Basic common sense says that if you want to increase oil production, you at least need to pay for more rig inspectors to handle the extra work.

But the new annual government spending bill introduced this week in the House of Representatives is an assault on common sense: not only does it under-fund BOEMRE (the oil watchdog agency) but it also includes a provision to speed up drilling offshore Alaska and re-write the Clean Air Act in favor of major polluters. Meanwhile, in the Senate, lawmakers are trying to put oil rigs off the coast of Virginia and in the Arctic Ocean.

Arctic drilling places endangered species -- like this Polar Bear -- in harm's way (photo: Amy Messere)

Would Congress be so eager to drill if they paid attention to the news?

Some recent headlines:

• “Oil and gas spills in North Sea every week, papers reveal” – July 5, The Guardian (UK)
• “After Gulf, now China spill spells doom” – July 21, The Times of India
• “Coast Guard checks reported oil spill off Louisiana” – June 8, Reuters
• “Oil slicks in Gulf of Mexico” – June 30, SkyTruth

Since the Gulf disaster we have learned that spills are the rule, not the exception, when it comes to offshore drilling. Many of them go unreported; the Guardian article cited above calls its findings just “the tip of the iceberg.”

Other accidents are kept quiet, [whistleblowers] claim, because workers fear they cannot report them in case they lose their jobs. One veteran said that although everyone is formally told to report anything that goes wrong, staff adhere to an informal code to remain silent to avoid a halt in drilling that loses money for the companies.

So the deck is stacked against safety from the beginning, and BOEMRE (The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement…whew!) already has its hands full: a senior staffer told us that the House’s budget is $35 million less than BOEMRE needs for inspectors and permit planning for future leases.  For an agency that already runs on fumes and table scraps, that’s a huge chunk of money.

In what world does this make sense? It’s another kick to the teeth of environmental and public health programs, which are being dismantled before our eyes by this Congress.  Make sure to check out National Wildlife Federation’s breakdown of the spending bill and then TAKE ACTION by sending a message to your representatives in Washington.

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Stop the stealth attack on wildlife!  Please speak up for wildlife TODAY, urging your federal officials to protect our nation’s bedrock conservation laws: http://bit.ly/defendwildlife

Coming soon to a coastline near you? (photo: flickr/hunting.glee)

Now, it’s one thing to support offshore drilling, but the Hastings bills are something else entirely: they would actually weaken the rules that were in place a year ago, before the BP rig sank and spewed 2oo million gallons of crude oil into the ocean. And keep in mind that Congress still hasn’t passed a single bill addressing oil spills, worker safety or Gulf restoration.

The House of Representatives just approved the first of the three today, opening new areas including offshore Virginia to drilling.  The bill also forces regulators to rely on outdated, pre-BP spill Environmental Impact Statements, the government’s tool for deciding where it’s safe to drill and what steps we should take to prevent disasters.  They’ll be voting on a second bill next week that limits the regulators’ ability to review drilling permits; the third bill would open up virtually the entire US coast to oil development.

Essentially what this says is, “All the lessons we’ve learned since the spill?  Just ignore them.”

The bills’ supporters, to nobody’s surprise, are dusting off the gas prices bogeyman.  They figure that Americans care enough about $4 gas that we’re willing to overlook everything else, but the fact is that more offshore drilling won’t affect the price at the pump: according to the nonpartisan Energy Information Agency, opening up the entire US coast to development (which is what the House bills would do) wouldn’t lower costs at all by 2020, and would only lower prices by three cents a gallon by 2030! And we’re already producing oil and gas at the highest levels in nearly a decade.  It’s hard to get much plainer proof than that–the US can’t drill its way to cheap gas.

So what are these bills really about?  It’s hard to see them as anything except a giveaway to Big Oil companies (who, in case you didn’t notice, are doing just fine) and a political reaction to the White House’s post-spill drilling reforms.  And what’s really scary is that the offshore drilling agency is already short on resources and can’t possibly keep pace with the new paperwork and oversight responsibilities the bills would create…talk about kicking someone when they’re down.

Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, put it more bluntly:

“I don’t have amnesia, and neither does the president.  And much of the legislation that I have seen being bandied around, especially with the House Republicans, is almost as if the Deepwater Horizon Macondo well incident never happened.”

Today’s vote, though, showed that amnesia is a bipartisan problem: 33 Democrats joined 231 Republicans on the wrong side of this issue.

