This Week in the Mercury
Monday, February 8, 2010
Green Oregon House Says No to Offshore Drilling
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 1:14 PM
- yeeha!
The Oregon House just approved a bill this afternoon that will permanently ban drilling for oil and natural gas off Oregon's coast update, 1:49 for ten years. Original post: The state passed a three-year drilling ban back in 2007, but it expired on January 2nd of this year. The just-approved bill, House Bill 3613 sponsored by Portland rep Ben Cannon, was originally going to sunset the ban in 2020, but late-game revisions will make the ban permanent if the Senate approves, Update, 1:49 was originally going to be permanent, but late-game revisions will give it a ten-year sunset.
"The revisions happened because we could get a unanimous vote out of our committee," says Christy Splitt, aide to Cannon. "And in a short February session, consensus is a top priority. We could have probably gotten this out of committee without the sunset, but we wanted to show a willingness to compromise."
The bill will now to go the senate, and is expected to be debated in committee early next week. Chances of this bill actually becoming a reality after a successful senate vote and the Governor's signature are "excellent," says Splitt.
The offshore drilling ban was one of the top three special legislative session priorities of environmental coalition the Oregon Conservation Network, who say the ban will protect Oregon's fishing industry and coastal tourist economy.
2
Maybe. They drilled a test well in the 1960s off of Coos Bay. (That area has several (now closed) coal mines, so the potential was high even with the crude off shore exploration technology of the time.) It was deemed to have potential, but they never developed it, (partly because of a lack of infrastructure [read: a pipeline] in the area, and partly because the gas prices were low.) Gas prices have risen since then, and there is now a smallish pipeline into the area which could be reversed for not too much money, and they are considering a much larger export pipeline for a potential LNG terminal in the Bay, so I expect that people might be interested. The state offshore ban only goes out 3 miles, so the wells would have to be in relatively deep water, which would require more specialized drilling ships that are expensive, in short supply, and all over in the gulf, so the only thing that is really stopping this is that mobilization costs would be high and the area is unproven, but that won't last forever.
So: I expect that before 2020 we'll have offshore rigs in the federal waters, and depending on the state revenue situation, this ban may not be renewed in 2020. That said, making the ban unlimited doesn't do much anyways, all it would take would be an act of the legislature to unban it...
The only 1st world nation with lower taxes than the US is Japan. (They lost a decade when their economy collapsed and they refused to raise taxes to stimulate the economy. Sounds kind of familiar.) When military spending is taken out of the budgets, (since the US spends more money on its military than the rest of the world combined, and Japan basically has none to speak of,) we spend far less on our government than them. So unless something amazing happens, I expect the revenue situation in the state to still be bad in 2020.
3
You need to clarify this to say Oregon territorial waters. The first 3 miles off the Oregon coast is owned by the state. The ocean from 3-200 miles is managed by the Fed Government and any ban would have to be done through Congressional and/or Presidential action
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