LITTLE RIVER, 1/29/2021 — Yesterday, Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) committed to reintroducing two acts to ban offshore oil drilling off California, and much of the northern Pacific coast, as well as in the Arctic Ocean. Huffman plans to reintroduce the bills, called the West Coast Ocean Protection Act and the Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act with Senator Diane Feinstein introducing them in the Senate.
If both ultimately passed, the acts would together prohibit leasing for exploration, development, drilling, or production of oil, natural gas, or any other mineral in the Arctic Ocean and the outer continental shelf off of California, Washington, and Oregon. According to a 2018 United States Geological Survey Report, extraction from federal lands and waters is responsible for fossil fuel production that results in about a quarter of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“Offshore drilling poses unacceptable risks, and the science and public opinion are clear: we should not put our oceans and fisheries, coastal communities, economies, and planet at risk just to enrich the fossil fuel industry,” Representative Huffman said in a press release.
As noted in the press release, the reintroduction of these acts aligns with President Biden’s recent moves to pause new oil and gas leases on public lands and waters, review permits already in place, and in general attempt to lessen the impacts of climate change by moving away from fossil fuels.
The oil and gas industry does not seem happy with these recent moves by Biden to stop oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.
Thursday, the oil lobbying group American Petroleum Institute published an article in their blog in which the author, Mark Green, claimed that Biden’s moves would actually increase global emissions while slashing American jobs.
Environmental advocacy groups have essentially the opposite view. “Today, in a sweeping executive order on climate change, the new administration placed a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing in federal waters and lands. This is such an important step in protecting the health of our oceans and coastal communities and facing the climate crisis. And it’s a monumental shift from the Trump Administration, which recklessly sought to sell our public lands and waters to polluting companies at the expense of our environment and health,” wrote the National Resource Defense Council’s oceans advocate Valerie Cleland in a blog post on the advocacy groups website.
Under President Trump, the Administration “recklessly” sought Energy Independence from our dependence on Saudi Arabian oil. It was a way to keep the USA out of Middle Eastern wars. Anyone else remember “Blood for Oil” from past administrations? So now we put American oil and gas workers on food stamps and then our turn to Saudi Arabia for our energy needs. That’s just great. And to think we could have sold Western Europe our natural gas so they did not have to go along with Russia’s influence in order to have gas for winter heating? All that is going to be lost now. America Last. Why? Oh, because of some hair brained left fuzzy wing thinking on what the world should be like 50 years from now. Yeah, that’s just great.
Dennis, you have been brainwashed by right wing media. The United States achieved energy independence under Barack Obama. But he never bragged about it because he foolishly believed that he did not have to and he thought environmentalists would be angry at him. Then Trump stole the election in 2016 and came into power and started lying, even more than earlier, and one of his many lies was that he, Trump, was responsible for the U.S. energy independence. But Obama had done that years earlier. If you think, you will realize that it takes years to develop any major energy project. So how could Trump have magically achieved that in 2017 only a few weeks into his regime?
Mass evictions, poverty, businesses decimated, rampant unemployment issues, PG&E can’t keep the power on and the forests are either burning or falling down but…. sure, let’s focus on offshore drilling. By the way, how many jobs and likelihoods is this going to cost, hmmm?
American Petroleum Institute has estimated that the leasing and development ban on public lands and waters will be increasing oil imports by 2 million barrels per day. What is the effect on the environment? None. No change. Stopping the Keystone pipeline? None. Stopping off shore exploration? None. Will the Representative address this?
Huffman overlooks the needs of people out here who are HURTING….financially, and health wise…where’s the stimulus money? Also, there’s no comment on Biden’s pro-fracking…