Alex Epstein: Obama Follows Nixon On Oil Spills
[Mr. Epstein is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.]
Which former president does Barack Obama most resemble? When it comes to handling oil spills, the answer is Richard Nixon. Like our current president, Nixon too presided over a major offshore oil blowout—the three million gallon Santa Barbara spill of 1969. And, like Mr. Obama, Nixon responded by whipping up anti-oil sentiment and passing a sweeping moratorium on drilling.
This parallel is important to keep in mind, because Nixon's reaction helped cause the worst energy crisis in American history. Before the Santa Barbara spill, American oil drillers were working on a variety of major projects off the coast of California and in Alaska that could have provided more than 20% of America's domestic oil production at the time. In Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, for example, oil companies struck in late 1967 what is still the largest oil field in U.S. history.
The Alaskan oil was expected to come to the market in 1972, transported by a state-of-the-art pipeline custom-engineered to brave the Alaskan tundra, which was alternately rock-hard in winter and sponge-like in summer. It was estimated that the field could produce 1.5 million to two million barrels a day. By comparison, the infamous Arab oil embargo in October 1973 took 1.6 million barrels a day off the market.
But Nixon's response to Santa Barbara was to cut off the flow of new oil. A president with an appreciation for energy and the freedom its production requires would have put the spill into perspective and defended the development of new oil reserves offshore and onshore. He would have stressed that oil is essential to advanced life, that the freedom to develop oil is vital for Americans to adapt to changing market conditions, and that an accident justifies investigations and improvements—not bans. He could have also pointed out that large amounts of oil enter the ocean every year through naturally occurring oil seeps, and that local wildlife would flourish again (as it did).
Instead Nixon signed a moratorium on California oil drilling, then proceeded to create multiple agencies (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency) that gave environmentalists the tools to oppose oil development in any "environmentally sensitive" areas—including the proposed pipeline in Alaska. The Prudhoe Bay project had already been threatened by environmentalists, who regarded the entire Alaskan wilderness as off-limits to human development. The Santa Barbara outcry swung political momentum in their favor. They won a federal injunction in 1970 to stop the pipeline.
For Americans, this meant scarcer, more expensive oil...
Read entire article at WSJ
Which former president does Barack Obama most resemble? When it comes to handling oil spills, the answer is Richard Nixon. Like our current president, Nixon too presided over a major offshore oil blowout—the three million gallon Santa Barbara spill of 1969. And, like Mr. Obama, Nixon responded by whipping up anti-oil sentiment and passing a sweeping moratorium on drilling.
This parallel is important to keep in mind, because Nixon's reaction helped cause the worst energy crisis in American history. Before the Santa Barbara spill, American oil drillers were working on a variety of major projects off the coast of California and in Alaska that could have provided more than 20% of America's domestic oil production at the time. In Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, for example, oil companies struck in late 1967 what is still the largest oil field in U.S. history.
The Alaskan oil was expected to come to the market in 1972, transported by a state-of-the-art pipeline custom-engineered to brave the Alaskan tundra, which was alternately rock-hard in winter and sponge-like in summer. It was estimated that the field could produce 1.5 million to two million barrels a day. By comparison, the infamous Arab oil embargo in October 1973 took 1.6 million barrels a day off the market.
But Nixon's response to Santa Barbara was to cut off the flow of new oil. A president with an appreciation for energy and the freedom its production requires would have put the spill into perspective and defended the development of new oil reserves offshore and onshore. He would have stressed that oil is essential to advanced life, that the freedom to develop oil is vital for Americans to adapt to changing market conditions, and that an accident justifies investigations and improvements—not bans. He could have also pointed out that large amounts of oil enter the ocean every year through naturally occurring oil seeps, and that local wildlife would flourish again (as it did).
Instead Nixon signed a moratorium on California oil drilling, then proceeded to create multiple agencies (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency) that gave environmentalists the tools to oppose oil development in any "environmentally sensitive" areas—including the proposed pipeline in Alaska. The Prudhoe Bay project had already been threatened by environmentalists, who regarded the entire Alaskan wilderness as off-limits to human development. The Santa Barbara outcry swung political momentum in their favor. They won a federal injunction in 1970 to stop the pipeline.
For Americans, this meant scarcer, more expensive oil...