Our ocean is not for sale
by Marissa Knodel, climate change campaigner
As concerned citizens in the Gulf Coast rally against the few remaining lease sales in the current 2012–2017 offshore drilling program, the Obama administration is teeing up yet another five years of dangerous offshore drilling.
On March 15, 2016, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) within the Department of Interior released the 2017–2022 Outer Continental Shelf proposed drilling program and Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. The proposal includes 13 lease sales for millions of new acres in the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. If the proposed program is approved, it would exacerbate climate disruption and put the already suffering Arctic and Gulf Coast communities at high risk from offshore drilling’s harmful consequences.
The Arctic Ocean is a unique and fragile ecosystem that is rapidly changing as the Arctic warms twice as fast as the rest of the U.S. The BOEM’s own assessment found a 75 percent chance of a large oil spill (more than 1,000 barrels of oil) from oil and gas operations in the Chukchi Sea alone. Given its remote location and harsh ocean conditions, a large oil spill in the Arctic Ocean would be nearly impossible to contain, placing endangered species like the Pacific walrus and polar bear in serious danger and place further stress on Alaska Native communities already facing the prospect of permanent relocation.
The Gulf Coast lies on the frontlines of fossil fuel destruction and climate disruption. Offshore production in the Gulf accounts for 17 percent of total federal oil production and 5 percent of gas production. Half of our country’s petroleum and natural gas refining capacity is located along the Gulf Coast. Industry of this scale comes with great costs. Over 10,000 spills have been recorded in the Gulf over the past six years, and its waters are blighted by some 27,000 abandoned, leaky wells. Coastal wetlands are shrinking by about one football field every hour due to natural subsidence, sea level rise and thousands of miles of canals carved out by oil and gas companies, forcing many residents to permanently relocate.
Increased drilling in the Arctic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico recklessly ignores the tragic lessons of the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil disasters. Both released millions of gallons of oil and cost billions of dollars in damages. Hundreds of thousands of seabirds and marine animals died in the immediate aftermath, and many populations have yet to fully recover. The damage to the fishing industry in both Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Mexico burdened many fisherpeople with financial hardship and forced many to abandon their livelihoods altogether. The bottom line is that offshore oil and gas development comes with significant inherent risks that are nearly impossible to avoid or mitigate.
Take action: Public comments can be submitted online before the May 2 deadline.
Considering these risks, offshore drilling is contradictory to President Obama’s commitment to leave a safe and healthy environment for future generations. During the 2016 State of the Union address, he acknowledged that we need to move away from the dirty fuels of the past and invest in clean energy. Opening vast new areas of the Arctic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico so the oil industry can blast and drill for oil and gas that won’t be available for decades and locks in carbon pollution for generations is the definition of subsidizing the past. The proposed lease sales in the 2017–2022 offshore drilling plan would allow for oil and gas production over the next 40 to 70 years, long past the point that scientists say fossil fuels should be phased out.
President Obama has authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to permanently protect our oceans and end new oil and gas leasing. On March 29, 2016, more than 45 climate, conservation, Indigenous and coastal organizations filed a legal petition calling on President Obama to align U.S. energy policy with his climate goals and issue an executive order to end new oil and gas lease auctions in federal waters, including the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, and the Gulf of Mexico. Such executive action would keep up to 62 billion tons of carbon emissions in the ground and make progress toward limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Given its inherent dangers and the urgent need to combat climate disruption, the federal government should have nothing to do with the dirty business of offshore drilling. The BOEM’s proposal to open up millions of new acres to offshore drilling is the wrong direction for the health and safety of our communities, wildlife and environment. Selling these waters that belong to the American people to private companies that only profit from environmental and climate destruction is unconscionable. The time of treating our oceans and coastlines as zones to pillage, destroy and sacrifice is over.
The time to protect, restore and defend has arrived. You can help by telling the BOEM to not offer any new oil and gas leases in the final 2017–2022 offshore drilling program. Public comments can be submitted online before the May 2 deadline.
