Green Jersey

Offshore oil drilling by the numbers

by William Owen

I find this curious: Securing America’s Future Energy, or SAFE, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, estimates “the offshore industry produced 10.2 billion barrels of oil between 1985 and 2007 with a spill rate of .001 percent.”

This is curious because it is one of the primary justifications for why the oil industry should be allowed to drill for oil in the shores off New Jersey and 11 other sites around the country.

In real numbers, that would be 102,000 barrels of oil. In what world this constitutes what Denise McCourt, industry-relations director with the American Petroleum Institute, calls “a tremendous environmental record,” I don’t dare to imagine. That is still a lot of oil, nearly 4.5 million gallons of it, and what’s more, that number does not account for the approximately 200,000 barrels of oil spilled by just the Exxon Valdez.

It’s curious that .001 percent is considered a sound argument for why the government should allow drilling off the coast of New Jersey and other states.

A number I am much more impressed with is 180.

When the Bush administration proposed allowing more offshore drilling, they granted a 60-day public comment period in which lawmakers, citizens, officials and interest groups would discuss changes with the potential to alter huge portions of America’s coastal borders for decades to come.

180 is the the number of days Ken Salazar, Obama’s Interior Secretary, extended the comment period in order to allow the issue the attention and depth of discussion it deserves. The first national hearing was held Monday in Atlantic City.

If nothing else, I am happy they are taking this time to think about it.

Imagine how much more you can think about an issue this complex in 240 days as opposed to 60. You can for instance consider whether it would be better to create up to 17 jobs per $1 million spent on wind-energy development compared to the 5.5 jobs per million dollars spent that oil development creates.

With 240 days, you can try to understand what more offshore oil drilling would mean for New Jersey’s $40 billion tourism industry.

You can mull over the estimates of the amount of oil off our shores, an estimated 3 to 7.2 billion barrels. That is a lot. It would run a lot of cars and a lot of trucks, which is a primary concern of SAFE (and one of the largest logistical hurdles in determining our energy future).

But the U.S., at present, uses 19.6 million barrels of oil a day. 7.2 billion barrels therefore lasts us 1 year. Three billion barrels would last us through a summer.

And since it would take 5 to 10 years for the fields to even begin to produce, that means there are 5 to 10 summers of high gas prices between now and then for motorists and truckers to contend with.

Ultimately, oil is going to run out. It is a limited resource. We need to continue using it, hopefully as efficiently as possible, in the short-term, but we need long-term strategies that involve renewables and we need to create them now.

Pricing structures, incentives and regulations, such as Gov. Corzine’s 2020 energy mandate, are needed in order to create a sustainable, growable market for alternatives so they can produce jobs, broaden the tax base, and help turn this recession around while we “secure America’s energy future.”

Ken, take your extra 180 days and have a good long think on this, because our energy future is obviously going to take some figuring out.

Green Jersey contributor William Owen, a freelancer writer, lives in Jersey City.