The Midwest Lakes Policy Center in Madison, Wisconsin is reporting that Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI) made comments in support of the drilling for oil under the Great Lakes.
The Michigan Democratic Party issued a press release that included audio of the comments, available here. On the recordings, Walberg is heard to make the following comments.
“I don’t know how many of you realize that here in this state in the United States, we do not allow even the slant directional drilling under the Great Lakes.”
“Our environmental lobby has done so well in lobbying efforts from keeping us from doing that, that we don’t drill in ANWR, we don’t drill under the Great Lakes.”
“Unless we are willing to use what we have and provide competition to the world market because we can say to OPEC then ‘to hell with them’ we got our own Alaskan oil, we have our own Great Lakes oil and we got our own intercontinental shelf oil.”
Walberg Watch, a Michigan site which has chosen a fruitful subject to blog about, provides the details and history of this bad idea. Including this fascinating excerpt from the PIRGIM study.
The Canadian experience of drilling for natural gas and oil on the Canadian side of Lake Erie serves as a cautionary example for Michigan. Spills associated with the petroleum industry are both widespread and highly significant environmental threats to the Canadian Great Lakes. Fifty-one natural gas spills directly associated with gas drilling in Canada’s portion of Lake Erie were documented between 1997 and 2001 - an average of almost one spill a month. The volume of natural gas released and the full duration of the leaks were not reported to or by the Canadian government.
The Canadian side of Lake Erie was also impacted by 83 petroleum spills from all sectors between 1990 and 1995 (the last year for which data was made available for this report). The volume spilled was not known for at least one-third of the spills. In addition, only 45% of the contaminants were cleaned up, on average.
I wonder how some of the Congressmen who represent districts on the Great Lakes feel about the idea proposed by the landlocked man from Michigan’s 7th?