America, and much of the rest of the world, runs on oil. Our cars need oil and the gasoline that is refined from it. Oil is a major means of heating. There are many industrial and manufacturing uses of oil.
Fortunately, we produce a lot of oil in the United States, but not enough.
Unfortunately, we are dependent upon unreliable and sometimes price-gouging foreign sources for a great deal of our oil needs.
So it is a matter of general interest when there are proposals to do more drilling for oil in seas off our shores, as is currently under discussion concerning Florida.
Some fear oil spills. But there now are hundreds of oil wells off our Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Pacific shores without any serious danger from oil spills that would harm our beaches, etc. It obviously is important that no big oil spill occur.
During World War II, for example, we got a bad example of oil on our beaches when many oil tank ships were torpedoed near the United States by Nazi German submarines. As a result, lots of highly undesirable oil washed onto U.S. beaches. That oil was not the consistency of what you put in your car engine or what you use to lubricate screechy hinges. Unrefined oil is thick, gooey stuff, much like tar. Yes, it would be very bad to have such oil wash up on our shores. But the danger of oil spills from offshore oil drilling is very small.
We need all of the oil that we can get domestically and economically, so we will be less dependent upon foreign sources.
We would like to see more American oil production, from current land-based oil fields and from waters off our American shores — obviously with all of the reasonable precautions that are available.