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by C. Grady Drago, Chairman of the Lincoln Heritage Institute
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is being republished because of the resurfacing of the nation’s fragile energy supply. It is particularly pertinent today. It was originally published 2001.
Recently, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan astounded many citizens in Michigan by taking legislative action that weakened their ability to control activities in Michigan’s Great Lakes. After her amendment was adopted, she boasted that the passage of her legislation for federal preemption of Michigan control of its Great Lakes was a “great victory.”
Senator Stabenow’s exuberant spokesman confirmed in greater detail to the media that her amendment was a straight-out prohibition of a state’s right to control the waters of the Great Lakes and that it was a federal preemption of the right of the Michigan people to control use of the land and water off their shores. This action will stall any gas or oil production from under the Great Lakes for many years. She has since extolled and attempted to defend the correctness of what she did to Michigan citizens in other states’ media outlets including New York, states that are concerned over this dangerous precedent.
If the Senator were truly interested in the environment, she would take steps to do something about the tankers in the Great Lakes. The largest 48 oil spills in U.S. waters came from tankers, not oil drilling.
The heated controversy over drilling in the Great Lakes was sparked by the State of Michigan’s decision to explore, develop, and produce oil and/or gas by slant drilling from land (1200 feet from the shore line) to locations thousands of feet below the bottom of the Great Lakes.
The controversy has resulted in, and is the result of, a great deal of inaccurate, misleading, and confusing information being provided to the public about the environmental impact of drilling and how it will destroy state drinking water. In an attempt to “put the record straight,” we are providing for your edification data, which we obtained from interviews with officers and staff of the State of Michigan, Canadian Government, the U.S. Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Corps of Engineers, the Association of American Petroleum Geologists, the State of Ohio, U.S. Congressional Committees, Western Michigan University, and from the archives of the Lincoln Heritage Institute. This will give any citizen that is interested the opportunity to check the facts for themselves.
Environmental extremists and the media have been fast and loose with the truth – sometimes providing outright misrepresentation and other times slanting the truth by implication and innuendo. They use this tactic because their goal is to make a negative first impression of oil drilling which they cannot support by fact. This is an irresponsible disservice to the citizens of Michigan and to the American public. This is a major reason the public has lost faith and confidence in the professionalism, honesty, and competence of these entities.
Recently, the radical environmental community in Michigan produced two photographs designed to foster opposition to drilling for oil and gas. Both have since been proven phony. One depicted children sitting in the sand surrounded by tar balls. The other was a picture of an oil rig drilling from the top of the Sleeping Bear dune.
In a recent, rather comprehensive newspaper article about Michigan oil and gas activity in a Detroit newspaper, information was provided that clearly painted a negative picture designed to create opposition to slant drilling in the Great Lakes. Specifically, that article stated that there were 89 incidents of oil or gas seepage last year, and that the state had to issue over 48 citations to the oil companies. According to the state regulatory agencies that keep these records, every drop of oil from seepage was automatically and instantly contained. Some of the 48 citations were for seepage while others had nothing to do with seepage. When the state officials were asked if they were aware of any harm to the physical or human environment or any inconvenience to humans as a result of the seepage, they said no. Much of the article was premised by the fact that the water level in the Great Lakes was low, a cyclical, event having nothing to do with oil and gas activities. The reporter concluded that his information demonstrated that there were many questions about the safety of Michigan’s oil and gas industry.
The truth is, there has been absolutely no actual or scientific evidence of a single incident of significant environmental impact in the almost 80 years of oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes. In spite of the fact that we are not facing the gasoline price crunch today that we faced this summer and four other times in the past three decades, our dependency on imported oil for over 60% of our domestic consumption results in our sending billions of dollars annually to the Arab nations. This level of dependence not only is a direct cause of the problems we now face with the terrorists, but also has and is putting America’s youth in harm’s way, and is a hindrance to the U.S. in the international arena.
The urgency of our situation has been made particularly clear because of the events of September 11, and since. The cause of this attack, or “why they hate us,” boils down to as one politico put it, “it’s about the oil stupid.”
The state of Michigan, particularly Governor John Engler, deserve a great deal of applause from the citizens of Michigan and from all Americans for a courageous decision even though that decision was backed up by the findings of an extensive study.
Since 1923, there has not been a single significant negative environmental impact resulting from drilling in the Canadian Great Lakes.
Oil and gas drilling in and on-shore adjacent to Great Lakes waters in Canada and in the U.S. has been significant and again with no measurable environmental damage from drilling, even during the earliest beginnings of the industry when engineering and technology were in its infancy. Today’s drilling technology rivals the engineering levels of sophistication of NASA.
Our energy crisis is like heart trouble that makes itself known from time to time. Over time, if the symptoms are not dealt with the damage could be catastrophic. The energy crisis we face may be our nation’s greatest threat.
