Offshore Oil Drilling

Offshore Oil Drilling is a type of oil drilling or fracking where the oil rigs are located just off of the shore or land and in the ocean, drilling for oil. Oil is the highest demanding fossil fuel in the world today and when being extracted it pollutes the air and the ocean. There are pipelines underwater that connect to the rigs and transport the oil out of the ocean and into local oil refineries to turn into refined oil or diesel. Most offshore oil rigs are located in the Gulf of Mexico, owned by america, but there are also more around the world. In 2006, 414 million barrels of oil were extracted by offshore oil rigs in that year alone. In 1981 the US Congress passed the outer shelf moratorium which banned new leases but could not stop currently existing leases. President George W. Bush wanted to restrictions of the outer shelf moratorium due to gasoline prices skyrocketing, but congress didn’t do anything about it. In March 2010 President Obama announced that he would lift restrictions on new offshore oil rig leases, and one month later an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico named Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank into the ocean. The open well leaked about 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil a day, and has spread out as far as to reach Texas and the Florida coastal line. Due to this accident President Obama imposed a 6 month moratorium on offshore drilling, while many leaders and observers argued that such a ban would do more damage to the Gulf economy than the accident itself as the region’s economy heavily depended on offshore oil business. Estimates say that the Gulf oil and gas industry was the second largest source of revenue for the federal government, providing 13 million dollars in taxes, and employing 200,000 people in the region, and over 9 million nationwide. Even though banning offshore oil drilling can cause economies to go down and lose money, it should be banned because it causes pollution and employees are at high risk of working in those environments because of the accidents, but the employees aren’t the only ones at risk, the Gulf and Nature itself is at risk too.

Offshore oil drilling causes not only water pollution but air pollution also, and because oil is the highest polluting fossil fuel and in highest demand there are so many all over the world. They end up transporting the oil to energy plants and refineries that end up making more pollution, CO2, PM2.5, and polluting the air. Although it is in high demand because of its efficiency to make energy, we should stop all oil rig companies and production to save the world and its population before it only gets worse. The pollution caused by oil spills will kill the environment and poison our water, while the refineries are causing the ozone layer to thicken and temperature to rise or cause sickness from unclean air.

We need to stop or ban off shore oil drilling or any fracking. A solution that was made was that in 1981 the US Congress passed the Outer Continental Shelf Moratorium, which banned new leases on offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf but it couldn’t shut down rigs that are existed before it was passed. There is not much being done about this issue and i believe we need to focus more on it.

I first chose this topic because most of the topics I first chose were taken or could not be mapped, so I went with this topic because it seemed a little more controversial and interesting. I learned more about pollution and what problems come with every decision that has been made. I hope that the audience understands that this a real world problem and try to act on it. People who are not directly affected by Offshore oil drilling should still care because it ruins the air and the water that we all share. It destroys environments and economies and will continue unless we stop it.

Auerbach, M. P. (2019). Offshore Oil Drilling: Overview. Points of View: Offshore Oil Drilling, 1. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.content.elibrarymn.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=55818887&site=pov-live

Auerbach, Michael P. “Offshore Oil Drilling: Overview.” Points of View: Offshore Oil Drilling, June 2019, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=55818887&site=pov-live.

Auerbach, M. P. (2019) ‘Offshore Oil Drilling: Overview’, Points of View: Offshore Oil Drilling, p. 1. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com.content.elibrarymn.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=55818887&site=pov-live (Accessed: 15 January 2020).