"The recent call for offshore drilling is an imaginary solution to the real problem of rising gas prices, and Virginia State Senator Frank Wagner and Delegate Chris Saxman are already spending the imaginary revenues from off shore drilling on Virginia roads", said Glen Besa, Virginia Chapter Director of the Sierra Club. "Instead of offering real solutions on energy, global warming and transportation, we are being given false solutions and empty promises."
Over 70% of Virginia's offshore drilling zone is within the U.S. Navy's Virginia Capes Operating Area, the principal training area for air, surface and submarine units as well as a testing area for new vessels, aircraft and weapon systems. Vital to accomplishing their mission of national defense and used heavily for training Navy and Air Force combat units for the war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, the Navy is strongly opposed to the restrictions and hazards presented by the presence of drilling rigs and related structures.
"The revenues imagined by Sen. Wagner ignore the Navy's and Air Force's training requirements encroaching on the Virginia Capes Operating Area," said Eileen Levandoski, Hampton Roads Conservation Coordinator with the Sierra Club. "And for what? As the U.S. Department of Interior has indicated, at the most, only 4 billion barrels of oil reserves lie off the entire Atlantic coast--about a 200 day supply based on current US consumption on 20 million barrels a day. That's hardly worth the tremendous risk to our environment, our local economy and our national defense."
Expanding offshore drilling has been recently demonstrated to have no impact on gas prices. This past January the United States held two major lease sales in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, yet prices continue to increase. "If opening up new areas for offshore drilling has an effect on gas prices, then we would be seeing lower prices right now as a result", said Besa.
More than 41 million acres in the outer continental shelf have been leased for oil drilling, yet just over 8 million acres are in production. The petroleum industry is using only a fraction (18%) of what it already has access to. "We don't need to open new areas, especially not our coastal areas in Virginia where our local economy risks losing so much", said Levandoski.
The price of oil is set on the world market and causes for high gas prices include increased demand in China and India, a weak dollar and speculation. Currently, the price of crude oil has nearly doubled even though oil inventories are ample, there have been no disruption in supplies, and petroleum demand in the US, the world's biggest consumer, has leveled off in recent weeks.
It would take at least 10 years before oil from coastal drilling could be brought to market, and it cannot legitimately be offered as a solution to today's increasing gas prices. Citizens are instead urged to reject the failed energy policies of the past and insist on clean energy solutions that could create thousands of new green jobs, reduce global warming and make us more energy independent.