Bush Admin taking steps to drill off California Coast

[dbackjon]

The federal government is taking steps that may open California's fabled coast to oil drilling in as few as three years, an action that could place dozens of platforms off the Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt coasts, and raises the specter of spills, air pollution and increased ship traffic into San Francisco Bay.

Millions of acres of oil deposits, mapped in the 1980s when then-Interior Secretary James Watt and Energy Secretary Donald Hodel pushed for California exploration, lie a few miles from the forested North Coast and near the mouth of the Russian River, as well as off Malibu, Santa Monica and La Jolla in Southern California.

"These are the targets," said Richard Charter, a lobbyist for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund who worked for three decades to win congressional bans on offshore drilling. "You couldn't design a better formula to create adverse impacts on California's coastal-dependent economy."

The bans that protected both of the nation's coasts beginning in 1981, from California to the Pacific Northwest to the Atlantic Coast and the Straits of Florida, ended this year when Congress let the moratorium lapse.

President-elect Barack Obama hasn't said whether he would overturn President Bush's lifting last summer of the ban on drilling, as gas prices reached a historic high. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Col., Obama's pick as interior secretary and head of the nation's ocean-drilling agency, hasn't said what he would do in coastal waters.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... tics&tsp=1

[AZGrizFan]

Do you find any irony in the fact that a democratic congress let an almost 30 year old ban lapse?

[Gil Dobie]

Donks and Conks are both Oil Whores.

[grizzaholic]

Well, more smog and pollution in the air doesn't really mean that much for that area.

[dbackjon]

Well, more smog and pollution in the air doesn't really mean that much for that area.

Disagree on that.

An oil spill there could wipe out most of the remaining wild salmon runs left in CA/southern Oregon.

[Gil Dobie]

Well, more smog and pollution in the air doesn't really mean that much for that area.

Disagree on that.

An oil spill there could wipe out most of the remaining wild salmon runs left in CA/southern Oregon.

Do the Wild Salmon fly?

[Gil Dobie]

Well, more smog and pollution in the air doesn't really mean that much for that area.

Disagree on that.

An oil spill there could wipe out most of the remaining wild salmon runs left in CA/southern Oregon.

What about the tame salmon runs on the left coast?

[dbackjon]

Disagree on that.

An oil spill there could wipe out most of the remaining wild salmon runs left in CA/southern Oregon.

Do the Wild Salmon fly?

Don't follow you...

[Gil Dobie]

Do the Wild Salmon fly?

Don't follow you...

Griz said air polution, and you disagreed and gave a water polution answer. So if you disagree about the air polution, and it affects the salmon runs, therefore, do the salmon fly to have their runs wiped out.

[AZGrizFan]

Don't follow you...

Griz said air polution, and you disagreed and gave a water polution answer. So if you disagree about the air polution, and it affects the salmon runs, therefore, do the salmon fly to have their runs wiped out.

Jon's confused. He just knows he's supposed to be against anything having to do with oil.

[dbackjon]

Gil - gotcha...
Z - STFU

[AZGrizFan]

Gil - gotcha...
Z - STFU

Make me, you big hairy bear.

[Appaholic]

Gil - gotcha...
Z - STFU

Make me, you big hairy bear.

...sez AZ while oiling himself in a speedo...