The American Petroleum Institute opposes lengthy or open-ended delays of offshore oil and natural gas development, as proposed today by the administration. Offshore development is crucial to creating and saving jobs and strengthening U.S. energy security.

We understand the concerns many people have about offshore drilling in the wake of this incident, and the frustration many feel toward oil companies. But this issue is much larger than the oil industry, since access to affordable energy impacts every sector of our economy, every state in our nation and every American family. Further, thousands of products--from toothpaste to iPods, cell phones to computers, and vitamins to vegetables--use oil and natural gas as a feedstock in the manufacturing process.

An extended moratorium on safely producing our oil and natural gas resources from the Gulf of Mexico would create a moratorium on economic growth and job creation--especially in the Gulf States whose people and economies have already been most affected by the oil spill--by undercutting our nation's access to affordable, reliable, domestic sources of oil and natural gas.

Deepwater development is a key component of domestic energy security. In 2007, deepwater provided 70 percent of the oil and 36 percent of the natural gas from overall federal Gulf of Mexico production. The 20 most prolific producing blocks in the Gulf are located in deepwater.

Additional moves to curtail domestic production by postponing exploration and development off the coasts of Alaska and Virginia, as well as areas in the Gulf, have the potential to significantly erode our energy and economic security.

Decisions that impact the industry's ability to produce the oil and natural gas this country needs in every sector of our economy and in every household in this country will affect the lives of every citizen, every day. We will encourage the administration and Congress to reconsider any decisions that would place previously available lease areas off limits, and to ensure that there is a process and a timeline for revisiting decisions that impact our energy and economic future.

As I read about the new flow estimates for the ongoing BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico today, I can only think about what might have been in the Arctic. And together with my colleagues and the people of the North Slope of Alaska, I breathe a huge sigh of relief that for now, one of our nation’s greatest natural treasures has been granted a repreive.

When the folks who call the Arctic home heard the news that President Obama has delayed Shell Oil’s plans for exploratory drilling in the Arctic Ocean until 2011 at the earliest, they cried tears of joy and relief. For so long, they have been fighting to keep Big Oil from taking its next drilling gamble in waters that the Arctic’s Inupiat people have called their “garden” for thousands of years. Yet their thoughts didn’t stray long from the people of the Gulf coast, who have already lost their garden to Big Oil.

As one Alaska Native leader who is down in the Gulf right now said in a recent email: “We saw the pelican nesting island surrounded by oiled booms, the birds are being oiled and how will their young survive? I have witnessed the tears from the people here and my heart is broken.”

Today is a day of celebration for the Arctic. But it is made bittersweet by the fact that it took a disaster like the one still unfolding in the Gulf to make the public and the federal government stop and think. It all reminds me of a time 21 years ago, when Congress was poised to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, until the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. It took that disaster to stop drilling in that pristine Arctic place. And here we are again, yet this time, the spill is larger, the human tragedy is greater, and the long-term impacts are likely even graver.

I am grateful that the administration did stop, think and realize that drilling in the Arctic Ocean this summer while we still don’t understand what is happening in the Gulf, is a bad idea. I only hope that it won’t take another drilling disaster for us to stop, think and realize that drilling is a dirty and dangerous business and we need to seriously reform the way it is done in this country before we gamble with another one of our nation’s natural treasures. Delaying offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean is a crucial first step, and a sign that the Obama administration is willing to step up and lead us toward a better, cleaner, safer energy future.

A move by Congress to re-impose a moratorium on offshore drilling in response to the environmental tragedy occurring in the Gulf would be irresponsible, an act of sheer folly. Until last month’s Deepwater Horizon accident, more than 40 years had passed since the last production incident in 1969. Over that period, we have drilled over 50,000 offshore wells without a serious accident. That is a record of excellence and care.

Regrettably tragic accidents, both natural and manmade, do occur. Extreme efforts to completely avoid any risk are not only futile; they’re also likely to lead to unintended consequences. The right course of action is to learn why this accident occurred and what steps can be taken to make offshore drilling even safer in the future.

