Well control, spill preparedness lack sympathy in Florida

Sept. 17, 2018
“Like red tide,” says commentary in the Sept. 7 Orlando Sentinel, “the push for more drilling near Florida’s beaches is relentless and dangerous.”

“Like red tide,” says commentary in the Sept. 7 Orlando Sentinel, “the push for more drilling near Florida’s beaches is relentless and dangerous.”

The disdain for oil and gas drilling echoes a Jan. 23, 2001, editorial in the Tampa Tribune, which called the activity “dirty business.”

The new editorial responds to American Petroleum Institute’s eponymous Explore Offshore coalition, which it says “presumes Floridians have short memories.”

Whatever the merits of that allegation, probably not many Floridians remember much about the “dirty-business” editorial of more than 17 years ago.

Most of them might retain the sentiment but have little reason to recall these words: “If offshore drilling were allowed, pollution would be a certainty.”

Indeed, who would remember details like that—other than someone who responded in an Oil & Gas Journal editorial by writing, “Nonsense. Modern oil and gas drilling is in fact very tidy business.”

One remembers one’s errors.

Everyone remembers Apr. 20, 2010, when the BP Macondo wildcat blew out in deep water off Louisiana, causing an explosion and fire that killed 11 occupants of Transocean’s doomed Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible and discharged oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days.

The Sentinel editorial provides a reminder, anyway. It notes that Explore Offshore Gulf Cochair Jeff Kottkamp was Florida’s lieutenant governor at the time.

The editorial does not treat Kottkamp gently. It claims, for example, to have caught him in an erroneous assertion that no Macondo oil reached Florida.

Nor does it express contentment with the Trump administration’s efforts to ease offshore regulations implemented in Macondo’s aftermath.

Explore Offshore logically can argue that the industry has changed for the fundamentally better and safer since the tragedy. And it deserves support for its righteous effort to expand access to oil and gas resources.

But in Florida, where beaches and tourism receive more sympathetic understanding than well control and spill preparedness, the only change is a hardening of bipartisan resistance predating a summer spoiled by red tide.

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Sept. 7, 2018; to respond, join the Commentary channel at ogj.com/oilandgascommunity)

About the Author

Bob Tippee | Editor

Bob Tippee has been chief editor of Oil & Gas Journal since January 1999 and a member of the Journal staff since October 1977. Before joining the magazine, he worked as a reporter at the Tulsa World and served for four years as an officer in the US Air Force. A native of St. Louis, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.