American Petroleum Institute Report on Offshore Permitting Shows Industry Has Head in the Sand

Environment America

Washington, D.C. — Today, the American Petroleum Institute released a report examining the economic impact of a one or two year delay in opening new offshore drilling fields, which they say could result if the President’s Oil Spill Commission’s recommendations are adopted by Congress. Mike Gravitz, Oceans Advocate for Environment America, released the following statement:

“Fighting proposals to reduce the risks of offshore oil drilling with doomsday scenarios and exaggerated impacts shows the industry’s same complacency and smugness that helped cause the largest environmental disaster this country has ever had. 

“The Oil Spill Commission and its Co-Chairs Graham and Reilly are doing everything in their power to reduce the chances of another oil spill catastrophe. It is appalling that the industry would delay or resist implementing these sensible recommendations.

“The truth  is that coastal tourism and fishing dependent on clean oceans and beaches generate more than $200 billion annually and provide 4.1 million jobs in states now taken off the table for expanded offshore drilling, according to Too Much at Stake: Don’t Gamble with our Coasts, a report by Environment America and the Sierra Club.  Those jobs and economic activity are threatened by offshore drilling. 

“Protecting our treasured oceans and beaches should be a top priority and the risk drilling poses to our coasts is just too great to do Big Oil’s bidding.”