Will the Oil Reach Washington? The Spill's Political Effects

As the oil continues to gush from the leaking well 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, it comes as little surprise that political support for expanding oil and natural gas drilling is waning.

Only a few weeks removed from President Obama's decision to open up vast expanses to offshore exploration along the East Coast, and the fervor to recover undersea fossil fuels is suddenly getting lost in the oily slick washing ashore in Louisiana.

As the images of oil-covered birds start flooding the Internet, the public discourse will likely shift against new drilling, at least momentarily. But will political conversation on the topic really change?

"I think it already has," said Jacqueline Savitz, a senior campaign director at Oceana, a Washington D.C.-based marine conservation group. "I think [the spill] is definitely changing the tenor of the discussion.

"There was a moratorium in place for over 25 years, and it disappeared in 2008 amid the 'drill baby drill' fervor around the election," Stativz told SolveClimate. "I think we can now look back on that and see it as a mistake, and I think more people are starting to do that," she added.

Whitehouse: Safety Before New Drilling

A week after BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration jumped on the issue, saying that no new oil drilling leases will be issued until better safety measures are in place.

While no new leases are due to be issued in the near future, the offshore drilling plans announced at the end of March would open up hundreds of millions of acres along the Atlantic Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Chuckchi and Beaufort Seas near Alaska to potential oil and gas exploration.

In his own remarks on Friday, the president offered little in the way of concrete promises. He said he still believes that "domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security," but said "it must be done responsibly for the safety of our workers and our environment."

For some advocates, however, putting a hold on the leases is not enough.

"We actually think [the Obama administration] should go a step further and reinstate the moratorium on offshore drilling," Savitz said.

"We've said all along that offshore drilling is a dirty and dangerous business, and we've talked about the potential for spills," she added. "It's the industry that's been saying that it's safe, and I think this really shows that the industry has been wrong about that, whether intentionally or not."

Mike Brune, executive director of environmental group Sierra Club, said the "disaster changes everything."

"It's time to take offshore drilling off the table for good," Brune said in a statement.

"This offshore facility was supposed to be state-of-the-art," Brune added. "We've been assured again and again that the hundreds of offshore drilling rigs along our beaches are completely safe. Now, we've seen workers tragically killed." 

Support wavering?

Elsewhere on the political landscape, at least one high-profile drilling supporter has backed off. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist had previously supported offshore drilling if it were deemed safe and far enough from shore. But after a long flight over the spreading oil slick he changed his course.

"It's clearly not clean enough after we saw what we saw today—that's horrific—and it certainly isn't safe enough," Crist told the Associated Press. "It's the opposite of safe."

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