The Interior Department has suspended deep water leasing activity until a thorough investigation has been completed and actions taken to prevent a reoccurrence as much as humanly possible. As unfortunate as accidents such as this are, they are also learning experiences. This one will be as well. From it, we will undoubtedly adopt new safety measures and develop superior tools, which will almost certainly include advances in cleanup and containment technology.

Cost of cleanup and restoration will provide the proverbial 2X4 incentive for our drilling industry to make necessary improvements. It’s already happening. According to press reports, industry has set up a high level task force to examine major changes in safety procedures. And BP announced that it plans to set up a research effort and has pledged 500 million over the next 10 years.

The Gulf of Mexico provides about 1/3 of our nation’s oil, and offshore tracts are among the most promising sources of new oil and gas discoveries. As much as some would like to eliminate oil from our energy budget, that simply cannot happen any time soon. Liquid fuels provide about 40% of our energy needs, enabling not just personal mobility but also transportation of millions of products from coast to coast. Oil plays an essential role in our economy, so we either must produce it here or import it from abroad. For the foreseeable future, alternatives to liquid fuels will be less abundant, less versatile, and more expensive.

Looking to the future, we’ll need better precautions to prevent accidents and protect sensitive ecological areas. Leasing requirements should reflect site specific conditions, which means that some requirements will be more stringent and some less. In the mean time, our focus should be on stopping the flow of oil, cleaning up the oil now in the water and onshore, restoring damaged areas, compensating those who have suffered economic losses, and learning exactly what happened and what can be done to minimize future risks.

The tragic oil spill in the Gulf needs to be – and will be – addressed by both the government and industry to make sure that every step possible is taken to prevent accidents like this from ever happening again. However, it is imperative that we not react to this incident by withdrawing our support for a balanced, rational energy policy that includes offshore energy production, along with wind, solar, hydro, nuclear and other energy sources.

If a new moratorium is instituted, America’s offshore domestic energy will be inaccessible and our nation’s energy security and economy will continue to be left to the whims of foreign, unstable governments that do not have America’s best interests in mind. A new moratorium on offshore energy production will only cause more economic harm to our country. Clearly, both energy production safety and the national security that comes from a strong domestic oil sector are necessary to help Americans shed their dependence on foreign energy. Instead of saying no to domestic energy, we must instead commit to producing more of our own vast oil reserves with the highest standards of safety and accountability in oil production.

Clearly this rare accident was not an inevitable byproduct of oil production and Americans shouldn’t rush to judgment on offshore energy production. We should focus on: 1) finding out what went wrong; 2) fixing it and ensuring that it never happens again; and 3) determining the appropriate path forward.

In the same way that this accident in the Gulf is unacceptable, our country’s current energy situation – where we import well over half the oil we consume — is simply unsustainable. If Americans are serious about developing their own energy resources and reducing dependency on foreign imports, offshore production must be part of the solution.

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico continues to be a tragedy of epic proportions – one that will still be felt in the fishing communities, wildlife sanctuaries, and the Gulf itself for decades to come.

This long-term devastation is exactly the reason that Secretary Salazar should stop the exploratory drilling that Royal Dutch Shell is planning to do this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the north coast of Alaska. Pending a full review of what happened on the Deepwater Horizon, a better grasp of the marine and coastal ecological values that will be placed at risk should a similar catastrophe occur in the region, and a reconsideration of the safety and environmental protection measures that Shell plans to employ in the Arctic Ocean, the drilling must be put on hold.

The Gulf of Mexico is hardly a calm body of water, especially now, entering hurricane season. But conditions there are benign in comparison to the icy, treacherous conditions that can exist in the best of times on the Arctic Ocean, far from Coast Guard oil spill clean-up equipment and facilities, or even other vessels capable of helping to contain a major spill. As others have pointed out before, the necessary infrastructure to clean up a disastrous spill simply doesn’t exist near the proposed drill sites in the Arctic.

