faykejayke:

Myths from the Right about the Disaster in the Gulf

azspot:

The idea that environmental regulations forced the industry into deepwater, as proclaimed by Sarah Palin and echoed by pundits, is a whopper.  The offshore industry set its sights on drilling in one thousand feet of water before significant federal environmental laws and regulations existed (many of these were implemented by that radical leftist, Richard Nixon).  The closure of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling in the 1980s did force the industry to concentrate its efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.  However, oil companies would have moved into deepwater by the 1990s wherever they could, in which case the current disaster might have happened elsewhere, perhaps even closer to shore.  The continental shelf drops off so quickly on the Pacific Coast that in places one can almost drive a golf ball into deepwater from the beach.

Big Oil drills in deepwater because that is where the largest remaining oil fields are and where the oil flows most prolifically.  Despite intensive exploration onshore and in shallow water, U.S. oil production has been declining since 1970.  Old fields are being exhausted and newly discovered fields in explored areas are getting smaller.  That decline would be occurring even if the environmental movement had never existed.

The federal government did give the oil industry a boost into deepwater, but it happened first under President Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of Interior, James Watt, not Bill Clinton.  In 1983, Watt introduced “area-wide leasing,” which gave oil companies access to greater offshore acreage at much cheaper lease prices.  During the 1980s, Shell Oil led the industry in acquiring huge numbers of deepwater leases, which it could readily afford thanks to area-wide leasing.