Posted on 05/31/2005 10:26:28 AM PDT by WKB
GULFPORT, Miss. — Tucked away in the 96-page emergency military spending bill signed by President Bush this month are four paragraphs that give energy companies the right to explore for oil and gas inside a sprawling national park.
The amendment written by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) codifies Mississippi's claim to mineral rights under federal lands and allows drilling for natural gas under the Gulf Islands National Seashore — a thin necklace of barrier islands that drapes the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Mississippi Ping
Bring them on, go for it so the politicians will have more money to throw away.
Good, hopefully Florida will be next. I'm tired of working off the coast of La/Tx.
Who do you work for?
My son works for H and P
Agreed, conservatives cried about drilling in ANWR for years but haven't said one word about drilling in the gulf off of Florida.
"Moreover, he said, the economic boon to the state could be significant. "You don't know until you drill," Sims said, "but I use the number $200 million to $300 million over the life of the production" as a likely estimate of the state's share of royalties and taxes from production under the islands.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the former head of the Republican National Committee and one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, laid the groundwork for drilling in the Gulf Islands National Seashore by signing a bill last year allowing oil and gas leases in state waters surrounding the islands.
Barbour also signed legislation transferring authority over drilling from the state's environmental quality agency to the Mississippi Development Authority, an economic department with no regulatory power over the environment."
Great news!
Haley is doing a masterful job as Governor!
Drill it. Then go to Gull Island and the ANWAR.
Haley is doing a masterful job as Governor!
Another thing he is doing is calling these special sessions.
It cost money but he sets the agenda and that is all
they can work on. It is really the only "power"
a Ms Gov has and he working it to a tee.
I work for a small survey co. in Lafayette. We mostly work on dive boats doing repairs on pipelines. In fact, I'm off the coast of High Island right now.
"Scientists suspect that seismic testing under water was linked to the death of a pair of beaked whales in 2002 in the Gulf of California and to the deaths of several humpback whales along the coast of Brazil. In controlled experiments, scientists demonstrated that the air guns used in the testing damaged the hearing of fish."
Who are these unnamed scientists, and how did they test this?
These air guns are apparently used extensively, so if they are really harmful to sea critters, why isn't there lots of evidence of it rather than some vague assertions of some unnamed scientists? Did they point the air gun at the fish directly, or use it as it's used for seismic testing?
For the tests they want to direct as much of the energy downward as possible. Sound waves going off into the water is just wasted energy and would likely cause reflections that could make the test less accurate.
This is kind of like a sonor in the ground instead of the water, except that the target isn't moving, so repeated pings are unnecessisary. They'll likely do several thumps to verify the results, but this isn't going to be a long disruption of the wildlife.
Sound travels better in denser objects. It travels better in water than air, and better in the ground than in water. It's unlikely that they would need to generate sound levels in the water that would be harmful to anything that isn't right on top of the air gun when it's being used.
This isn't going to cause a significant disruption in the wildlife in the area. This is just another obstructionist ploy by the power hungry "environmental" lobby.
"It cost money but he sets the agenda and that is all
they can work on. It is really the only "power"
a Ms Gov has and he working it to a tee."
Yes...MS governor is weak.
But, Haley is utilizing every tool in his possession.
He's good at strategery...;o)
Florida won't even allow seismic surveys off it's coast to see if or how much oil/gas is there. If it compares to the rest of the Gulf Coast, I'd bet there is a lot of both.
This is just another obstructionist ploy by the power hungry "environmental" lobby.
And it won't be the LAST!!!
It's proven that whales use low-frequency sound to communicate over long distances. It's certainly possible that they use it to navigate as well. These air guns could be interfering with that, even damaging the nerve system that the animals use (think of someone firing a gun downrange with your ear next to the muzzle).
I'm not saying this is proven or anything; I too would like to see the actual studies. But I can certainly envisage that it's possible.
Frankly, I think that rather than spend time and money on stuff like this, we should be spending time and money replacing oil and natural gas with other sources of energy. It's pretty unlikely that drilling here and in ANWAR is going to make much of a dent in the amount of oil and gas we buy from people who then give the money to people who want to kill us. I think that President Bush and the rest owe us some real leadership for a change on this issue, rather than just making their oil buddies some more money.
None. Which means there is much work to do, not that the objective is invalidated. And while it is a conservative tenet that the free market should operate as much as possible and that government subsidy is anathema, it is also conservative thought that national security is properly a governmental concern. I am of the opinion that getting us off of the oil standard for our energy needs is an issue of national security.
Just sent an email to the Sun Herald "Sound Off" column. If it is printed, I'll be amazed. The same people here on the Coast, are whining about high gas prices, but they don't want oil rigs off the coast. Fat, lazy, complacent Americans make me sick. The Arab Muslims have us by the gonads (oil), and we bicker about some islands. Total , idiocy in the highest form. Drill for oil, and drill some more. Damn the islands, and Saudi be dammned as well.
Jeff
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