Wildlife concerns abound in and around the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic is home to more 3,000 beluga whales, and is a summer home to endangered bowhead, finback, and humpback whales – a spill in these waters could push these already stressed species over the brink. Seals, walruses, and polar bears would also be devastated by the poisoning of the Arctic ecosystem, along with hundreds of thousands migratory birds and waterfowl. No one wants to see the oil-covered brown pelicans on Louisiana coast, why would we invite images of oil soaked polar bears and seals next?

The catastrophe in the Gulf shows how dangerous our addiction to oil is. Until we transition to a clean, carbon free economy, we must take all precautions against destroying our wild places in the name of oil. The assurances from oil companies that “it couldn’t happen here” aren’t enough, as we have clearly learned from the Gulf debacle.

Until the Obama Administration conducts a thorough review of the Arctic marine ecosystem and the environmental impacts that any proposed drilling would have in case of a spill, and determines what new safety measures are needed to prevent or stop a spill, we should not risk another catastrophe. Secretary Salazar needs to call a timeout on Shell’s drilling plans in the Arctic.

It seems clear that the oil spill in the Gulf will change many things. However, it is important to remember how important Gulf oil is for the present energy security of the country. I say present, because this spill and what seems to be the catastrophic results of it, may finally push this country to take renewable energy, nuclear and other alternative energies more seriously. It may also force us as a nation to finally consider the full costs of focusing so much on hydrocarbons and oil. The externality cost of a million barrels of oil is now seen in the bays, estuaries, and shorelines of the region and may be seen far beyond that.

Oil is an important part of our energy mix. It will likely be for some time. However, as we head into deeper water and as we head into more complex reserves and technologies for extracting the oil means and methods may contain risks that we are not considering fully.

Should there be a moratorium? What will be the alternative sources of energy that we will produce as this moratorium works its way through? Will we import more oil? Will we shift to even heavier crudes? Will we be ever more reliant on external sources of our energy? Even more important: will we finally face the facts that it is time for an energy transition in this country and globally and that is time to "cut bait and fish". The major oil, gas, and coal companies know that the transition is coming. The think tanks, politicians and others also see what is blowing in the wind.

However, we need to be reasonable. This spill is a disaster. The real costs of it may not be known for some time – even years. However, our country's transport system is completely dominated by oil. Transitioning to another transport system will take considerable time. Maybe an answer is tighter safety and operational controls. Another answer has already been followed: to reform and start to really change the MMS. This has been a source of embarrassment for years, especially for the many good and decent people who have worked there. We all know the stories. There is no reason to repeat them.

Maybe the moratorium that is needed is a moratorium on the political infighting that has stifled any moves toward a better, more sustainable, more secure and more reasonable energy policy and energy industry in this country.

We need reasoned strategic leadership in energy policy and in the energy industry that will lead this country to a better energy future, not just calls for moratorium.

Should the government clamp a moratorium on new offshore oil and natural gas drilling? In a word – yes. Yes, this administration should immediately extend the current “suspension” on new offshore oil drilling. Yes, that moratorium should be expanded to include current and planned drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico – where according to the New York Times, “at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted” since President Obama ordered a suspension of new drilling on April 30. Yes, the moratorium should most certainly include the fragile Arctic seas, where Shell still plans to start drilling as early as this July, and the East Coast, parts of which President Obama opened to exploratory drilling earlier this year.

The debate should be over about whether the U.S. should allow offshore oil drilling off America’s coastline. Oil drilling is simply too dirty, and too dangerous, to risk in our waters. The impacts already being seen in the Gulf are having huge impacts on our wildlife resources and the jobs that depend upon them. And these impacts are likely to last for decades, changing the way that Gulf coast residents interact with their beaches and islands, and undermining a way of life for fishermen, charter boat companies, seafood restaurants, and many other businesses throughout the region.

We can’t afford NOT to curb offshore drilling, in fact. Not least because the costs of this disaster will run into the billions, and we can ill-afford another such tragedy elsewhere. But also because allowing more offshore drilling further delays America’s transition to cleaner forms of energy – a transition we must make as soon as possible to reduce the other impacts which dirty fossil fuels have on our nation, from air and water pollution to global climate change.

