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ADT Home Security in Virginia

Oil Drilling: Virginia Gets All the Risk, But Has to Share the Rewards?

by: TheGreenMiles

Thu Apr 22, 2010 at 08:45:28 AM EDT


As Not Larry Sabato points out, this is what the McDonnell/Bolling/Cuccinelli administration is working so hard to bring to Virginia:
Survivors of a thunderous blast aboard an oil platform off the Louisiana coast were being reunited with their families at a suburban New Orleans hotel early Thursday as the search for 11 missing workers continued.
But there's more! Via The Deadrise, if some senators get their way, Virginians would get no more of the revenue from drilling off our shores than would go to Iowans:
Three key Senate Democrats are urging their colleagues to reject a proposal in the emerging climate bill that would give a cut of oil and gas production royalties to states that allow offshore drilling.

Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia called "revenue sharing" an ill-advised "giveaway" of money that belongs to all U.S. citizens.

All the risk, only a fraction of the rewards. I bet you didn't realize that when Bob McDonnell promised drilling revenue would fund transportation, he was referring to an expanded Route 20 to Sioux City, did you?

UPDATE: Brian at Too Conservative says it's outrageous that we keep using the deaths of workers to suggest maybe we stop doing things that kill workers.

UPDATE #2: Officials had been saying the explosion didn't pose much of an environmental risk. That was before the platform sunk:

The well could be spilling up to 8,000 barrels of crude oil a day, McNamara said, and the rig carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel. She didn't know whether the crude oil was spilling into the Gulf.

UPDATE #3: We could be looking at an oil spill washing up on Gulf Coast beaches.
TheGreenMiles :: Oil Drilling: Virginia Gets All the Risk, But Has to Share the Rewards?
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Oil Drilling: Virginia Gets All the Risk, But Has to Share the Rewards? | 39 comments
Who Actually Bought McDonnell's "Plan"? (4.00 / 1)
Those people who actually thought that drilling for oil and gas off the coast of Virginia could contribute much to solving the state's transportation crisis must have been smoking an illegal substance. (That's a joke, Jack, not an "ad hominem attack.")

Meanwhile, I fully expect Maryland to be the state that will benefit from the wind power off its Atlantic shore, while we will sit back and wait for oil companies to drill for the relatively small amount of oil that may or may not be off Virginia's coast.

So far, the new governor's "transportation plan" has consisted of raising the speed limit to 70 on selected highways (hardly a way to save energy), while charging $1 more in fines for speeding tickets...Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. It's easier to stop and pee on I81, too.

It's allright, Elaine (0.00 / 0)
I never said it would solve all our transportation problems.  However, the more oil we produce domestically, the less we buy from countries such as Saudi Arabia.
[ Parent ]
Which would be true ... (4.00 / 1)
... if our oil consumption wasn't going up every year. Right now, we're drilling off our shores AND importing more. Worst of both worlds.  

Read more at TheGreenMiles.com and follow me on Twitter
[ Parent ]
If our consumption goes up... (0.00 / 0)
...that's yet MORE we would be buying from those countries.  Do you also plan to solve our trade deficit with China by forbidding US manufacturers to make products similar to those we buy from the Chinese?
[ Parent ]
How about we just use less oil? (0.00 / 0)
Is that an acceptable idea to the GOP these days? Or will that get filibustered, too?

Read more at TheGreenMiles.com and follow me on Twitter
[ Parent ]
Sure we can... (0.00 / 0)
...but what's the government got to do with that?  Are you unable to reduce your oil consumption without government interference?  Do you need the government to keep you from eating too much, too?
[ Parent ]
YEAH (0.00 / 0)
Or putting out your house when it's on fire? Or making sure you're not drinking arsenic in your tap water? Or telling car companies to put seat belts in your car? GET BIG GOVERNMENT OUT!

Read more at TheGreenMiles.com and follow me on Twitter
[ Parent ]
We have a volunteer fire department (0.00 / 0)
As for arsenic in the water, how could I do that, easily, myself?  But I can reduce my driving.  I can get a more fuel-efficient car.  I can get an electric lawn mover (although if that is powered by a coal-fired plant, I'm not sure it's a net minus on CO2, even though it reduces oil imports).

Tell me, do you also need the government to TELL you to wear your seatbelt, or are you smart enough to do that on your own?

[ Parent ]
Why are seat belts in your car in the first place? (0.00 / 0)
The benevolence of the auto industry? The invisible hand reached into the car & installed it? Please, enlighten me. I'm not smart enough.

