To drill or not to drill, in the Outer Continental Shelf?

April 21, 8:44 PMSF Energy Policy ExaminerAnn Garrison

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On January 25, 1969, this oil drilling operation off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, caused a huge explosion in the ocean floor, and a spill covered the Santa Barbara harbor and the nearby coast with thick sludge, inspiring still fierce resistance to oil and gas drilling on the California Coast.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar comes to San Francisco, and Atlantic City, New Orleans, and Anchorage

On April 16th, in San Francisco, Barack Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazer, held the last of four hearings on the extension of oil and gas drilling leases,  into all 1.7 billion ocean acres in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), and, on wind-and-wave versus oil-and-gas energy.  

Salazar had traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Anchorage, Alaska, for the first three hearings, which were like this week's, videocast and then archived for review, as the public comment period on the fate of the OCS continues, until September 21, 2009.

Why now?

1)  Because of George Bush's parting gift: the Draft Proposed Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Ga Leasing Program, 2010-2015.  

2)  Because, earlier in 2008, as gas prices soared, enraged gas consumers climbed atop cars and started firing guns, and oil and gas devotees chanted “Drill Baby Drill!" at the Republican National Convention, Bush canceled all presidential restrictions on coastal oil and gas drilling, and persuaded Congress to do the same.

Then, Bush presented his December plan, including only 45 days for public comment, but when Salazer took office, he declared that far too little time, scheduled the hearings  just ended, and extended the time for public comment, and, no doubt, for more lobbying than most of us will never know about.   Not only Interior, but also Congress will have to approve whatever 5-year plan for the OCS emerges.

There's still time to speak out:

Anyone who was unable to join the sea otter, the penguin, the shark, or the oil and gas industry lobbists, at San Francisco's hearings, or in Jersey City, New Orleans, or Anchorage, can still comment, to Interior, up until September 21, 2008, according to instructions on the Minerals Management Service (MMS) website.

However, anyone who reads these instructions will understand why I just sent this little message to Interior, at  http://www.doi.gov/feedback.html , urging them to make commenting far less arduous:

"Following instructions for submitting written public comment on the Draft Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling Plan, 2010-2015, is such an ordeal that it seems almost as though you would rather no one followed them and//or submitted any further public comment.”

Though it does seem this way, Interior's byzantine electronic instructions are quite likely one more bit of bureaucratic complexity that Interior should simplify----if they really want to know how the rest of us feel about more drilling in the OCS.

So write, but don't spend more than two minutes doing it . . . 

Any commentors who might pour their passion for our coasts into an electronic letter should be forewarned that Interior's computer word recognition software will electronically convert whatever you say into #s in columns like  Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific, or Alaskan Coast, drilling or no drilling, and, yes or no to wind and wave, yes or no to oil and gas, yes or no to global warming, don't-believe-in-global warming, pro oil and gas jobs, pro wind and wave jobs, pro-energy efficiency, and/or pro seals, salmon, jelly fish,  polar bears, etc. 

Is it worth bothering then? Sure, why not?  So long as you don't spend more than two minutes doing it.  And please also send a note to Interior, as I did, at  http://www.doi.gov/feedback.html, asking them to respect us, the public, and our time, by creating simpler instructions for becoming a number, or two or three, in their databases.

Snail mail, or even hand delivered mail to addresses on the MMS website, may have some chance of being actually read, and, perhaps somehow considered, by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar or someone else in his Minerals Management Service Departrment.   And, of course, you can always write and call your Senators and Reps in Washington D.C., whom industry lobbyists, and environmental organizations, will no doubt line up to lobby between now and the final outcome.

Since I chafe at bureaucratic  containment, I sent my own hand written public comments through the U.S. Post Office,  and called Interior, (202) 208-3100.

Few of us can knock on doors, or pick up a phone to speak directly to Ken Salazar, or Barack Obama, or to our Senators or Congressional Reps in D.C., like big corporate campaign contributors and their lobbyists, or, environmental organizations capable of delivering large voting blocks.  But, that doesn't mean that we can't keep speaking publicly, or, in the traditional press, Internet press, social networks, and in churches or anywhere else there might be an interested audience.  

So you want to be elected to public office in California?  Then speak, and vote, to protect the California Coast.

In California, just for example, politicians from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, 9th District Congressional Representative Barbara Lee, California Governor Arnold Schwarnegger, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom all know, very well, that they cannot continue to hold elected office in California, if they fail to advocate, and vote, to protect the California Coast, at least for now.  

No matter how much oil and gas interests contribute to their campaigns or anyone else's.  

For now, resistance to more drilling in the OCS seems almost as strong on the Atlantic Coast, but the oil and gas industries, and those they employ, most often prevail in the Gulf States and, in Alaska, where the polar bears that the whole world worries over can't testify.

Even here, on a sunny spring day last week, here in California, Greenpeace did their best to testify for them: