That’s the question I address today on the free-market energy blog, MasterResource.Org.
This morning, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Environment is holding a hearing on the Blowout Prevention Act. The bill text says that the federal government “shall not” issue a permit for an offshore oil well unless the applicant can “demonstrate” that he has the “capacity to promptly stop a blowout in the event the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail.” However, as the ongoing disaster in the Gulf makes painfully clear, once “the blowout preventer and other well control measures fail,” there is no way to “promptly stop” oil from spilling into the ocean. At that point, physics (two fluids coming into contact) takes over.
In short, the Act sets a standard that no oil company can meet. As written, the bill would effectively prohibit all future offshore drilling. Logically, moreover, it implies that all existing permits to drill should be revoked.
Two points should be kept in mind.
First, although oil spills are bad, oil is good. Without oil, there would be no modern commerce and no mechanized agriculture. Life for most people would be nasty, poor, brutish, and short. Many of us would not even be alive.
Second, banning offshore drilling would increase consumers’ pain at the pump, destroy tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, cripple the economy of the gulf states, and make the United States more dependent on OPEC oil.
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Morlo Lewis makes excellent points! Do we Really want to live in the 18th,17th century again? Like your 'fridge,freezer,micrcowave?How about your computer?What about your CAR? None of these things existed in those centuries!Life was tough, hard, brutal,just like Mr Lewis suggested!Wake UP! We have one AWFUL spill,with many implcations,(and a president compounding it,mabey using it-You can't let a crisis go to waste!Hellow,Cap and trade!Go look at the video when he talks about his cap and trade bill…Electricity bills will, naturally skyrocket up!,not my words) However,we have had NO rig spills in more than 40 years!(Valdise was a tanker)there are thousands of rigs in the gulf and all over the world operating safetly,and there's a moratorium for 6 months!on ALL oil riggs?? even those not in DEEP WATER??Good Buy New Orleans,America…..
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