Wait, that was an ad hominem attack against myself! HOW DARE I!

Read more at TheGreenMiles.com and follow me on Twitter

[ Parent ]
The '56 Ford's Lifeguard System... (0.00 / 0)
...was the first to have seatbelts, I believe.  We had a '63 Fairlane with seatbelts before they became mandatory.
[ Parent ]
The government has a huge amount to do (4.00 / 2)
with the price of gasoline.  See this study for more, but here's the gist:

A report released today by the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA) calculates that the actual cost of a gallon of gas to the American consumer could be as high as $15.14. The report "The Real Price of Gas" identifies and quantifies the many external costs of using gas that consumers pay indirectly by way of taxes, insurance costs and retail prices in other sectors. Established in 1994, the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA), is a Washington-based research organization that analyzes how technology affects society.

[...]

The CTA study examines more than 40 separate cost factors associated with gasoline production and consumption. These include subsidies for the petroleum industry such as the percentage depletion allowance; tax-funded programs that directly subsidize oil production and consumption, like government-sponsored R&D for the oil industry; the costs of protecting oil supplies, shipments and motor vehicle usage, including military expenditures for protecting the Middle East and other oil rich regions; and environmental, health and social costs including those for global warming. Together these subsidies for gas paid by consumers total up to $1.68 trillion per year.

Let's see how much gasoline people consume when all the "externalities" are internalized and it costs $15 per gallon.  That should be fascinating.

Follow me on Twitter.
[ Parent ]
It would indeed! (0.00 / 0)
If we could reduce our taxes by the commensurate amount, and remove those "externalities," I'd be all for it.  Would you?
[ Parent ]
In general... (0.00 / 0)
...I'm always for "internalizing externalities."  Basically, they're market distortions, and unless there's an overriding reason to have them, why not get rid of them?

Follow me on Twitter.
[ Parent ]
Is there one? (0.00 / 0)
I agree with you.  IS there an overriding reason for these "externalities"?  I'm all for getting rid of them.
[ Parent ]
In the case of oil (0.00 / 0)
I'm not sure what "overriding reason" would argue against internalizing externalities. If anything, the "overriding reasons" argue strongly in the direction of getting rid of implicit and explicit subsidies to this industry.

Follow me on Twitter.
[ Parent ]
The reason is simple (0.00 / 0)
Exxon-Mobil and friends would prefer to continue  to sponge off of the taxpayers.  

Impeachinelli! Now on Twitter.
[ Parent ]
Easy Way To Import Less (4.00 / 1)
There is a very easy way to import less oil from other countries. (By the way, the majority of our imported oil comes from Canada and Venezuela, not the Middle East.)

If we were to continue the requirement that automobiles and trucks get progressively better mileage from a gallon of gas, plus return to a 55 mile per hour limit in highway speed, plus invest in rail travel between large metropolitan areas, we would save far more oil than is possibly off Virginia's coast.

No one knows whether Virginia even has recoverable amounts of oil off our coast. The oil companies wanted the drilling ban lifted because they wanted access to valuable oil resources known to exist in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

We need a transportation plan for this state right now, not one based on hoping that oil revenues might flow into the state in a decade or so.

[ Parent ]
Venezuela doesn't like us, either. (0.00 / 0)
But be that as it may, government CAFE standards cost lives:
The evidence is overwhelming that CAFE standards result in more highway deaths. A 1999 USA TODAY analysis of crash data and estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that, in the years since CAFE standards were mandated under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, about 46,000 people have died in crashes that they would have survived if they had been traveling in bigger, heavier cars. This translates into 7,700 deaths for every mile per gallon gained by the standards.

New composites and airbags certainly help, but Congress cannot repeal the laws of physics, and lighter cars (and their passengers) undergo much greater accident-induced accelerations than heavier cars do.  That acceleration kills.

Your point about the speed limit is valid.  The big question is, how low should we go, and why?  Obviously, a car travelling a 65mph (a typical speed in a 55 zone) consumes less fuel than does one going 75-80mph.  A car travelling at 40mph consumes even less, and that would also lower traffic fatalities even more.  So, what IS the "right" speed limit, and what criteria do we use to get that number?

I, too, support passenger rail lines between metropolitan areas.  Even more do I support cargo rail.  And I argue that such projects do indeed provide for the general welfare of the States by making goods cheaper to ship, and by reducing traffic fatalities with the reduction of truck traffic on our highways.  In this, I think we are in complete agreement.

