A few weeks ago, before N.C.’s elected officials went home from Raleigh — and took their snouts from the public’s pockets — they considered oil and natural-gas drilling off our coast. As certain as there are environmentalists who cry buckets when a single tree is cut down (but cheer when a decayed tree falls inside a national forest), we know the next two words, if this study becomes proposed law, will be “environmental lawsuits.”
But the discussion this month isn’t about lawsuits; we want to talk about the Gulf of Mexico, where there’s offshore oil and natural gas derricks and how those structures affect U.S. fishing.
We’re in a unique position at North Carolina Sportsman because our sister publication is Louisiana Sportsman, the largest outdoor magazine in a state whose nickname is the “Sportsman’s Paradise.” Of course, Louisiana is a little less of a sportsman’s paradise today following hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.
But the Bayou State remains a prime destination for hunters and anglers, despite the ravages of 2005’s storms. It’s not that there aren’t problems, which have been well documented. News outlets continue to publish stories about the storms’ destruction, which included 44 inland oil spills. mostly caused by pipeline ruptures (most crude oil was trapped behind berms along the Mississippi River and recovered, dispersed or evaporated). No major oil spills occurred in the Gulf of Mexico from oil rigs, despite those two storms, according to a MSNBC report.
Today fishing at oil platforms in the Gulf remains outstanding. These offshore rigs, which would be the same type built in North Carolina, are designed to withstand big storms. Yet, as a secondary result, their support structures are tremendous fish magnets.
Louisiana and Texas anglers head for the rigs when they want to catch king mackerels, Spanish mackerels, cobias, red drum, groupers, snappers, sharks, sheepsheads and myriad other saltwater game fish. The rigs provide shelter for baitfish species, which attract saltwater gamefish anglers seek.
The only comparable spot in N.C. waters is Frying Pan Tower, a former Coast Guard weather station 44 miles southeast of the Cape Fear River’s mouth at the end of Frying Pan Shoals.
The major storm problem at Louisiana was inland, not at the rigs. Broken coastal pipelines leading to storage facilities and refineries caused major post-Katrina headaches. But North Carolina has no such oil infrastructure facilities, and it’d be expensive to build them. Only two deep water ports exist (Beaufort and Wilmington), and only Wilmington and its surrounding area has the open land (along the Cape Fear River) to handle off-loaded oil. The good news is Wilmington’s port is 20 miles from the river’s mouth, impenetrably safe from a direct hit by a hurricane.
Surely our legislators could write a law that requires any company that wants to drill off the N.C. coast to sign a pact that (a) extracts a legal promise to use the latest technologies and designs to prevent oil spills, (b) allows state inspections of oil derricks, and (c) legally binds an oil company to pay for all cleanup costs, plus a stiff penalty, should a spill occur at one of its sites.
Then North Carolina could do its part to produce energy and perhaps become another saltwater fishing paradise.
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