Focus on new, not old, sources of energy

Comment: Great Letter, Virginia needs to demand new, modern green power now!

By Published by The Editorial Board
Published: September 4, 2009

To the editor:

The Danville Register & Bee reported recently that gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell touts offshore drilling for oil and gas as a way to help replenish state coffers. The Southern Environmental Law Center wishes to correct a factual error in McDonnell’s statements.

Currently, federal law limits the sharing of oil and gas revenue to the Gulf states of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama. According to all reports, Congress is not likely to expand this program any further. In fact, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has rejected a proposal to expand the program. So, even if one supports oil and gas drilling — which the Southern Environmental Law Center does not — it would be erroneous to do so on the grounds that the commonwealth would benefit from any of the revenue.

Moreover, despite McDonnell’s statements to the contrary in other news media, offshore oil and gas drilling in Virginia is not “already set.” The U.S. Minerals Management Service has only just begun to review a potential lease sale in Virginia; thus no decision has been made.

SELC opposes a potential lease sale in Virginia because the miniscule amount of oil and gas it would yield (6½ days of oil and 18 days of gas at present rates of national consumption) is simply not worth the enormous consequences that the drilling would have on commercial and sport fishing, coastal tourism and ocean life — including endangered whales and turtles. (Not to mention that the area in question overlaps with sensitive Department of Defense and NASA operations in the Atlantic.)

Rather, federal and state leaders should be focusing time and money on assessing and developing non-carbon based energy sources — including the tremendous offshore wind potential that Virginia has.

MARIROSE PRATT
Associate Attorney
Southern Environmental Law Center
Charlottesville

http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/danville_letters/article/focus_on_new_not_old_sources_of_energy/13657/