Banning offshore drilling is not the answer to protecting the environment from pollution
Active enforcement of the rules and regulations offshore oil producers are required to follow is the solution
There is no getting around it the world is to dependent on oil for the near future
Long term future energy supplies will come from sources that we living today will not see , but they will come
Protecting our environment is as simple as increasing governments budget for the BOEM & EPA to allow them to hire new staff to increase inspections of compliance and enforcement for incidents of non compliance
This increase in budget must come from the BUSINESS side
Recently BOEM enacted a policy where each time they arrived at a offshore facility to inspect the facility was operating in compliance they then charged the individual facility $ 6,000 for the inspection
This is totally acceptable way of doing business to keep the offshore industry under proper supervision without increasing the tax burden to the american public
After all it is the offshore oil companies who are willfully breaking the laws put in place and polluting the environment , thus the oil companies should be required to pay for their compliance inspections
Also the frequency of inspections MUST BE INCREASED
1 time a year inspecting offshore production facilities is simply inadequate , the offshore oil & gas facilities illegally dump 100 times the amount of oil into the Gulf of Mexico waters on a yearly basis than the recent BP oil spill by FALSIFYING OVERBOARD WATER QUALITY RESULTS of produced water from the oil resivoir which they dump into the Gulf of Mexico
The frequency of inspections onboard offshore production facilities should be increased to 4 times per year
The frequency of inspections onboard offshore drilling facilities should be every 14 days
The government allowed SELF REGULATING that was a COMPLETE & TOTAL FAILURE
Its time to protect the environment from the offshore polluters and not give them the benifit of the dout any longer
Offshore oil companies have proved they no longer deserve to be trusted
