Political Quotes

“I rise to introduce a bill, the West Coast Ocean Protection Act, which would amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to prohibit the Department of the Interior from issuing a lease for offshore oil or gas in federal waters off the coast of California, Oregon, or Washington. I am pleased to be joined today by Senators Wyden, Merkley, Cantwell, Murray, and Harris in sponsoring this bill, which has been reintroduced in every Congress since 2010. The original impetus for this bill was the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico in April of 2010, which demonstrated yet again the risks of offshore oil and gas extraction. When the Deepwater Horizon well blew out, 11 people died and 17 others were injured. Oil and gas rushed into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days. Oil slicks spread across the Gulf of Mexico, tar balls spoiled the pristine white sand beaches of Florida, wetlands were coated with toxic sludge, and more than one-third of federal waters in the Gulf were closed to fishing. While Deepwater Horizon served as an important reminder, the dangers of offshore oil and gas were already too well known to Californians. In 1969, the Santa Barbara oil spill leaked up to 100,000 barrels of oil, and remains the third largest oil spill in the country to this day. Like the Deepwater Horizon, the Santa Barbara oil spill was caused by a natural gas blowout when pressure in the drill hole fluctuated.…”