President Obama should look at the current crisis as an opportunity to speed up America’s move away from toxic oil to clean renewable energy. His first step should be to reinstate, immediately, the presidential moratorium on offshore drilling, and make sure that it includes all our fragile waters – including the fragile Arctic waters that will be imperiled by drilling this summer.

One thing the U.S. cannot afford is another disaster on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy that continues to spill crude oil into Gulf waters with no end in sight. And if Shell Oil is allowed to move forward with their plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean in less than 40 days, we could have a situation on our hands that eclipses what’s happening in the Gulf.

We have proven that we are not ready to deal with a catastrophe of that scale in an area with moderate temperatures, relatively tame seas, and lots of infrastructure, personnel and equipment on hand to respond. In the Arctic, one of the harshest and remote environments on the planet, government agencies have already said things like: “There has been little experience with under-ice or broken-ice oil spills, and there is little evidence to suggest that the capability exists currently to successfully clean up a spill of this type up in a timely manner.” (These comments came from the government’s Minerals Management Service)

Let me offer a few comparisons between the situation in the Gulf and the Arctic. There were 32 vessels on hand to respond to the disaster in the Gulf within 24 hours – in the Arctic, there are 13 vessels. Likewise, the skimming capacity in the Gulf was 171,000 barrels a day; in the Arctic, it would be 24,000 barrels a day. And, while its 47 miles from the Louisiana coast to site of the Gulf spill, in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, the nearest dock is 250 miles from the proposed well sites, and the nearest Coast Guard station is 800 miles away. At the same time, a former MMS employee testified before Congress earlier this month that blowouts are more likely in shallow waters like those in the Arctic.

The Obama administration must learn from the disaster in the Gulf and Shell must prove that they can clean up a spill in the Arctic’s conditions before these plans for exploratory drilling – the same type that was being done in the Gulf – are allowed to move forward.

In March, the Obama administration proved that they understand the need for restraint in the Arctic when they canceled four future lease sales in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, took Bristol Bay off the table completely and ordered a study of the scientific and spill response gaps in the region. In light of what has happened in the weeks since that announcement, it seems only prudent to suspend Shell’s plans and make sure that if it is done, it is done right.

The Arctic is one of our nation’s greatest natural treasures – the Arctic’s sea-ice environment is home to some of our most beloved wildlife, from polar bears and seals to walrus and whales. The people of the Arctic coast, who call the Arctic Ocean their “garden” because they have lived off its bounty for thousands of years, live in fear of what happened in the Gulf. As Earl Kingik, an Inupiat elder from the Alaskan village of Point Hope said in the halls of Congress last week, after traveling to the Gulf coast where he saw the devastation for himself: “Our garden we love the most, our garden that unite our people, our garden that keep our culture together – please help us protect our garden.”

The Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the coast of Alaska’s North Slope are two of nature’s most untamed places. Pristine, yet forbidding, the gale-force winds, dark skies and icy waves make these vast bodies of water appear desolate. Yet the region is teeming with wildlife, including polar bears, seals, walrus, birds, whales and more than 150 species of fish.

This remote corner of the Arctic feels a world away from the Gulf of Mexico, where more than 3,000 drilling rigs are in active service, and tens of thousands of gallons of oil continue to gush from the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout.

Yet if all goes as planned, in less than a week from now, a ship operated by the Shell Oil Co. will begin its journey to the Arctic, in preparation for drilling that is scheduled to start on July 1.

It may be months before we fully understand the underlying causes of the BP catastrophe. And as we’ve witnessed, oil spills are difficult to contain even under the best of circumstances. After more than a month, BP remains unable to contain the escalating catastrophe in the gulf – and this is a region with a favorable climate, one where the industry has significant experience drilling and area where state-of-the art spill response equipment is close at hand.

By comparison, the Arctic site where Shell plans to drill is located more than 70 miles off-shore in a remote region of the world where basic infrastructure necessary to mobilize spill response equipment – highways, airports and seaports – are lacking. The nearest Coast Guard station is more than a thousand miles from the proposed drill site. At certain times of the year, it could be weeks or months before response equipment could even get into the region. The U.S. is woefully unprepared to cope with the logistical challenges posed by even a modest spill in the hostile Arctic climes, a view shared by many including the U.S. Coast Guard commander who had oversight for Alaska until 2007.

