Last month, the U.S. Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed a bill sponsored by Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, that would allow for drilling in federal waters within 50 miles of Florida’s coastline. The bill passed the committee 12-10 along a straight party-line vote. It now awaits consideration by the full Senate after the summer recess. If passed and signed by the president, the new law would replace existing federal guidelines that maintain a 125-mile zone buffer around Florida. Senator Bill Nelson, D-Florida, was predictably livid, and he vowed to use every procedural tactic at his disposal to block the pending legislation.

As the bill’s sponsor, Cassidy claims that increased access near the Florida coastline will result in an additional million barrels of oil each day, billions of dollars of additional royalties and lots of new, high-paying jobs for Floridians. This sounds so familiar. In 2009 and 2010, our state Legislature came very close to lifting a moratorium on drilling activity in state waters within 9 miles of the shoreline, and similar claims were made. I remember it well because I was the lead author for a report on the potential impacts of this policy change that was written by the Collins Center for Public Policy on behalf of the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida:

Our report considered a broad range of potential risks and rewards associated with drilling near the Florida coastline. It did not offer recommendations because that was not within our charge (the report was requested by former Senate President Jeff Atwater). Some of our most important insights, however, concerned the estimates for oil and gas resources in the eastern Gulf of Mexico that are off-limits to drilling. This included estimates for Florida’s coastal waters as well as the eastern Gulf areas under the federal moratorium.

Suffice to say there’s not much to get excited about. There may very well be lucrative oil and gas deposits in an area near the Panhandle known as the Destin Dome that could generate meaningful profits for a few oil and gas firms. But claims of an additional million barrels of oil per day are bogus.

The eastern Gulf of Mexico is largely a limestone platform that doesn’t hold the giant oil and gas reservoirs found in the central and western Gulf. It’s essentially a hydrocarbon desert with some potentially productive areas along the edges — a little oasis here and there.

Even more bogus are the claims regarding royalty revenues and new jobs.

In our Collins Center report, we used one of the oil and gas industry’s own economic analyses as the basis for converting estimated reserves into estimated royalty streams and jobs. We didn’t just pull our numbers out of the air. Subsequent industry analyses have employed dubious methods that appear to exaggerate potential benefits of drilling by an order of magnitude or more. This is done through a little fudging of how much oil and gas exists, more fudging of the timeline and volume of new well productivity, and still more fudging of the additional economic activity this would create (as opposed to simply shifting the location of current activity). If you put it all together you get a big pile of fudge.

If Senator Cassidy’s bill passes, Floridians would likely see the oil and gas industry expand its operations eastward along the Panhandle about 50 miles from the white sandy beaches. Existing infrastructure and personnel would likely be used, and any oil and gas produced would likely be shipped or pipelined back to Louisiana’s refineries. Louisiana may stand to gain a little from this, along with other Gulf states, with existing oil and gas jobs and associated infrastructure. Whatever new risks are generated by moving drilling operations closer to Florida’s beaches will be borne by Florida.

The oil and gas industry also will have to work out an arrangement with the folks at Eglin Air Force Base to share the space that’s used exclusively by the military. Whether this would result in fewer military exercises (perhaps requiring fewer supporting jobs) is anyone’s guess.

It comes as no surprise that few, if any, Florida politicians are jumping on Cassidy’s bandwagon.

Dr. Frank Alcock is an associate professor of political science at New College of Florida, where he teaches world politics, international law and environmental policy. He is the former director of the Environmental Studies program at New College as well as the former director of the Marine Policy Institute at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.

Source: tbo.com

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