Offshore Drilling and Oil Tankers

In regard to recent oil tanker disasters we seem to have several California legislators coming to the rescue of their constituency by advocating a comprehensive ban on offshore drilling and pre-lease activities. It is very vote productive to take such a stance, but being the extreme stance that it is it has many flaws and one major irony which is evidence that our rescuers haven’t done their homework.

Question: If we ban our domestic supplies how will we quench our thirst for petroleum products?

Answer: Foreign oil.

Question: How will it get here?

Answer: Tankers, or to be accurate, more tankers. The weakest link in the petroleum chain.

California is the third largest consumer of oil and gas in the world, just behind the Soviet Union and the rest of the U.S. But while everyone is jumping on the “ban offshore drilling” bandwagon, we are still jumping into our cars, boats, planes, etc. We eat food from all around the world but don’t think of how it got here. We do all these oil consuming things but don’t want to look offshore and see an oil platform.

Oil exploration, drilling and production can be performed with environmental safety and must be. Leaps and bounds have been made in safety technology and oil industry technology in the past 20 years. We need to improve the tanker link. We don’t need to put ourselves into a situation which equates to more tankers, i.e., a domestic ban. We need to be realistic.

KEN DENTON

Buellton