Achurch: Don’t allow seismic blasts off S.C. coast

Even though municipalities up and down the S.C. coast are unified in their opposition to offshore drilling, Gov. Haley favors it, and DHEC has said it will allow seismic oil and gas exploration off our shore. At the urging of the Consumer Energy Alliance, a well-funded lobbying group, several governors in the Southeast are pushing for these surveys to be allowed under the guise of job creation. But what about the jobs we stand to lose?

The proposed testing would cover an area twice the size of California, and would be performed by firing high-powered airguns every 10-12 seconds for months at a time.

A letter to President Obama signed by 75 doctoral and research scientists says there would be 20 million blasts in all and describes the devastating impacts to marine mammals, sea turtles and fish. Among them: significant disruption in whale activities essential to foraging and reproduction, plus “chronic behavioral and physiological stress, which increases mortality and morbidity”; displacing commercial species of fish and “depressing catch rates … raising concerns about potentially massive impacts on fish populations”; and impairing the hearing of sea turtles.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released an environmental impact study in 2014 projecting that 138,000 marine mammals would be harmed and potentially 13.6 million sea creatures could have their migration, feeding or other behavioral patterns disrupted should the survey be conducted.

Seismic blasts are particularly harmful to the North Atlantic Right Whale, of which there are fewer than 500. The bureau’s proposed protection measures would be ineffective, and extinction is a real possibility.

What is the potential reward? The bureau projects 1.3 billion to 5.58 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and gas in the Atlantic — enough for a U.S. supply of 6.5 weeks to 10 months. Compare that to the estimated 300 years worth of energy in our onshore reserves.

If there is a material supply off our coast, it is not going anywhere, and we can leave it for another day when we might actually need it. This is what a true conservative would do.

This story was originally published November 9, 2015 at 12:23 PM with the headline "Achurch: Don’t allow seismic blasts off S.C. coast."