"No one knows whether Virginia even has recoverable amounts of oil off our coast."

Because such exploration has been banned by the US government.  Shouldn't we at least find out what's there?

"We need a transportation plan for this state right now, not one based on hoping that oil revenues might flow into the state in a decade or so."

On that point, we are also in complete agreement.  

[ Parent ]
If USA Today says it it must be true (0.00 / 0)


Read more at TheGreenMiles.com and follow me on Twitter
[ Parent ]
And THAT, my friends... (0.00 / 1)
...is a perfect example of an ad hominem attack -- not addressing the substance of the argument, or the data on which it is based, but the source of the data.
[ Parent ]
You do know what a hominem is, don't you? (0.00 / 0)
Please don't whine that I'm attacking your intelligence and that, in itself, constitutes an ad hominem attack.

But if I say "this coffee cup sucks," that is not an ad hominem attack. It means "to the person."

Read more at TheGreenMiles.com and follow me on Twitter

[ Parent ]
No, It Isn't (4.00 / 1)
Actually, "ad hominem" means "toward the person." Unless USA Today recently got citizenship - or unless one is going to take the fiction of a corporation being a living person to an extreme - any attack on USA Today would have to be called an "id est" attack. :-)

(Finally got to use those four years of Latin I took so long ago.)

[ Parent ]
Unless I missed something... (0.00 / 1)
USA Today is made up of people, and people did that research and wrote the article.  The Supreme Court even reaffirmed that corporations have 1st Amendment rights.  An attack on the people that did the research and wrote the article, in place of an argument against their research itself, is an ad hominem attack.

Now, if you have studies that counter the one quoted, then please present them.

[ Parent ]
Statistics (4.00 / 1)
In 1952, a year of the big tanks, the fatality rate was 7.027 per million miles traveled. In 2003, a year of far more small vehicles, the fatality rate was 1.48 per million miles traveled. (Statistics of NHTSA and FHWA)

I have a feeling that the "id est" philosophy of printing industry propaganda as fact may have something to do with that story. I would like to know where the USA Today research came from.

[ Parent ]
There have certainly been improvements (0.00 / 0)
As I mentioned, the seat belt came in in 1956.  Those "tanks" didn't even have seatbelts, much less shoulder belts and airbags.

But now, both the tanks and the mosquitos have those.  If you hit a jersey wall at 35mph, which would YOU rather be in?

[ Parent ]
A car with both front and side air bags. (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
Small-cars vs. Midsize (0.00 / 0)
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety compared small cars vs midsize cars:
http://arlingtonva.localspur.c...

All cars now have airbags.  The bigger cars win.

[ Parent ]
Car Ads in USAToday (4.00 / 1)
Gee...I wonder how many additional ads USA Today got from the auto industry - that loves huge vehicles that have a higher profit margin - in 1999. Odd, since of late even though more autos are traveling more miles, the highway death rate has been going down. This at a time when smaller cars are becoming the "in" thing again.
[ Parent ]
THE usa today (0.00 / 0)
correlation is not causation...

b

bruce roemmelt
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." Jimi Hendrix

[ Parent ]
Wasn't drilling a hush puppie (0.00 / 0)
tossed to calm the hounds in exchange for funding more specific development of alternative energy, like wind power, geothermal, even switch grass? It was my impression that it was a, pardon the expression, tit for tat? A bargaining chip? Where the tat for the tit of drilling?
Why will some one (0.00 / 0)
not answer my question about drilling in exchange for alternative energy? Too busy snarking each other, I guess.
[ Parent ]
Because we don't know the answer (0.00 / 0)
I was under the impression that some, at least, of the lease money that VA would get would go to a domestic (in-State) alternative energy industry.
[ Parent ]
Curious... (0.00 / 0)
Do you support or oppose the proposed amendment?  What is your reasoning?
I don't think its fair (0.00 / 0)
to snark on Brian's post at TC without offering him an opportunity to comment here.
[ Parent ]
Don't worry, Brian is more than ably represented by Jack! (4.00 / 1)
Jack is Brian's revenge!
[ Parent ]
Thank you! n/t (0.00 / 1)

[ Parent ]
Sorry, that wasn't meant for you, jack (0.00 / 0)
n/t
[ Parent ]
Collusion? In cahoots? (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
One and the Same? (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
Oil Drilling: Virginia Gets All the Risk, But Has to Share the Rewards? | 39 comments
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