Virginia Beach ala Louisiana
“If there’s going to be money made from drilling for gas, I want the city of Virginia Beach to benefit, period,” said Mayor Will Sessoms.
How exactly is Virginia Beach making money from drilling?
The Feds don’t allow for revenue sharing with coastal states, and if they did, Virginia wouldn’t spend it on roads in Virginia Beach. The limited number of jobs on rigs would be filled by workers from all over the U.S. Most offshore oil rig jobs call for a 14/21 day rotation, meaning working for 14 days and having 21 days off. This equates to having approximately 3/5 of the year off. For this reason, workers would not have to relocate their families and otherwise disrupt their lives to work on Virginia’s offshore rigs, opting to simply fly in from the Gulf Coast for the handful of times they are needed to work off Virginia’s shores.
Yet the visions of “jobs, jobs, jobs” dancing around Sessoms’ head remains as put there by Gov. Bob McDonnell. “This is the City Council showing support for the governor”, said Sessoms like any good lap dog.
Meanwhile, McDonnell has based his “jobs, jobs, jobs” song-and-dance entirely on a 2005 “report” by Dr. James V. Koch, local celebrity economist and former ODU president. Writes Dr. Koch in an email to me: “First, this really doesn’t qualify as a report. Indeed, I don’t even have a copy. I was given about 48 hours to produce a very quick estimate of the economic benefits (jobs, income, taxes) that might be generated by drilling off shore. Since I had no Virginia data, and no time to produce any, I looked at what had happened previously in Louisiana and a Canadian province as a guide. I did not have time to take environmental costs, etc., into account. I do not list this work on my C.V. because I did not invest the considerable time and attention that I give to the many economic impact studies that I do”.
To the right is a zoning map of Virginia Beach. The Louisiana that Dr. Koch looked to for modeling his economic projections is the one pictured above and below as riddled with green boxes, red circles and a myriad of grey lines. (The grey lines are pipelines; the red lines are pipelines damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.) With visions of those thousands of jobs and millions in revenue, Virginia Beach would have to be similarly riddled.
This is what Mayor Sessoms’ envisions off Virginia Beach?!? What a pawn!
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March 29th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I wonder if Dr Koch’s more careful analysis would include the costs of continuing to send so much money overseas to meet such a large percentage of our nation’s economy’s dependence on crude oil? Even if most of the workers in the oil rigs off Virginia’s coasts commuted from Louisiana (yeah right) the money from the salaries paid would still stay here in America.
One does not need to be an economic genius to figure out it is better for as large a percentage of the amount paid at the pump to stay here in the good ole USA. This is particularly true when one considers that many of those we import crude oil from are rather unfriendly and the money they receive is used to finance things that go against our nation’s strategic interests.
March 30th, 2010 at 4:54 am
If you believe Virginia produced oil/gasoline will be cheaper, you really do not understand the economics… And there isn’t enough off Va’s coast to make a real long term impact.
March 30th, 2010 at 6:16 am
America consumes 24% of the world’s oil and has 3% of the world’s oil reserves. No amount of drilling will change that basic fact. The oil cartels would only need to reduce production by a fraction of a percentage to get the same amount of money from us. Our problem isn’t dependence on foreign oil; our problem is dependence on oil. Reducing consumption through efficiency and renewable sources is the only way to free ourselves.
March 30th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Efficiency is good and the increased CAFE standards for automobiles was wise, however that is not going to be enough to end our dependence on foreign crude oil, at least in the short term.
Every increase in supply is going to put downward pressure on the price of oil; supply and demand. While there might not be significant reserves off Virginia’s coast alone, if you put all the coastal areas currently off-limits together the sum total will be significant. Besides, if there really aren’t any reserves off Virginia’s coasts, then why the strong opposition? If there is no oil out there then there will not be any oil drilling either.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
There is some oil offshore Virginia – just enough to soak the Virginia Beach oceanfront in the event of an oil spill, but not enough to affect supply and demand in the global oil market.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
OK, and Virginia should be so special that our citizens (including you) should not take the risks of environmental degradation and these risks should only be borne by the unfortunate citizens of third world countries?
By your figures, we use so much and produce so little. Why shouldn’t we produce as much as we can?
I am not trying to scream too loudly. David, I know you drive a fuel efficient vehicle. But a percentage of the fuel your efficient vehicle needs comes from foreign sources. I am not going to agree that every drop possible must come from outside our borders. You will find agreement with me on reasonable steps to lessen our dependence on crude oil totally (not just foreign crude oil) although we might still disagree on the definition of reasonable.
What is reasonable? Well instead of buying that Verso why didn’t you buy a Prius? Better fuel economy right? And I guess you would have been one of the first to trade in that old school hybrid for a plug-in also? Your plug-in would have been powered by solar panels too as wll, ah, so green friendly.
What, you couldn’t afford all that? My gosh, you are so fortunate and YOU can’t afford it? What about those less fortunate then you? I know that as fortunate as I am, I can not afford leading edge technology. I do try and do my part, but money only goes so far. I also realize that there are many who are not as fortunate as I am and I also realize those less fortunate can still vote. If you pull the rug out from under them, they are going to be upset.
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