Editorial: A unified no to Northwest offshore oil drilling
The Trump administration may be among the most optimistic of prospectors if it believes the offshore coasts of Washington and Oregon hold vast fields of untapped oil and natural gas.
Currently, there is no offshore oil drilling off Washington’s coast, and hasn’t been for 50 years. There may not be much out there to tap.
The most recent resource assessment by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates that the combined offshore area for the two states could hold about 810 million barrels of “technically recoverable” oil and natural gas. That sounds like a significant amount, until one considers the daily consumption of petroleum products in the United States is about the equivalent of 20 million barrels. Drilling off the Pacific Northwest coast would feed U.S. consumption for about 40 days.
However, 810 million barrels of oil is very significant if even a small percentage of that is spilled into coastal waters and washes up onto our beaches.
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