North Carolina and Virginia Businesses Oppose Atlantic Offshore Drilling

Outer Banks beach

If one lives in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, after the military and the U.S. government spending, the number one driver of the economy is tourism, especially tourism focused on the regions' beaches and waterways.  As I have noted before on this blog, years ago I was in-house counsel for a Fortune 50 company's oil and gas subsidiary, so I do know a thing or two about oil and gas explorations and offshore drilling (I even negotiated concession agreements with foreign governments).  While no oil company wants a drilling disaster, as the BP nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico made clear, accidents do happen and the economic and environmental consequences are dire.    Here are highlights from Think Progress on opposition to Atlantic offshore drilling:

For coastal companies that depend on a healthy stream of tourists to keep business healthy, the prospect of drilling in the Atlantic Ocean means one thing: spills that will sully beaches and drive visitors away.

More than 300 Atlantic coast businesses sent a letter to President Obama Thursday, urging him to take back his administration’s proposal to allow drilling in the Atlantic Ocean. In January, the Obama administration announced a proposal to sell oil and gas leases in offshore sites from Virginia to Georgia.

In the letter, the businesses outline the economic risk posed by offshore drilling, saying that monetary losses due to lost tourism revenue could be “devastating.” They also note that the Energy Information Administration estimates that the Atlantic Ocean holds only about 209 days’ worth of oil and 13 months’ worth of natural gas.

“Offshore drilling is incompatible with our tourism and fishing industries. When you drill, you spill, and day to day drilling operations result in chronic pollution and the industrialization of the coast for oil facilities,” the letter reads. “Look no further than the devastation the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe brought to the Gulf of Mexico’s fishing, tourism and wildlife to recognize the impact drilling would have here on the Atlantic Coast.”

Jeff Downey, owner of the Savannah, Georgia restaurant Circa 1875 and one of the signatories of the letter, said on a press call Thursday that about 85 percent of his business during the summer comes from tourists.
“If they allow offshore drilling, it will ruin our coasts first of all, and people will just stop coming,” he said. Savannah is in a hurricane zone, he said, and though hurricanes there have been rare over the last century, he worries a major storm could damage a drilling rig and cause a spill.

Cola Vaughan, owner of Cola Vaughan Realty on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, was another one of the business owners who signed on to the letter. He said businesses in the Outer Banks depend heavily on pristine beaches to attract visitors, and that even a “perceived threat” of spills would cause potential vacationers to think twice about choosing the Outer Banks.
It makes sense for businesses to be worried about a major spill. The Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 people and sent millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, took a toll on Gulf businesses. An estimated $22.7 billion in Gulf tourism money was lost from 2010 through 2013 because of the spill.  

The 300 businesses hope adding their names to the opposition will help convince the administration to give up plans for Atlantic drilling. 

“Our coasts are worth too much to risk,” they write in the letter. “Rather than exposing our beaches, families and businesses to the inherent risks of drilling, we need to move this country in the direction of renewable energy.”

In the interest of full disclosure, the husband and I live on a tidal creek, and a major oil spill offshore from Hampton Roads could foul the creek behind our home.

Our backyard and Robinson Creek last fall

Failed GOP Policies: Mothballing Aircraft Carriers A Distinct Possiblity

Aircraft carries at the Norfolk Naval Base

No one blathers more about supporting - dare we say worshiping - America than the Republican party, including the blithering idiots in the Tea Party.  Yet because of GOP intransigence and the  budgetary sequester that has occurred because the Congressional GOP refused to conclude a deal with the Democrats and the Obama White House, very real threats to national security and military readiness are looming.   Virgina could be hit very hard, especially because under the dominance of the GOP controlled House of Delegates and Messrs. McDonnell and Cuccinelli, Virginia has made itself anathema to many progressive and innovative businesses.  A vote for the GOP is a vote for economic suicide in Virginia and Tidewater in particular.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at the growing possibility that air craft carrier battle groups could be mothballed.  Here are excerpts:

Really? Mothballing aircraft carriers?   The idea floated last week by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel seemed particularly shocking in this Navy town – home to half the nation’s fleet of nuclear flattops, where carrier deployments and homecomings routinely lead evening newscasts.

But defense analysts say people shouldn’t roll their eyes at Hagel’s warning or other drastic changes described last week in the Pentagon’s first formal attempt to detail the long-term effects of sequestration.

If Congress does nothing to mitigate $500 billion in across-the-board defense cuts planned over the next decade, several analysts say, reducing the number of carrier strike groups from 11 is more than just a possibility – it’s almost assured.

“Given the size of the cuts, it’s hard to imagine a scenario that wouldn’t involve cutting carriers,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

[A]nalysts from three other Washington-based think tanks developed plans for how they would deal with sequestration. Every group said it would eliminate at least two carrier strike groups; one analyst said he would cut four. Even if Congress reduced the budget cuts by half, each team of analysts still recommended cutting at least two carrier strike groups.

Aircraft carriers are widely considered America’s best weapon for projecting force across the globe. They’re also the most expensive piece of military equipment ever – one that typically deploys with seven squadrons of multimillion-dollar aircraft, a cruiser, two or three destroyers or frigates and about 5,500 sailors.

“It’s not that carriers aren’t important, it’s that perhaps other systems in the force, even in the Navy, are of a higher priority and deliver more bang for the buck,” said Harrison, noting that he would rather invest in stealthy Virginia-class submarines and unmanned aircraft. “You can try to maintain 11 carriers, but if you don’t have money to deploy them, they won’t be very useful.”

[W]ould aircraft carriers be decommissioned and destroyed, or would the plan involve defueling the nuclear reactors and placing the ships in long-term storage? Huntington Ingalls Industries CEO Mike Petters addressed the hypothetical question Wednesday during a quarterly conference call with Wall Street analysts. The most efficient way to cut the fleet, Petters said, would be to inactivate the next few carriers slated to come into Newport News Shipbuilding for their midlife nuclear refueling.

That would place the aircraft carriers George Washington, John C. Stennis and Norfolk-based Harry S. Truman in the crosshairs.

However you slice it, said retired Vice Adm. Peter Daly, the chief executive officer of the U.S. Naval Institute, fewer aircraft carriers is bad news for Hampton Roads and for national defense.

“Given the level of cuts, I’m not surprised they’re looking at this,” said Daly, the former deputy commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk. “That doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea.”

The irony is that the GOP leaning voters in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake would see the local economy pummeled and their property values drop significantly.  But for the fact that others would be harmed in the process, I'd almost like to see it happen.  Then these cretins and bigots would be reaping what they had sown.