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EDITORIAL: Where We Stand: Observe Moratorium on Offshore Drilling

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 April 2006, 09:01 CDT

By The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Apr. 4--Offshore drilling for energy comes in two parts: exploration, which finds the gas or oil, and production, which gets it out of the ground and to market.

Both are banned under federal law, but the General Assembly has again passed legislation seeking permission to open the waters off Virginia Beach.

Much of the discussion in our editorial project, Offshore 101, has tended to conflate the two, for good reason: If exploration finds anything, the pressure to allow production will be enormous.

Exploration has some risks, including underwater explosions that can harm aquatic life, especially whales. Others, including small spills from test wells and pollution from drilling facilities, are generally well controlled.

By far the largest risk is that if geologists find gas or oil, irresistible pressure will be put on politicians to allow energy companies to go get it. But that's a political problem with a political solution.

Philosophically, this page simply can't advocate proceeding in ignorance. If there is significant gas and oil off Virginia's shores, Virginia should know it.

The problem is that we can't know it without allowing ourselves to become even more powerless to manage, limit or control what comes next.

The biggest risks to our environment, our culture, and our economy come from producing whatever might be out there. Gas production is about as benign as any fossil fuel extraction. It's clearly less worrisome than oil production, at least at the wellhead.

Unfortunately, under the current federal scheme, there's really no practical difference between producing oil and gas, which are often found together. If exploration finds oil, the same rules that allow companies to extract gas will let them extract oil.

Once it asks for the moratorium to be lifted, Virginia would be powerless to decide what kind of petroleum production would be permitted off its coast, where it could be mined, how it would be transported, where refineries would be located.

Regardless of what Virginia does, the federal government may decide to go ahead anyway and permit drilling off the Atlantic coast. That decision would certainly be far easier politically if Virginia invites Washington to make it, but it remains a possibility even if Virginia doesn't.

That fundamental lack of control is the most troublesome aspect of the whole business. Though proponents tend to classify as hysterical worries about rigs visible from the Boardwalk, Virginia may be unable to prevent them.

Laudably, state Sen. Frank Wagner's legislation, SB262, attempts to draw bright lines on what would be allowed -- and what would be forbidden -- off Virginia's coast. While we applaud Wagner's attempt to bring some coherence to energy policy in the commonwealth, the trouble is that Virginia's desires may not have any weight at all beyond its territorial waters, which end a few miles from the beach.

That has certainly prove d to be the case as the federal government maps offshore boundaries for the Atlantic states. One of the more bizarre bits in the debate is the federal government's decision to give Virginia only a teeny part of the ocean. That probably means that any money the state would receive from offshore drilling would be far smaller than current estimates, and certainly smaller than many of our neighbors.

If Virginia were to seek an end to the presidential ban, it's not clear what it would get in return. Vague promises have been made of additional royalties to states and coastal communities, but there is no scheme in place to guarantee them. In truth, the experience in the Gulf of Mexico, where some energy companies have refused to pay up, should be particularly instructive.

Beyond the political, though, lies the practical effects that drilling -- gas and especially oil -- might have here.

The environmental risks from offshore production are unavoidable. Spills are possible at any step in the process, and, as we've seen time and again, are notoriously hard to clean up.

As remote a possibility as an oil spill might be, it will only take one good one to wreck Virginia Beach's gigantic stake in tourism. Two decades of private and public redevelopment on Atlantic and Pacific avenues would be sunk.

While we can imagine a regulatory structure that would mitigate that risk, the current administration in Washington simply can't be trusted to establish and enforce it.

So too goes the debate over where refineries, pipelines and processing facilities would be located. Sen. Wagner's bill calls for a fast track process to site facilities, circumventing some local consent.

That's worrisome enough, but Washington is likely to reduce local powers still further. That means not only would Virginia be powerless to control what goes on beyond its territorial waters, it might even be largely powerless to control what happens on dry land .

In our conditional endorsement of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, we said: "Congress should approve drilling in ANWR only as part of a national energy agenda that assures we don't ever face such an ugly choice again. It should include serious funding for research into sustainable alternative energy sources, including the clean hydrogen necessary for next-generation automobiles. Done wisely, lawmakers could help pay for the development of new technologies with the last gasp of the old."

By any estimate, the energy available off Virginia couldn't begin to do any of that. At best, it might contribute some millions to the commonwealth's general fund, while fundamentally altering the relationship Hampton Roads has with the ocean.

But it would almost certainly do nothing to help move America off its dependence on fossil fuels, an addiction that has cost us thousands of military lives and forced us to make friends with some horrible people around the globe.

Virginia has been asked to trade something precious and irreplaceable for uncertain financial riches, and to perpetuate a bankrupt national energy strategy for a few years more.

Nobody would take that deal, and Virginia certainly shouldn't. Gov. Tim Kaine should strike any part of SB262 that would permit exploration or production. The General Assembly should table the issue indefinitely, or until the federal government can find an energy policy that shifts the nation from its addiction to fossil fuels.

The gas and oil off our shores -- if there are any -- won't go away. America and Virginia might be better off to consider those reserves a kind of energy savings, for a time when we need the withdrawal more desperately than we do now, and for a time when politicians can be counted on to protect our environmental, cultural and economic interests.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Virginian-Pilot

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