Most of the hoopla about off-shore drilling is born from an absence of the facts, or political posturing. For example, Florida bristles at offshore drilling. It’s political positioning and nothing more. They already have a plan for a pipeline to connect them directly with inshore drilling platforms suggested for adjoining states along the Gulf Coast. A perfect example of the “not in my back yard” mindset. It’s a way to get the oil and the votes at the same time.
To the best of my knowledge there has never, I repeat, never been a spill from an offshore drilling rig on the continental shelf surrounding the U.S. Brazil yes, Australia, yes. U.S.A. no.
The technology used is amazing. Think about it. How many really big storms have ripped up the Gulf of Mexico since the first oil drilling rig was established. How many oil rigs out of the hundreds out there have come crashing down and filed the seas with crude oil? Answer; none. How many times have there been oil rig fires and explosions in U.S. waters with loss of life that resulted also in oil spills? None. After Katrina in 2005 there were over twenty oil rigs missing. there were no oil spills.
Oil rigs also produce natural gas. Natural gas burns clean. Coal vs natural gas? that is a subject for another article  I will tell you this. natural gas wins hands down. I recently attended a seminar of the National Marine Educators Association that was hosted, I believe,both by theSkidaway Institute of Oceanography(SkIO) and the University of Georgia Marine Extension Center (MARESK) I love to attend those things in hope that they will have some pictures that I can look at because I don’t understand a lot of what they are saying.
At this particular conference Fabian Cousteau was the keynote speaker. Fabian is the grandson of the world famous Jacques Cousteau. Remember him? He was a world renown self taught marine scientist and stout environmentalist who invented the aqua lung for individuals to explore the sea underwater. You a diver? Grab a set of tanks and remember Jacques Cousteau who made it all possible. I digress but I needed to emphasize the stock from which Fabian came. Fabian himself is a world class environmentalist and self taught marine scientist. At the conference Fabian provided us with some great old films of his grandfather at work in the ocean. He progressed to some more modern day power point presentations which included a very detailed description of some time he and his crew spent visiting and exploring oil platforms in the Gulf. They went from the top to the bottom and engaged every aspect of the platform’s operation. Peach, my wife and I might have been the only conservatives in the room that day and I can tell you the audience was waiting with baited breath for Fabian Cousteau to rip into the oil platforms for the gulf of Mexico. What he presented were pictures of giant towering legs of platforms that had become artifical reefs with a marine environment that had slowly grown from the first drifting microscopic life form that attached itself to the rig into a aquatic wonderland teeming with an unmatched kaleidescope of sea life. Cousteau simply described the towers as a ecological boon to the Gulf. You could hear a pin drop in that room when he finished. You can’t ask for a better endorsement.
Drill here, drill now.

Hubbard and his wife Peach are active in a number of environmental issues.