Posted on 03/20/2021 4:49:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
“Louisiana officials say the state’s oil and gas industry is in danger. This comes after President Joe Biden cancelled a March oil lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly 80 million acres of available leases would have been sold this week. The damage to Louisiana’s (and the nation’s) oil and gas companies started in January when President Biden signed an executive order banning all new oil and gas leases on public land and waters for 60 days," reports KLFY.
Now for the cheering:
“Cancelling this huge offshore Gulf oil auction helps protect our climate and life on Earth. President Biden understands the urgent need to keep this oil in the ground…This is a great step toward phasing out all offshore drilling and bringing environmental justice to the Gulf Coast and Alaska. We need to help restore coastal communities and marine life," the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement.
And speaking of “marine life.” If bona-fide science has crowned “Global Warmists” with 10-foot dunce caps, then over half a century of scientific evidence has crowned anti-offshore drilling activists with 50-foot dunce caps. That offshore oil drilling—far from an environmental disaster, is empirically an environmental bonanza—has been pounded home with a vengeance in study after study. The science, you might say, is settled. To wit:
According to the Energy Information Administration, "Gulf of Mexico federal offshore oil production accounts for 17% of total U.S. crude oil production." Yet with over 3000 of the 4000 plus offshore oil production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico off her coast, Louisiana provides almost a third of North America’s commercial fisheries.
A study by LSU’s sea grant college showed that 70 percent of Louisiana’s offshore fishing trips target these structures. “Oil platforms as artificial reefs support fish densities 10 to 1000 times that of adjacent sand and mud bottom, and almost always exceed fish densities found at both adjacent artificial reefs of other types and natural hard bottom,” revealed a study by Dr. Bob Shipp, professor at the Marine Sciences department of the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. “Evidence indicates that massive areas of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico were essentially empty of Red Snapper stocks for the first hundred years of the fishery. Subsequently, areas in the western Gulf have become the major source of red snapper, concurrent with the appearance of thousands of petroleum platforms.”
In brief, “villainous” Big Oil produces marine life at rates that puts to shame “wondrous” Earth Goddess Gaia. “The fish Biomass around an offshore oil platform is ten times greater per unit area than for natural coral reefs,” also found Dr. Charles Wilson of LSU’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Science (emphasis added). "Ten to thirty thousand adult fish live around an oil production platform in an area half the size of a football field.”
But you’re very conveniently “forgetting” the infamous BP oil spill! comes the retort from Environmentalist Whackos.
Glad you mentioned that. Because only one year after the infamous spill, the FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Seafood Inspection Laboratory, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, along with similar agencies from neighboring Gulf coast states, have methodically and repeatedly tested Gulf seafood for cancer-causing “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.”
“Not a single sample [for oil or dispersant] has come anywhere close to levels of concern,” reported Olivia Watkins, executive media advisor for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
“All of the samples have been 100-fold or even 1,000-fold below all of these levels,” reported Bob Dickey, director of the FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory. “Nothing ever came close to these levels.”
That this proliferation of seafood in the Gulf of Mexico came because – rather than in spite – of the oil production rattled many environmental cages and provoked a legion of scoffers.
Amongst the scoffers were some Travel Channel producers, fashionably greenish in their views. They read these claims in a book by yours truly—"The Helldiver’s Rodeo”—that Publishers Weekly hailed as “highly-entertaining!” (Ted Nugent’s blurb certainly didn’t help against their scoffing!)
The book describes an undersea panorama that (if true) could make an interesting show for the network, they concluded, while still scoffing. They scoffed as we rode in from the airport. They scoffed over raw oysters, grilled redfish and seafood gumbo that night. More scoffing through the Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s. They scoffed even while suiting up in dive gear and checking the cameras as we tied up to an oil platform 20 miles in the Gulf off the southeast Louisiana coast.
But they came out of the water bug-eyed and indeed produced and broadcast a Travel Channel program showcasing a panorama that turned on its head every environmental superstition against offshore oil drilling. Schools of fish filled the water column from top to bottom – from 6-inch blennies to 12-foot sharks. Fish by the thousands. Fish by the ton.
The cameras were going crazy. Do I focus on the shoals of barracuda? Or that cloud of jacks? On the immense schools of snapper below, or on the fleet of tarpon above? How ’bout this – whoa – hammerhead! We had some close-ups, too, of coral and sponges, the very things disappearing off Florida’s pampered reefs—a state that bans offshore oil drilling. Off Louisiana, they sprout in colorful profusion from the huge steel beams —acres of them. You’d never guess this was part of that unsightly structure above. The panorama of marine life around an offshore oil platform staggers anyone who puts on goggles and takes a peek, even (especially!) the most worldly scuba divers. Here’s a video peek at this seafood bonanza.