Former Shell engineer Robert Bea, who now heads the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California-Berkeley, believes the oil company has not provided the government with an accurate assessment of the true risks of drilling in the Arctic. “This is imagineering, not engineering,” he said at a briefing on Capitol Hill last week.

The BP disaster is as much a failure of policy as it is of technology, exemplifying the fundamental flaws in how MMS has regulated the oil and gas industry. The Obama administration has taken some positive steps in addressing these issues by separating the regulatory, safety and revenue functions of MMS and announcing the creation of an independent commission to review the BP disaster. Until that commission has a chance to complete its work and make recommendations on how to prevent a similar catastrophe, President Obama and Interior Secretary Salazar must affirm that there will be no new drill bits sunk into U.S. waters.

It would be reckless and irresponsible to allow any oil company to rush out and begin drilling new wells until we know all the facts surrounding the BP spill and can be certain that the right safeguards are in place to ensure it won’t happen again. In the case of the Arctic, drilling must be put on hold until there is an adequate response strategy.

Over the past month, the jingoism of “drill, baby, drill” has been thoroughly discredited by the horrifying reality of “spill, baby, spill.” What’s needed now is a big dose of “chill, baby, chill.”

Yes, the administration should impose a moratorium on all new offshore drilling activities. Existing plans to move ahead with projects were based on the assumption that the likelihood of a serious spill was virtually too remote to contemplate. The catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has shattered that assumption.

In light of the Gulf tragedy--now one-month old and counting--America should halt new offshore leasing, exploratory drilling, and seismic exploration.

The moratorium should remain in effect until the causes of the current spill and their ramifications are fully understood.

I am pleased that President Obama is establishing an independent commission to investigate the disaster and that two experienced and fair-minded figures, former Senator Bob Graham and Former EPA Administrator William Reilly, will lead it. The work of a fully independent commission is our best hope of finding out what caused this catastrophe and what we can do to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. No new offshore activities should be allowed until we receive the commission's report.

It is especially critical to stop the exploratory drilling scheduled to begin in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in Alaska this summer. The Arctic Oceans is an extremely vulnerable environment and one that presents major challenges for drilling technology. Any large-scale spill there would be nearly impossible to clean up.

We simply don't have to jeopardize our oceans economy in the name of fuel production. Last Friday, President Obama announced new, cleaner vehicle standards for cars, big trucks, and SUVs, a move that by 2030 could result in vehicles that run on half the fuel they use today.

Meanwhile, if we want to boost our domestic oil supply, we should focus on enhanced oil recovery from existing fields, a process that can supply more than 10 times the amount of oil that could be produced by drilling in our oceans over the same period.

These are the oil-saving solutions we need right now. In addition to a moratorium on offshore drilling, we urge Congress to pass the clean energy and climate legislation that will shift America away from our dangerous reliance on oil, toward cleaner options that can't spill and won't run out.

It goes without saying that the nation should legislate no new commitments to offshore oil drilling without first getting to the bottom of the colossal BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

That means investigators, lawmakers, and the public at large need to really grapple with the Deepwater Horizon mess.

In this respect, lawmakers need to understand what technical things went wrong and get a grip on what regulatory failures played a role. But beyond that--and hardest--all of us need to take from this debacle a little more serious appreciation of the unavoidable costs of our oil addiction. Along these lines, it remains quite mystifying that President Obama only last weekend began to tie what Brad Plumer over at The Vine calls “the nasty side effects of our fossil fuel addiction”--from massive spills to the risks of catastrophic climate change--to a broader case for energy reform and moving the country away from oil. This is a teachable moment after all.

Which brings us to the drifting Kerry-Lieberman climate and energy bill, now stuck in limbo in the Senate, as reports Darren Samuelsohn of ClimateWire.

Strange to say, the much-debated offshore drilling provisions in Kerry-Lieberman represent a critical opportunity to act on the current teachable moment and tie further fossil fuel use once and for all to energy system transformation.

