Testimony of Jeremiah
Baumann, Environmental Advocate, on SB 790
The Oregon
Coast is, simply put, an
amazing place. It is a place that holds special value for our state in many
ways. It is a place special enough that it cannot be put at risk of the
long-term damage that oil or gas drilling could cause. SB 790 sends a clear
signal that the Oregon
Coast is not a place that
Oregonians are willing to let be put at risk.
The Oregon
Coast is a special place
for many reasons. The Coast is the 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, some of Oregon’s historic communities, and its resources have
been the core of Oregon’s
fishery and forestry economic bases. The Oregon Coast
is also home to amazing ecological diversity – 200 species of fish and 120
species of sea birds, in addition to the sea lions and thousands of migrating
whales.
These resources are too valuable to allow the risk of
significant and lasting damage that would come with allowing 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.
The oil industry will say that because of new technology, the risk of a spill
is dramatically reduced, but the Minerals Management Service of the federal
government made an estimate for California
that operations there pose a 95% risk of a spill of less than 1,000 barrels in
volume and a 41% risk of a spill larger than 1,000 barrels.
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.
These are the results of standard operations, not accidental
spills. 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. A
single rig can create as much air pollution as 7,000 cars driving 50 miles each
day.
It was the fear of these threats to our Coast that caused
the Legislative Assembly, 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.
Those circumstances alone make the time seems right to re-affirm Oregon’s commitment to
protecting our coast.
One other critical question, of course, is whether there are
resources off of the Oregon
Coast that would attract
oil and gas interests. It was, in fact interest in mining the sands in Southern
Oregon for oil that prompted Oregon’s
earlier moratorium. Offshore reserves of oil and gas in their traditional form
are relatively small but not insignificant. The most recent numbers available
from the Minerals Management Service indicate oil and gas deposits totaling
$200 million in net value (after accounting for the costs of production). That
figure was calculated at oil prices of $48 per barrel and as the price of oil
rises, so will interest in our coast.
In addition, just off the Oregon
Coast is one of the few places in North America where there are large stores of gas in form
called methane hydrate. Methane hydrate is essentially a crystalline form of
gas trapped in ice. It forms under unique environmental conditions that happen
to exist where the two tectonic plates off the Oregon Coast
meet. The energy potential of methane hydrate in U.S. territories is estimated at
200 times the conventional natural gas resources in the country. These
resources cannot currently be extracted commercially, but research and development
is proceeding quickly in Japan
and one estimate has it that the first domestic production could happen off of Alaska within 10 years.
Extraction of methane hydrate off of the Oregon Coast
would be an environmental nightmare. Our coastal communities and the beaches we
all visit could be subject to the air pollution, toxic contamination, and
erosion that are routine for drilling rigs, and could pose a serious threat to
our fisheries. In addition, the use of methane itself would constitute a major increase
in global warming pollution. Methane is many times more potent that carbon
dioxide in its ability to cause global warming and the extraction and
consumption of methane would make worse a problem that is already threatening
important Oregon resources.
These risks simply are not worth taking when it comes to the
Oregon Coast. OSPIRG respectfully urges the
Committee to vote Yes to renew Oregon’s
moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling and protect Oregon’s coastal communities and the Coast
itself for future generations to enjoy the way ours have.
