Oil from George's Bank

Neither inshore nor off
 
We certainly don't like the idea of oil and gas exploration on Georges Bank. But nestled among the pork chops in the recently enacted federal energy bill is a provision calling on the federal government to look into possible oil and gas drilling along the entire U.S. coastline -- including storied, if overfished, Georges Bank, where there has been a ban on drilling since 1982. Indeed, the moratorium is supposed to run through 2012!

Needless to say, many New Englanders were surprised and dismayed to discover this provision.

Georges Bank is a vastly important fishing ground: a protein factory crucial to New England's remaining offshore-fisheries industry, based in such places as Gloucester, New Bedford, and Point Judith. We'd hate to see this rich ecology -- and historic part of New England culture -- jeopardized.

Nevertheless, we're amused at some of the opposition to exploratory drilling there. For instance, there is Sen. Edward Kennedy, the longtime Massachusetts Democrat. "We'll strongly resist any attempt to turn Georges Bank into a forest of oil and gas wells," the statesman says.

But Mr. Kennedy and some other powerful politicians, as well as many rich summer people (and others) living on Nantucket Sound, also strongly oppose Cape Wind's proposed wind farm in the sound: a clean-energy project that would meet about 75 percent of the electricity needs of Cape Cod and the Islands. Foes have said the windmills would be an ugly "forest of poles." Maybe they're right. Yet Senator Kennedy and other key politicians also oppose proposals to bring liquefied natural gas -- the cleanest of the fossil fuels -- into the port (such as it is) of Fall River. Also heavily in opposition are wealthy yachtsmen, who say that the LNG tankers would interfere with their summer boating.

We might note that many of the biggest foes of new energy facilities, especially near summer resorts, are disproportionately big users of energy. That includes the rich folks on the warm-water south side of the Cape, as well as on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

The rich folks, also not coincidentally, include some state and federal politicians. But then, politics is increasingly composed of rich people (they can afford the TV election-campaign ads), who often have vacation homes on such places as, well, Nantucket Sound. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is far from the only big-name politician whose family favors gasoline-chugging SUVs and huge houses with massive heating, air-conditioning and other energy bills -- even while he touts energy conservation.

Anyway, Senator Kennedy and his friends don't want the windmills, don't want oil and gas drilling on Georges Bank, don't want LNG plants, and don't want nuclear energy. And whale oil, while quaint, no longer seems a plausible source of illumination.

We realize that opposing any public project that might inconvenience or discomfit a group of voters can be good politics (at least until the lights go out), but we'd love to know where our statesmen see energy for New England coming from. For instance, given their record of kowtowing to pressure groups opposing the construction of any energy facility near them, would the politicians be willing to impose draconian conservation laws (in lieu of new energy facilities), which might make most voters really mad? Many of the politicians presenting themselves as proponents of energy conservation leap to defend American motorists' right to cheap gasoline.

We're all hypocrites in something, but some New England politicians are at Olympian levels when it comes to energy. Oh, by the way, the price of oil yesterday hit $66 a barrel.

This originally appeared August 12, 2005 in the Providence Journal here.