Offshore energy platforms provide great fishing!

I have not had the opportunity to dive any oil rigs, but I have been around other hunks of metal underwater. The wrecks in New England, the Bahamas, Florida, and Cayman Brac are usually surrounded by marine life, and I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.

Although some energy platforms are mobile, some stay put. For the Louisiana shoreline, retired stationary platforms mean fish, and fish means food. Platforms off the coast of the Bayou state provide more than 75 percent of the oil and gas produced in the continental United States; and tons of shrimp gumbo.

From Humberto Fontova’s piece at American Thinker today…

“Environmentalists” wake up in the middle of the night sweating and whimpering about offshore oil platforms only because they’ve never seen what’s under them. Louisiana produces almost 30 per cent of America’s commercial fisheries. Only Alaska (ten times the size of the Bayou state) produces slightly more. So obviously, Louisiana’s coastal waters are immensely rich and prolific in seafood.

These same coastal waters contain 3,200 of the roughly 3,700 offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. These oil production platforms off the Bayou state’s coasts also extract 80 percent of the oil and 72 percent of the natural gas produced in the Continental U.S., without causing a single major oil spill in half a century of this process. This record stands despite dozens of hurricanes — including the two most destructive in North American history, Camille and Katrina — repeatedly battering the drilling and production structures. So for those interested in evidence over hysterics, by simply looking bayou-ward, a lesson in the “environmental perils” of offshore oil drilling presents itself very clearly.

Diving decommissioned platforms can also be a pleasant surprise, especially to environmentalists who assume the area is a wasteland of debris, with oil and trash floating everywhere.

The Louisiana energy rigs are a perfect example of environmentalist twisting the truth. If you asked any kid in elementary school, you’d find that they have been brainwashed into thinking these rigs are a disaster for the Earth. Fontova continues…

Amongst the greenie scoffers of the environmental bonanza described above were some The Travel Channel producers, fashionably greenish in their views. They read these claims in a book titled “The Helldiver’s Rodeo.” The book described an undersea panorama that (if true) could make an interesting show for the network, they concluded, while still scoffing.

They scoffed as we rode in from the airport. They scoffed over raw oysters, grilled redfish and seafood gumbo that night. More scoffing through the Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s. They scoffed even while suiting up in dive gear and checking the (sic) as we tied up to an oil platform 20 miles in the Gulf.

But they came out of the water bug-eyed and indeed produced and broadcast a program showcasing a panorama that turned on its head every environmental superstition against offshore oil drilling. Schools of fish filled the water column from top to bottom — from 6-inch blennies to 12-foot sharks. Fish by the thousands. Fish by the ton.

The cameras were going crazy. Do I focus on the shoals of barracuda? Or that cloud of jacks? On the immense schools of snapper below, or on the fleet of tarpon above? How ’bout this – WHOOOAA – hammerhead!

Fontova’s article starts off with Obama administration touting – on Earth Day – that it was time to cut the ties to foreign oil. They noted environmental wackos (OK, they did not use that term) need to understand their days of “dictating energy policy in this country are over”.

I’m calling that statement hogwash. Actions, not words, must be measured and I’m certain those fools are pandering. I’m just not sure to who.

Will the Obama administration stop pandering to groups that want to ensure not one oil rig, oil refinery, nuclear power plant, or power station is created in the United States?