Drilling off Virginia’s coast for oil and natural gas was a bad idea years ago and still is

Conservatives are often identified by their “hawkish” views on military matters such as national defense as well as their willingness to dig a hole in just about anything that will produce energy for the U.S. (or foreign) markets. But in the case of drilling for oil and natural gas off the shorelines of Virginia, conservatives can’t have their cake and eat it, too.

The Virginian-Pilot recently ran a piece about some of the problems associated with drilling off Virginia’s coast. One of those key problems is the “peril” that such drilling would pose to U.S. Navy operations. The bastion of the U.S. war machine, the Pentagon, has publicly held for years that drilling off of Virginia’s coast “will interfere with the military’s mission.”

According to the Pilot, nearly 50 percent of the economy of Hampton Roads depends on Department of Defense (DoD) spending largesse. Aside from indicating the overwhelming spending power of the DoD, this figure also points to the potentially crippling effects that drilling for oil and natural gas off Virginia’s coast could have on particular economies in the state.

So the answer should be obvious, right? Virginia should be in unanimous agreement that drilling off of Virginia’s coast presents the commonwealth with more costs than benefits.

But our friends in the oil and natural gas industries, and their political puppets (i.e., many Virginia politicians), only listen to reason when it turns in their favor. It is, for example, Virginia’s official stance that the federal block on leasing territory on the Outer Continental Shelf off Virginia’s coast (“Lease Sale 220”) should be reversed. That is, for many of Virginia’s politicians, scoring a lease to drill off of Virginia’s coast is worth more politically than saving DoD-dependent Virginia economies like Hampton Roads.

Much more would be adversely affected besides DoD-dependent Virginia economies. Marine ecosystems, whose value cannot possibly be estimated, stand to be irrevocably devastated by drilling and the oil and natural gas industries unfaltering commitment to leaving ecological havoc behind once it’s through with pulling all it can from the earth. And all of this devastation, for what?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management, less than 10 percent of the total estimated recoverable gas and oil resources can be extracted from the U.S. Atlantic continental shelf. And this means even less within Virginia’s territorial waters.

There are no easy solutions to the “energy problem.” But it’s been my experience that addressing a problem by creating a dozen more is probably not the best route to take. If Virginia chooses to drill off its coast, it will open a Pandora’s box of negative consequences, some of which will have been foreseen, others not.