How’s that? Well, providing appropriate safety and regulatory provisions can be fashioned, the Senate bill’s drilling title represents an important opportunity to make anecessary point as well as generate substantial revenue to drive the energy system innovation needed to help the nation decarbonize its economy and wean itself from fossil fuels.

To be sure, it’s unclear appropriate safeguards for further drilling can be designed and equally unclear whether the Kerry-Lieberman bill will actually move. But if the legislation does proceed, any concessions on drilling in the bill should be strongly tied to a hard requirement that any lease revenue associated with offshore drilling along the nation’s coasts be invested directly in energy efficiency and clean energy innovation.

Such a link, as it happens, was first proposed by a 2009 GOP plan to put hundreds of billions of new oil and gas royalties into a trust fund to accelerate clean energy innovation that would help make clean energy cheap and truly help wean America from its carbon dependency.

But at any rate, such a stipulation makes powerful practical as well as symbolic sense. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that, in terms of their oil and gas yield, "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf [offshore] regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030." However, as Jesse Jenkins and Yael Borofsky of the Breakthrough Institute have noted, what could make a difference would be to invest the tens of billions in potential federal revenue from oil and gas royalties in efforts to accelerate clean tech innovation and deployment and so help America develop the affordable clean energy sources needed to truly diversify its energy mix and secure our freedom from oil. In short, it’s not so much the oil and gas itself that would make a difference in addressing the nation’s energy needs but the potential associated revenue, which would help to address the nation’s serious need to find the wherewithal to apply from $15 billion to $25 billion a year, each and every year, to clean energy innovation activities.

And if such a trade of drilling for cleantech revenue sounds mercenary, I plead guilty out of desperation. After all, as I noted during a panel session at last week’s compelling Brookings forum “Energy and Climate Change 2010: Back to the Future,” the nation has not done so well with providing for sufficient energy innovation, either through the regular appropriations process or through the allotment of cap-and-trade emission permit revenue within its “comprehensive” climate bills. In the former case, Congress simply comes up short on the dollar levels; in the latter case it keeps “giving away the store” with massive allowance giveaways that severely depress the stream of revenue available for public needs like clean energy innovation. Even now, the Kerry-Lieberman outline will hand some 37 percent of its offshore drilling lease revenue over to coastal states as a disastrous brand of ill-founded “revenue sharing.”

In sum, we desperately need a set of major, dedicated revenue sources for clean energy R&D and deployment and offshore drilling revenue looks like one top candidate. Post-Deepwater Horizon, linking any sort of expanded drilling to clean energy transformation looks is a no-brainer that should be insisted upon.

In assessing whether to continue dangerous offshore oil drilling in the United States, let’s look at some numbers. First, Americans consume approximately 20 million barrels of oil daily, or 7.3 billion barrels annually. Second, the estimated amount of recoverable oil in the Gulf of Mexico is approximately 44 billion barrels, a number that is larger than the Pacific, Atlantic and Alaska waters put together. Further, the Gulf of Mexico now produces roughly 1.7 million barrels of oil daily, which is less than one-tenth of current American consumption (this does not count the 100,000 barrels daily that the BP blow out is currently spewing and wasting).

Put it all together and what does it mean? Even if we completely destroyed the Gulf of Mexico, it has only enough oil to satisfy our thirst for seven years. This, of course, ignores the billions, if not trillions, of dollars of damage we would do to fisheries, tourism, clean water, homes and wildlife were we to follow the Bush/Salazar logic of more drilling. Most of our oil does not come from oceans and outer continental shelf, and we do not need to obliterate our natural capital to suck a small portion of oil that we could easily gain by conservation measures. I would wager the American people have no interest in destroying Alaska’s Arctic oceans, the Chesapeake Bay or the Pacific cost when presented with these facts.

So why is “more offshore drilling” even on the table? Why is “more offshore drilling” in Kerry’s “climate” legislation? Why does Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and the Republican leadership continue to call for “more offshore drilling?” Because the oil companies like BP, Exxon-Mobil and Shell have lubricated the political system with money that our elected representatives find too tempting to pass up. It’s cronyism at its absolute worst.