And here’s the book that caused so many “environmentalist” heads to explode.
>>President Biden understands the urgent need to keep this oil in the ground
Oil doesn’t stay put. It’ll seap out naturally. Better to extract it and do away with that “nasty” oil.
On the other hand, the Prince William, AK fisheries have never recovered from the Exxon Valdez spill
Sarcasm? If not you should rethink your position, it’s foolhardy. https://www.soundsalmon.org/
That's not quite accurate. The salmon, cod, and halibut populations have rebounded in Cordova, but herrings have not.
When will the Governor of Louisiana nullify the illegitimate fedguv EO and just let the drilling continue? Inquiring minds want to know. GOPee Delenda Est!
You fish up there?
I am looking at the hundreds of oil tankers torpedoed in WWII. Most of the articles I am seeing are pearl-clutchers describing these tankers as “time bombs” that could start leaking oil and destroy the whole ocean at any point. So, environmental ‘cleanup’ outfits need more money.
Maybe somebody who knows more about it can say, but I have a hard time believing that all of these tankers went down without spilling their cargo.
The greenies results? Chains rusted in the salt water (who knew?), storms and hurricanes scattered the individual tires all over the sea floor.
No
I’m guessing that the oil platforms have more fish due to the greater range in depth around the structure. A natural reef probably has a limited depth range, and only attracts fish that like those depths.
Either that, or it is a diabolical scheme between the oil and fishing industries to gather all sorts of fish in one area and then catch them all - and then served to yuppies (is that still a thing?) at fancy New Orleans restaurants.
BTW - if salmon is on the endangered species list - how come it is still on the menu?
Can’t be proved, but a whole lot more methane leaks out of the ocean floor than can ever be produced by man. But that isn’t the point. The point is subjugation of the people by government control.
The Norwegian are getting rich extracting all that oil from the pristine seas around them.
If Norwegians can do it, Americans can surely do too!
In the worst case, hire some Norwegians.
Just so you know, oil has seeped to the surface for millions of years with associated bacteria that readily eats it. Especially in the warm Gulf of Mexico. Steam cleaning the PWS beaches delayed recovery by killing this bacteria, but never the less the sound has recovered.
Abstract and Figures
Eight years of quantitative biological and chemical data have been analyzed for trends in recovery of biota inhabiting beaches in Prince William Sound following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and subsequent shoreline treatments. Sampling has focused on biota at sheltered rocky and mixed-soft sites subjected to three degrees of disturbance (unoiled, oiled but not hot-water washed, and oiled/hot-water washed). Only epibiota on sheltered rocky habitats are covered in this paper. The majority of community dominants survived 1989 on oiled rocky shores that were not high-pressure, hot-water washed. These areas appeared to be nearly completely recovered by 1991, although subsequent monitoring has revealed oscillations in species abundances that exceed those on unoiled beaches.
25 Years after Exxon Valdez Spill, Sea Otters Recovered in Alaska’s Prince William Sound
It took a quarter century, but the northern sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) living in Alaska’s Prince William Sound have finally recovered from the effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, according to a new report from the U.S.
I think a BIG hole in a ship would tend to 'leak' something!
But then, maybe it all burned up before getting a chance to pollute the shore.
But, Grampa Otto still tells scary stories of the past to rapt little otter ears...
I was wondering because some friends that fish up there say it hasn’t - so you must be reading various articles that say it has, contrary to actual experiences. I do miss fishing there myself but that was too many years ago.
Yes yes, I spent 30 years in the industry fishing from AK to OR in almost all the fisheries.
You know nothing unless you were there then as I was - you only know what you read. So please do not quote various abstracts etc they reflect only the academic gimme-a- grant point of view not the realities, in other words, they are full of crap.
What are they going to tell the people when the “No Gas” signs come out? When they get in a line a mile long for gas, only to have them run out after they spent hours waiting? When they get on social media to complain and then get banned? When they go to the polls to do something about it and see every race lost by a few hundred votes? This is what is coming.
But they came out of the water bug-eyed and indeed produced and broadcast a Travel Channel program showcasing a panorama that turned on its head every environmental superstition against offshore oil drilling. “”
It’d be interesting to see the career trajectories of these persons post production.
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