My ‘crude awakening' on domestic oil production

I went through the rationing and gas lines of the 70’s, believing the United States would learn from that episode and work towards energy self-sufficiency.

Where did the intervening 30 years go? Certainly by now we’ve solved all sorts of energy problems and have become the world leader in conservation, renewable energy, nuclear power, and petroleum production. If only this were true.

The reality is that we’re still dependent on foreign oil. At least we now have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but that’s really a Band-Aid; maybe tourniquet is more appropriate. We produce about 8.3 million barrels of oil a day, but wind up using over 20 million barrels of oil, each and every day. How is that possible? Obviously the difference of 11-plus million barrels represents a huge chunk of money going internationally in order to obtain the oil we guzzle. We are far from being self-sufficient.

I have been a proponent for all domestic production: Alaska, the lower 48, and even off-shore. I have publicly supported expanded drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and up the East Coast where individual states have expressed the desire to do so, e.g., Virginia.

However, borrowing a cleverly coined phrase, I’ve had a “crude awakening.” Prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, fire, and spill, I was under the impression that we had a firm grasp on the technology and could safely do the exploration and drilling. It seems many people thought that. Because of what has happened, I would now propose a moratorium on exploratory drilling until a thorough investigation has been done on the accident and if there are lessons learned and actions that can be taken to prevent another such accident.

In a perfect world, there would be no need for off-shore drilling, because we would have built more nuke plants, wind-farms, have most commercial and residential buildings with some type of solar generation, and drilled more in Alaska and where there are other BIG known reserves. In other words, we wouldn’t have wasted the last 30 years. Alas, we don’t live in that perfect world.

So, do we need to inspect each and every rig that’s off-shore? Yes. Do we need to assess creating shut-off systems for current and future exploratory or production wells that will automatically prevent oil spills? Yes.

At the same time, and it’s coming a little late for the fishermen and beaches of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, do we need to have expanded capabilities to respond to spills? Yes. For the last 20 years, the federal government was required by law to have “response plans” for spills such as this one, to include methods and equipment; instead, those plans were hollow and the equipment never acquired, for example, "fire booms" that could have been deployed Day One and used to burn off the oil. So, the government part of this needs to be fixed as well. I commend the Walton County folks who are not taking a “wait-and-see” or “poor pitiful us” approach. Pay attention Obama.

As long as man asserts mastery over our domain called Earth, there will be the chance that something goes wrong. We soar through air and space, we dive to the depths of the oceans, we tunnel through mountains, we drill for oil and gas on man-made little floating islands, and we split atoms. We capitalize on the sacrifices of pioneers and learn from accidents associated with all those risky endeavors.

If we can learn from the Deepwater Horizon accident, and get to 99.99 percent assurance that we have fixes in place to prevent a similar occurrence, then I would endorse continued off-shore exploration and production, but with the goal to end the need for such drilling.

The off-shore track record up to this point, has really been pretty good. If we adopted knee-jerk reactions to every problem or accident we would never leave the ground, never venture on or under water, abandon all forms of transportation, live in tents and become self-clothed hunter-gatherers.

Raymond Netherwood, from Miramar Beach. is a candidate running without party affiliation for Congress from Florida's 2nd District, which includes Franklin County.