Famed oilman T. Boone Pickens lately has been calling it the greatest wealth transfer ever the $700 billion or so the United States now will send overseas each year to buy expensive oil. Much of that money is enriching regimes that want to undermine the West and kill Americans.

More people are motivated to take serious action and make sacrifices to trim our appetite for foreign oil. And California which burns more gasoline than any other state and most other countries is in position to make an important contribution. California should reopen offshore drilling.

I know there is a barrel of opposition to it. But most arguments against offshore drilling are old and no longer valid.

For example, those who say drilling inevitably leads to devastating oil spills apparently have missed the revolution in safety improvements. Sure, there’s risk in oil exploration and production, but in recent years the amount of oil spilled in the oceans from human activity has dropped so far it is now far less than from natural seepage. Think about this: Hurricanes routinely twist up dozens of rigs in the western Gulf of Mexico, yet you don’t hear much about oil spills there, thanks to safety improvements.

Those who say that the amount of oil offshore wouldn’t help much apparently haven’t seen the numbers. The federal Minerals Management Service said the offshore oil that’s now off limit amounts to nearly 18 billion barrels. That would almost double the current U.S. reserves. By the way, of those 18 billion barrels, 10 billion are off the coast of California; close to 6 billion of that off of Southern California.

Also wrong are those who object because it would take 10 years or more to bring the oil to market. A report from a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst a couple of weeks ago said that a good deal of the California oil could be brought to market in a year one year! because the platforms and other infrastructure already are in place, particularly around Santa Barbara.

And those who don’t want offshore oil platforms because they’re ugly make a repugnant argument. So we all should suffer because some elites want a perfect view from their beachfront estates? Is that the spirit of sacrifice?

Actually, they may not have to look at so many platforms as they would have in the past. Thanks to today’s horizontal drilling, one oil production platform can do the work of several, and they can be sited further from shore. Beyond that, submersible platforms reportedly are being developed, which means in the future they may not be visible at all.

Sentiment seems to be shifting. According to a recent Field Poll, Californians still oppose offshore drilling (51 percent against versus 43 percent in favor), but that’s weaker opposition than any time since 1981. Florida, which has long opposed drilling off of its shores, is starting to relent.

President Bush recently lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling that has been in place since 1992, but a separate congressional ban would also need to be repealed. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is balking.

Pickens, who testified in Washington last week, emphasized that we must discover the next fuel. And if Americans are tasked with that urgent responsibility, we will. But that may take 20 years or longer. That means the immediate problem is getting there from here.

Sure, we need to conserve and develop alternatives. But we also need oil at least for a couple more decades, and we must stop buying so much from other countries. America has a fair amount of the stuff. We should get it, and Californians could demonstrate that they are willing to do their part.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at

[email protected]

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