BEAUFORT, S.C. — A report released Wednesday by an advocacy group concludes more energy and more jobs can be generated in the Carolinas by harnessing offshore wind than by drilling for fossil fuels in the ocean.
The report by Oceana, which opposes offshore drilling, said the Carolinas have the largest offshore wind resources on the East Coast. Wind energy along the entire Atlantic coast can produce twice the jobs and twice the energy of drilling for oil, it said.
The report concluded that developing wind energy will create 82,000 jobs in the Carolinas while oil drilling would create only about 36,000.
At a news conference where the report was released in South Carolina, Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling said oil spills could threaten the state’s $18 billion tourism industry largely based on attracting tourists to the state’s beaches.
“Why would we put at risk the livelihoods, the jobs and the quality of life that we all enjoy particularly when there are alternatives out there? My common sense tells me and my knowledge tells me South Carolina is the largest manufacturer of wind turbines, yet there is not one out there yet,” the mayor said.
Hamilton Davis of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League added that it’s not just spills, but an oil industry could mean coastal refineries as in Louisiana and Texas.
The federal Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management is reviewing where to issue oil and gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf between 2017 and 2022. Three years ago the agency held public hearings in both Carolinas and the majority of those who spoke said they favored finding out how much gas and oil there is off the coast.
Surveys decades ago concluded there were only minimal amounts of oil offshore.
“They are based on decades-old technology and things have changed in terms of the way we collect the data and the way we process the data,” said Andy Radford, a senior policy adviser for offshore issues for the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, who said he had not seen the Oceana report.
He told the AP that, based on what has been found in similar geological formations in other parts of the world, government estimates of oil and gas in the Atlantic were revised upward by last year by 43 percent.
“There is no way to know what is really down there until you drill the wells,” he said.
A number of coastal communities, including several in the Carolinas, have gone on record opposing offshore drilling. But North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory chairs a coalition of governors from Gulf and Atlantic coast states who favor such drilling.
The Obama administration last July opened the Eastern Seaboard to offshore energy exploration and announced that sonic cannon that generate sound waves many times louder than jet engines can be used to locate energy deposits beneath the ocean floor.
Oceana is worried about that.
“Based on the government’s own estimates, seismic blasting in the Atlantic could harm fish populations while injuring as many as 138,000 marine mammals like whales and dolphins,” report author Andrew Menaquale of Oceana said in a release.
But Radford said seismic testing is also used by the wind industry and government agencies.
“It’s been proven to be safe,” he said. “Over decades we haven’t seen the evidence that what we are doing is causing an impact to marine mammals or other fish populations.”
