The Oregon Coast is one of Oregon’s most treasured places. It is a place that Oregonians from every corner of the state have gone for vacations and family reunions. Every family seems to have their special place – whether it’s Haystack Rock or the Oregon Dunes.

The Coast is also home to a very large number of Oregonians, the bedrock of the state’s fishing industry, and stunning ecological diversity – 200 species of fish and 120 species of sea birds, in addition to the sea lions and thousands of migrating whales.

Take Action!

Let your legislator know here that you support banning offshore oil and gas drilling off of the Oregon coast!

The Threat of Oil and Gas Drilling
The effects of an oil spill are cemented in the minds of anyone who remembers the Exxon Valdez spill or, for those who remember, the 1971 oil spills off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. The images of oil-coated birds and wildlife, and of ruined beaches, are hard to forget.

However, the damage caused by oil and gas extraction goes far beyond the effects of an oil spill. In an environmental impact statement on drilling activities in the Gulf of Mexico, the Minerals Management Service listed the following as “unavoidable” consequences of offshore drilling: erosion of wetlands, air pollution, contamination by toxic chemicals, dumping of industrial waste and debris, and the decline of fish populations.

A single drilling rig can drill between 50 and 100 wells, each dumping as much as 25,000 pounds of toxic metals such as lead, chromium, and mercury, and potent carcinogens such as toluene, benzene, and xylene into the ocean. Each drilling rig can create as much air pollution as 7,000 cars driving 50 miles each day.

Unfortunately, these disasters still occur today. As found in our new report "Oceans Under the Gun: Living seas or Drilling Seas", an oil platform off NW Australia started to spill oil and gas on August 21st, 2009.  It is still leaking today, up to 2,000-3,000 barrels per day, and now totals almost one half the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.

Protecting the Coast
It was the fear of these threats to our Coast that caused the Oregon Legislature, in the wake of the Santa Barbara oil spill and in the era of Tom McCall declaring our beaches to be the property of every Oregonian, to enact laws protecting the Coast. The Legislature summarized it best, in a legislative finding that Oregon “is unwilling to risk damaging sensitive marine environments or to sacrifice environmental quality to develop offshore oil and gas.”  Since the 1980s, there have been moratoria of various forms in place for both state and federal waters. By 1994, it was perceived the threat had passed, and Oregon’s moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling in Oregon’s territorial seas was allowed to expire.

By the early part of this decade, however, the threat had re-emerged. Oil and gas interests in Congress have repeatedly tried to remove the federal moratorium. Just last summer, a bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives that would remove the moratorium for the entire East and West coasts, including the Oregon Coast.

Environment Oregon is working to renew the state moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling which expires on January 2nd, 2010.