On Deepwater Drilling and San Diego Development

I enjoy reading and listening to Charles Krauthammer. He's a clever and wise pundit with a knack for saying things clearly. Having said that, he's got this one wrong.

Here’s my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama’s tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we’ve had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Yes, environmental restrictions have made drilling elsewhere off-limits, but even if those places had been available, we would still have been drilling in deep water. Just like the development that turned San Diego from a sleepy, little Navy town in the 1970s to a major metropolis today, oil companies will drill anywhere and everywhere they are allowed. They make money drilling for oil, so they do it as much as they possibly can.

In the late 70s and early 80s, San Diego constantly dealt with issues associated with growth. Developers wanted to build more homes, malls and business parks and the locals wanted to keep San Diego the way it was. Every time a development project came up, the same argument took place and, for the most part, they ended up in favor of the developers. Open space was devoured in favor of more building. No matter what a particular developer had been given in the past in terms of building allowances, they wanted more and they were always aggrieved when they were (always temporarily) denied permission to bulldoze and pave. There was no such thing as "enough."

So it is with the oil companies. To blame the environmentalists for this disaster is a huge mistake. Like the developers, the oil companies will drill everywhere you let them and any time they aren't permitted to do so, they'll cry out about how put upon they are.

In hindsight, drilling at 5000' seems to have been a pretty stupid idea without proven technology to seal off a blowout, but the decision to do so was independent of decisions to block off Alaska or shallow ocean waters to drilling. You can't blame the environmentalists for this one.

If they thought there was oil beneath your swimming pool, they'd be trying to drill there, too.