really "environmentally" sound they'd stop over development of the coast and destruction of wetlands (I'm all for halting development, just as soon as my beachfront home or lake front home is built).

NIMBY.

[1monster]

36. Do you think we haven't tried? Government has become corrupt not only on the federal level, but on

state and local levels too.

The same lobbies that bribe, threaten, blackmail, seduce, and otherwise buy our politicians in D.C. are working hard on the state and local level too.

My hat is off to any politician, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, or even teabagger, who stands up to the intense lobbying and says NO. It may be self interest that motivates them to take a stand against practices that are bad for everyone but the profiteers, I don't care as long as the wanton destroyer are stopped.

And that goes for all those who want to drill in ANWAR too. It isn't just a Florida issue.

And by the way, the Gulf Stream carries a lot of that muck from the Gulf of Mexico to Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia beaches. Those of us living near the Atlantic Coast have seen big globs of tar wash up on our beaches.

[mbperrin]

37. Google "padre island tar on beach" and get 30,900 hits.

Go to images and get 65,300 pictures of tar on the beach at Padre. We quit going 20 years ago over just this issue.

[Javaman]

45. Here I did it for you...

South Padre Island tar ball cleanup nears ends

http://coastguardnews.com/south-padre-island-tar-ball-cleanup-nears-ends/2009/07/25/

Brownsville, Texas – Clean up efforts continued Saturday in the removal of tar balls that washed ashore on beaches near South Padre Island July 23, 2009. It is estimated that more than 2,500 gallons of tar have been recovered, and clean up efforts are expected to end Saturday.

The U.S. Coast Guard, Texas General Land Office, Texas Parks and Wildlife, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife crews have been working together to clean up the oiled beaches.

Chemical Response and Remediation Contractors (CRRC) was contracted to conduct the clean up.

CRRC dispatched a crew of more than 10 workers Saturday to clean up remaining oiled areas on Boca Chica beach.

[DesertFlower]

20. my friend lives in st. petersburg.

she was part of it. so was her 18 year old daughter who is president of the Pinellas county young democrats. her 16 year old son was also out there.

[mudplanet]

29. Great. Get out there and exercise you're right to be heard and seen.

But get informed before you open your mouth. The words "drilling" and "oil production" seem to elicit a knee-jerk reaction from a lot of otherwise good people. The simple fact is that oil production has had very minimal impact on Texas beaches.

Do your friend and her daughter drive cars? Or do they make regular environmentally-sound use of the excellent public transportation in South Florida? Oh, that's right, public transportation is nearly non-existent in South Florida, and what there is seems to be reserved for poor Blacks and Latins. Jesus Christo, you can't get from Clearwater to St. Pete without a car and it's non-stop development the entire way. It's all fine and well to be an "environmental activist" as long as it doesn't inconvenience you into actually changing the way you live.

Environmentally, the very best thing that could happen in Florida would be a series of category five hurricanes on both coasts over a series of years resulting in the cessation of Federal underwriting of homeowner insurance (and "undevelopment")in these areas.

[Lochloosa]

30. "a series of category five hurricanes on both coasts over a series of years"

Since you have your profile blocked and we can't see where you live I'll just assume you have no fucking idea what your talking about.

One Cat 5 would wreck incredible environmental damage. Not the mention of the loss of life. But that's ok, just get rid of the beach development. If you don't like it, get the fucking laws changed.

Go wish that shit on someone else.

[mbperrin]

43. Please don't ignore post 37 above which clearly refutes your assertion.

[IDemo]

31. A bit about offshore drilling and "getting off foreign oil"

The real "drill, baby, drill" screaming is coming not from Sarah and the Teanuts, but from Big Oil and its pet politicians. When you take the time to look at the math, it becomes clear that the actual impacts of offshore drilling on "our"* total oil supply and the cost of a gallon of gas will be negligible. If you factor in the exponential demand growth in China and India, the gains become statistical noise on a graph of world oil production.

from the Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

Similarly, lower 48 natural gas production is not projected to increase substantially by 2030 as a result of increased access to the OCS. Cumulatively, lower 48 natural gas production from 2012 through 2030 is projected to be 1.8 percent higher in the OCS access case than in the reference case. Production levels in the OCS access case are projected at 19.0 trillion cubic feet in 2030, a 3-percent increase over the reference case projection of 18.4 trillion cubic feet. However, natural gas production from the lower 48 offshore in 2030 is projected to be 18 percent (590 billion cubic feet) higher in the OCS access case (Figure 21). In 2030, the OCS access case projects a decrease of $0.13 in the average wellhead price of natural gas (2005 dollars per thousand cubic feet), a decrease of 250 billion cubic feet in imports of liquefied natural gas, and an increase of 360 billion cubic feet in natural gas consumption relative to the reference case projections. In addition, despite the increase in production from previously restricted areas after 2012, total natural gas production from the lower 48 OCS is projected generally to decline after 2020.

Although a significant volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and natural gas resources is added in the OCS access case, conversion of those resources to production would require both time and money. In addition, the average field size in the Pacific and Atlantic regions tends to be smaller than the average in the Gulf of Mexico, implying that a significant portion of the additional resource would not be economically attractive to develop at the reference case prices.

*The oil extracted off the coast of Florida or any other US state is not automatically routed to the nearest refinery for processing and shipment to Denver and Duluth. Oil is a global commodity, meaning it may wind up in Bangalore or Beijing just as easily.

[liberal N proud]

41. All at the cost of pristine beaches and another destroyed environment.

From this:





To this:



And this:

Tar ball on Syrian beach

[Javaman]

46. Thanks for posting this...

The ignorance of the likes of failin quitter and some people on DU blinds me. They all think that just because it's drilled here, it's automatically ours. No, it's the oil corporations oil.

There is this colossal disconnect among "the drill more oil" crowd. They don't want our nations energy nationalized, but are in complete amazement when that same domestic oil is shipped overseas to other nations.

Just makes me laugh at their pure ignorance.

[IndianaGreen]

40. Elect Rubio and you will get off shore drilling for sure!

How a crypto-nazi like Rubio ever got to beat an incumbent governor of his own party for a US Senate seat is beyond credulity.