If US President George W. Bush had no option other than to sacrifice national interest to Florida politics and family relations, he at least should have kept his brother from spouting idiocy.
The president and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on May 29 announced a $235 million buy-back of federal leases in the Destin Dome unit off the Florida Panhandle and in the Everglades (OGJ Online, May 29, 2002). The aim: to prevent drilling.
Acknowledging the obvious political motivation, the governor said, "It is good public policy. When there is a convergence of good policy and good politics, I don't think we should be ashamed of it."
Rubbish!
It's terrible policy. It feeds off ignorance. It lets a single state's foolishness thwart national interest.
The president should have said so. His brother was wrong.
Demand for natural gas is growing steadily in Florida and elsewhere in the US. The country needs new sources of supply. It needs development of discoveries such as the Destin Dome, potential recovery from which the Department of Energy estimates at 2.6 tcf.
But Floridians are determined to block drilling anywhere off their coasts.
"It is important that drilling be kept at least 100 miles off our shores, a buffer to protect the state's beaches and tourism industry from any negative impacts, especially from potential oil spills," writes the Pensacola News Journal in response to the Destin Dome lease buy-back.
Oil spills from a gas field? Since when? Even if Destin Dome were an oil field, it could be developed without jeopardizing Panhandle beaches.
Floridians grotesquely exaggerate the environmental threat posed by oil and gas drilling. They want energy, and they want it cheap. But they don't want activities essential to the production of energy. They won't acknowledge the modern practices that limit the environmental risks.
They're like Californians, whose sad experience with have-it-both-ways energy regulation should be instructive.
The lease buy-back advances the fool's paradise that Florida has become on energy. When natural gas prices rise, as they will, Americans should remember policies like this and the politicians who called them good.
(Online May 31, 2002; author's e-mail: [email protected])