Every credible expert agrees that the underlying reason terrorists hate us is not because of what we did to Saddam Hussein, or our support of Israel (though they certainly oppose our positions); it is because of the amount of oil we are forced to import from that area of the world and what we have to do to protect our nation’s interests.
Our dependence on foreign oil often drives U.S. policy. One of the major U.S. considerations during the U.N. vote creating Israel was the potential negative impact on our relations with Iran, a major source of oil.
The amount of oil we import has increased following every energy emergency we have faced since 1972. This happens because efforts to increase domestic production are thwarted by radical environmentalists, and OPEC increases supplies to force prices below levels that would stimulate new production.
Why does the American public continue to let this happen? We have ample domestic oil and gas resources. Our technology has allowed us to produce this oil in a safe and orderly manner. Let’s solve our problem and protect our nation and its citizens from economic and social harm caused by high energy prices and interruptions in supplies.
We must remove the self imposed restrictions to the formulation of our domestic and international policies that high levels of oil imports impose. We must curtail the billions of American dollars being sent to these nations for oil each year. We must dry up the financial resources some of this money provides to terrorists for Acts of war.
Drilling in the Great Lakes can also insure the Michigan auto industry and its thousands of workers a safe and local supply of energy to run their factories and fuel the products of those factories; provide billions in revenues to state and local treasuries; and create thousands of new jobs.
About 550,000 producing oil wells in this nation produce an average of approximately 15 barrels of oil a day, and most of them took up to 15 years to bring on line. In other words, our national oil supply is made up of relatively small producing wells; therefore, every contribution to our supply is important. How many families would lose their gas for heating and cooking, and how many cars, trucks, and planes would lack fuel if we decreased the amount of oil now available to Michigan by the amount of oil and gas estimated to be located in the Great Lakes?
The time has come to drill for oil in the Great Lakes. The American people, particularly the people of Michigan, need and deserve the security and stability energy from the Great Lakes can provide. Drill rigs will not be located in the waters of the lakes but, in many cases, up to a mile inland. Slant drilling will be used to reach the oil resources located under the lakes. If a problem develops it will not occur in the waters of the lake, but onshore.
If you are interested in additional information on the energy situation confronting Americans, go to the search engine on our site at http://www.lincolnheritage.org and do a key word search.
Below are some facts pertaining to gas and oil drilling in the Great Lakes. If someone can dispute them with factual, published, thorough, and provable data, we would like to hear from them. Please contact the Institute at 517-663-5909, or by e-mail at lhi@wmis.net.
- Within State of Michigan, the Niagara Reef trend (excluding Lake Superior) has estimated reserves 1.6 trillion cubic feet of gas (tcf) and over 400 million barrels of oil.
- Ohio waters in Lake Erie off shore of Cleveland, are estimated to contain 1.1 bcf of gas.
- The first oil well was drilled in the Northern Hemisphere in 1858 in southern Canada.
- The first well in the Great Lakes was drilled in 1923 in the Canadian waters of Lake Erie.
- Since 1923, there have been over 2200 wells drilled in the Canadian Great Lakes
- About 50% of the 2200 wells were drilled in the waters of the Lakes, the other half were slant or directionally drilling from shore under the waters of the lakes.
- Lake St. Clare holds some promise of producing gas, but the five wells that Canada drilled there have been capped.
- As of 1999, 482 billion cubic feet of gas has produced from the Canadian Great Lakes.
- The annual production of natural gas from the Canadian Great Lakes is 10 billion cubic feet.
- The known reserves of recoverable gas is 637.2 bcf. in the Canadian Great Lakes.
- The estimated natural gas resourse in Canadian waters is 1.3 tcf .
- In addition to providing the natural resource, drilling in the Great Lakes has created, directly and indirectly, 1400 jobs, and a $100,000,000 benefit to the Canadian economy.
- Michigan ranks 17th in oil and gas production in the U.S. with 63 of Michigan’s 83 counties having oil/gas operations.
- Michigan produces 22,677 barrels of oil and 289 bcf of gas.
- The total number of oil wells in Michigan is 4,673.
- Last year there were an estimated 89 incidents of seepage from oil or gas wells (all contained) in Michigan without a single detectable inconvenience or harm to the physical or human environment.
- The oil industry in Michigan directly provides over 10,000 jobs; 14,000 private mineral owners are paid more than $80 million in royalties.
- The oil and gas industry pays over $40 million annually in taxes and fees and over $7 million in privilege fees to the State of Michigan.
- Oil and gas activities in Michigan generate an additional $1.1 billion in business activity every year
Michigan’s oil and gas operations are amongst the safest in the world. They are covered by hundreds of federal rules and regulations from EPA, the Federal Resource Conservation and Recover Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensations and Liability Act. The State’s regulatory entities include the Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Natural Resources and Michigan Public Service Commission.
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