This is President Obama’s historic moment: a disaster that can catalyze more rational thinking about serious investment in renewable energy and wiser consumption patterns. It will not be simple. But it will be a lot easier than cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico over the next decade or three.

If there is one lesson from the Deepwater Horizon it is that we should not be continuing to allow new oil drilling in the ocean. Such drilling will unavoidably continue to pollute the marine environment, poison fisheries, and devastate coastal economies dependent on recreation and tourism. The promise of "safe, clean" off-shore drilling is a chimaera, a myth -- and a fraud.

This is not because off-shore drilling technology is ALWAYS inadequate. It is NOT because oil companies are ALWAYS irresponsible.

It is because MOST OF THE TIME is not good enough.

It is because both the ocean and oil and gas strata geology are highly unpredictable, so technology which works most of the time won't work all of the time. We don't yet know what happened at Deepwater Horizon. But it's clear that Blow Out Preventers, which are the final line of defense, don't work all the time -- and they didn't work here. It's clear that as the industry goes deeper and deeper the difficulties of testing the equipment, repairing it, and dealing with failure, increase not gradually but at an accelerating rate. Deeper is not just deeper, it's also colder, the pressures are enormously higher, and the behavior of equipment much less predictable.

And finally the odds of failure are dramatically increased by the intrinsic incentive structure that faces the industry. To make money reliably, given the risks of dry holes, uncooperative geology, price volatility, the industry has a strong incentive to cut corners -- and while some companies resist this lure better than others, it is a fantasy to imagine a world in which ALL companies are responsible ALL of the time.

And technology that works all of the time, and companies that are responsible all of the time is essential, because we really have no effective technology to clean up oil once it spills. The use of booms, dispersants, absorbents, skimmers is utterly inadequate even to deal with minor spills like those that result from a freighter hitting a bridge, as happened in San Francisco Bay. The idea that clean-up technology can deal with a gusher on the ocean floor, as we face in the Mississippi Canyon with Deepwater Horizon, is risible -- and the oil companies, internally, don't imagine for a minute they will capture all, or even most, of the oil in a major spill.

Nothing better illustrates the fundamentally fraudulent nature of the concept that the current generation of oil drilling is safe and well understood than BP's contradictory claims to the federal government in its permit applications in the Gulf. BP claimed at one lease that a big spill was possible but acceptable because BP could easily clean up a spill much worse than this one. It simultaneously was obtaining permits for Deepwater Horizion by claiming that there was NO chance of a big spill at all. And no one in the Mineral Management Service flagged these contradictions. Evidently no one actually took these claims seriously enough to compare them with each other -- either in the company or in the MMS.

We are now being told that since the specific problems that afflicted Deepwater Horizon and make it so hard to shut the gusher off are unique to its depth, that shallow drilling is somehow safe. But these claims overlook the inescapable irony: yes, a shallow gusher can be shut off quicker than a deep one, if necessary by drilling a relief well. But shallow water means closer to wetlands and beaches, so that while the amount of oil that will leak will be smaller, the damage may well be as bad because more of the oil will end up on shore.

So the lesson we should draw from Deepwater Horizon should not be, "we can do this right if we just try harder." Nor should it be, "Oil is fine as long as it doesn't come from US coastal waters." The sobering reality is that the major international oil companies -- BP, Exxon, Total, Shell, Chevron -- no longer have access to oil which can be produced with a modest environmental risk. There's much of that oil left in the US and Canada -- tar sands are worse than OCS. And while there is still a large volume of conventional, on-shore oil in other countries, they produce it themselves -- they don't need Exxon, or BP. So the remaining oil in the world is either too dangerous to produce environmentally, or in countries which are unstable, or whose interests conflict sharply with ours .

There is only one solution to this problem -- move away from oil as fast as we can. And fortunately, in 2010 we have clear technologies that can get us there is twenty year. Oil Independence is now a real and practical policy choice for this country.

We ought to embrace it.