There is a lot of ongoing oil pollution on the coast of California.
The problem is that it is all natural oil seeps -- these are underwater, bubble up and wash onshore as stinky tar balls that stick to everything. I have one around here somewhere that I picked off the beach near Monterrey.
If one were somehow able to dig down, penetrate these pesky pockets of pollution and relieve the pressure, the oil would not seep.
From Daily Tech:
How to Reduce Pollution by Drilling for OilHere is the website for SOS California Makes sense to me!
In 1969, a Union Oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara experienced a blowout. Pipes burst, and oil spilled into the sea -- as much as 100,000 barrels worth. The resultant oil slick so horrified local residents that Earth Day was born. Soon thereafter, the first of a series of laws banning offshore drilling was enacted.
The chance of another spill, locals reasoned, just wasn't worth drilling. And despite four decades of progress in eliminating such accidents, the ban has stood. Yet, local beaches still see oil slicks and its resultant damage. Where's the oil coming from?
Seeps.
A seep occurs when oil escapes naturally from the ground, due to pressure in the underground reservoir. Off the California coast, seeps release an incredibly large amount of oil. In fact, since the 1969 accident, the amount of such seepage in the Santa Barbara Channel alone has been over 30 times as large as the amount from the spill itself.
We can't stop such seeps, but we can reduce them. How? By drilling.
Earlier this year, University of California geophysics professor Bruce Luyendyk spoke to a citizens� town hall forum at Santa Barbara. He told citizens that the oil mucking up Santa Barbara beaches was due to seeps, not spills. According to Luyendyk, the amount of oil escaping naturally from just one set of seeps in the Santa Barbara channel is equal to about 42 thousand gallons a day -- equal to an Exxon Valdez-size oil spill every 5 or 6 years.
Oil isn't the only thing seeping either. About 3 million cubic feet of natural gas escape each day from the ocean floor off the California Coast. By comparison, your average home uses between 200 and 300 cubic feet per day.
This is oil and gas we could be capturing and using. Instead, it's going to waste and polluting beaches in the process.
The sheer size of the seepage has led to the formation of a new environmental group, called SOS California -- which stands for Stop Oil Seeps. The group wants to lift the offshore drilling ban not to generate oil, but to reduce oil pollution from seepage. They point to university studies which demonstrate that extracting oil through drilling reduces reservoir pressure. That, in turn, reduces seepage. SOS advocates lifting the drilling ban for just that reason -- to reduce oil pollution on local beaches.