NWF sent a letter to Congress opposing the bills, and we’ll continue to fight these and other irresponsible policies that endanger wildlife, coastal communities, and the natural resources we all rely upon.  To read more about our work to restore the Gulf and prevent another disaster, visit nwf.org/oilspill.

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NWF letter – Hastings bills

Good luck finding one of these in the Gulf of Mexico (photo: US Fish & Wildlife)

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was a critic of the agency long before the Gulf debacle and didn’t waste this opportunity to pile on: “It’s better late than never,” Issa said at a press conference, “but it shouldn’t have taken the worst ecological disaster in history for GAO to place this program onto the high risk list.”

He’s right, of course: the agency looked the other way while BP and other companies spat on the rulebook.  National Wildlife Federation sent a letter thanking Congressman Issa for his comments and his push for greater oversight.  We also noted that reform cuts both ways and pointed out that BOEM has been under attack by oil companies and lawmakers who have accused the agency of slowing down drilling in the Gulf.

Rep. Darrell Issa (photo: Gage Skidmore)

The government issued its first new deepwater permit yesterday, saying the company, Noble Energy, proved it can contain a blowout if one occurs.  But don’t assume that things are under control—for all of their protests, Big Oil knows that drilling is an inherently dangerous business that has resulted in hundreds of deaths, explosions, spills and accidents over the last decade.

Rep. Issa isn’t an environmentalist (and he’d probably thank us for saying so) but we hope he takes on a constructive role in the reform process.  Because when it’s all said and done, this is about protecting things all Americans care about: the safety of our workers, healthy ecosystems, and the fish and wildlife that form the backbone of the Gulf economy. If we want to make sure BOEM doesn’t wind up on next year’s Risk List, we have to keep pushing for meaningful change—and even though the federal government has begun to step up its oversight, we still have a long way to go.

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You can read NWF’s letter to Rep. Issa here.  Learn more about our efforts to restore the Gulf at www.nwf.org/oilspill.

Last week BP decided to stop playing nice.  Ken Feinberg, who the oil giant chose to run its compensation fund for spill victims, recently released a report estimating fishermen’s losses.  The report predicted that Gulf wildlife would mostly be back to normal within a year or two, and it was widely criticized for ignoring the spill’s long-term effects (not to mention that it was based on some pretty shady research).  So BP crunched the numbers again and concluded that there would be even fewer long-term problems than Mr. Feinberg thought, meaning they shouldn’t have to pay as much to fix things.

Then, to add insult to injury, BP backed out of its promise to help Louisiana restore wetlands, oyster beds, and fish hatcheries.  In a report in yesterday’s New Orleans Times-Picayune, officials say that BP “has clearly changed their approach” to the restoration efforts.

Oiled wetlands in Louisiana's Bay Baptiste (photo: Rainforest Action Network)

Robert Barham, the state’s Wildlife & Fisheries Director, said, “All we’ve asked is for them to do what they said they would do in their commercials: be here for the long haul and make it right.”  But now the oil giant has decided to fight it out in court, forcing Louisiana to scramble to find money for these vital projects.

Call me a cynic but is anyone surprised at this turn of events?  BP said all the right things when the cameras were rolling and now we’re seeing their true colors.

Nobody would be happier than fishermen and wildlife lovers if BP turned out to be right—but the sad fact is that we have very little idea of what to expect in the Gulf, and the evidence we do  have points to a difficult recovery ahead for oysters, dolphins, fish and other wildlife.

Consider this—Dr. Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia has spent the last 8 months examining the sea bed around the blown-out well.  The samples and photographs her team collected painted a depressing picture: dead sea creatures, suffocated and poisoned by the oil that has accumulated on the ocean floor.

“I’ve been to the bottom.  I’ve seen what it looks like with my own eyes.  It’s not going to be fine by 2012,” Joye told The Associated Press. “You see what the bottom looks like, you have a different opinion.”

Dolphins playing off the coast of Gulf Shores, AL (photo: Christy Sheffield)

And another tragedy is being linked to the spill: dead infant and stillborn dolphins are washing up on shore at an alarming rate.

Adult dolphin deaths tripled during the spill, but this is the first calving season since then and our first look at the long-term impact on marine mammals.  Scientists in Mississippi and Alabama have seen a spike in mortality since and, according to Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, it’s “more than just a coincidence.”

We’ve known all along that it would be a struggle to recover from this catastrophe and now more than ever we need to keep the spotlight on what’s happening in the Gulf.  You can find out more about NWF’s efforts to protect wildlife habitat (including volunteer opportunities) at www.nwf.org/Oil-Spill.