You will prepare and submit a term paper on Offshore Drilling. Your paper should be a minimum of 1250 words in length. Offshore drilling may have had a purpose, reason, and use at a given time in history. It may have been seen as a way of drilling the ocean to extract the oil so that the on-land environment would not be affected and the concerns would not be of importance. Offshore drilling was not seen as hindering the world. Deep-sea was thought of as far away and it could not harm the world and its environment.
History, however, has proven mankind wrong. Offshore drilling has hindered the environment, and it has altered nature and its way of progressing. Offshore drilling has killed part of the sea world and has invaded the natural habitat of the sea world. Consequently, this pattern of offshore drilling has proven to alter nature and the consequences have come to shore and affected those who eat the natural underwater species.
Due to the offshore drilling, chemicals, and toxic substances (mercury, lead, arsenic) rise and they return to the ocean. The seismic waves used to seek the oil harms the sea mammals, and disorient the whales, such was the case of Exxon Mobile stopping their exploration near Madagascar when more than one hundred whales suffered the consequences of their actions and came to shore (Nixon 2008). Canals that are built across the Louisiana wetlands to transport the oil have also caused erosion (Horton n.d.). This according to Horton may have led to the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. Horton maintains, oil spills are another detrimental factor that hinders natural habitat and causes caution for future offshore drills as was the case of the oil spill of Exxon Valdez in 1989. There are still negative effects of that episode.
Horton (n.d.) acknowledged much of the controversy concerning offshore drilling has to do with the economy and the environment. In this case, the detractors argue that offshore drilling would have a minimal impact on the economy on domestic supply and it would devastate the surrounding ecosystem. She stated that even if the outer continental shelf (OCS) started drilling, it was found through research (Energy Information Association (2007) (EIA), that it would take several years before being able to extract oil. As of yet, the amount of probability would not suffice the global market to have to incur in such a project of offshore drilling.
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