Fun offshore-oil-drilling fact of the day

By wpcomimportuser1 | June 24, 2008 | +

Almost every recounting of the Great Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969 mentions that it was on (or under) Union Oil’s Platform A that the blowout occurred. But hardly anyone ever mentions that, a few weeks after the leak was fixed, Platform A was put into service for the first time, and has been pumping oil ever since.

The folks at the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf Region of the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service tell me that Platform A, now operated by a privately held company called Dos Cuadras Offshore Resources, has produced about 100 million barrels of oil (that’s five days worth of U.S. oil consumption) and 52 billion cubic feet of natural gas (just under a day’s worth of U.S. consumption, if I’ve got my millions and billions straight) over the past 39 years. Current daily production is 1,000 barrels of oil and two million cubic feet of natural gas.

Related Topics: Economy & Policy

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Here are some more “fun facts” from the Wilderness Society:

>The administration’s pace of oil and gas leasing has out-stripped industry’s ability to drill. The oil and gas industry owns leases on more than 44.5 million acres of public land nationwide but has developed less than 12 million acres of that land.

>Even though the United States has more drilling rigs operating than the rest of the world combined, prices have not dropped. The most recent Baker Hughes rig count shows 1,901 drilling rigs operating in the U.S. (offshore and onshore), and 1,305 in the entire rest of the world.

>Since taking office, the Bush administration has issued leases on over 26 million acres of on-shore public lands.

I do agree that oil extraction itself represents only a tiny fraction of the environmental hazards we create. On the other hand, how many of those hazards are directly related to our oil consumption? And do those practices justify opening up more leases than the industry can (or is willing to) even exploit? And just what did ever happen to all of those tax breaks for increased exploration and infrastructure?