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Dr. James V. Koch, former president of ODU, has yet again backed away from his 2005 "report" on revenues resulting from Virginia's offshore drilling. "I surely wouldn't want to go to the cross over the quick once over that I gave to this important topic", he wrote in a recent email to me.
First, this really doesn't qualify as a report. Indeed, I don't even have a copy. I was given about 48 hours to produce a very quick estimate of the economic benefits (jobs, income, taxes) that might be generated by drilling off shore. Since I had no Virginia data, and no time to produce any, I looked at what had happened previously in Louisiana and a Canadian province as a guide. I did not have time to take environmental costs, etc., into account. I do not list this work on my C.V. because I did not invest the considerable time and attention that I give to the many economic impact studies that I do.
There's not much more to say. Those who pose my weekend of work as a full-blown study are making way too much of it. This was not the thorough study that needs to be done and I think should be done. By the same token, the numbers that I produced aren't fictional; they are based upon what has happened other places in roughly similar circumstances.
Nonetheless, that report is the exclusive basis for McDonnell's legislative agenda whereby offshore drilling revenues fund our transportation fixes.
Meanwhile the State of Florida has the novel idea of commissioning a state sponsored report as part of a state Senate review of whether a ban on offshore drilling should be lifted.
As reported in the Miami Herald, the report concludes that "[e]stimated reserves in Florida waters would provide the United States with less than a week's worth of oil and have no discernible effect on prices at the pump or U.S. reliance on foreign oil."
The report is the latest indication that the push to open Florida waters as near as three miles from the state's beaches may be waning, at least for this year.
Another is that all 12 lobbyists for Florida Energy Associates, a group of independent petroleum explorers known as "wildcatters," that's been pushing for lifting the ban have withdrawn, according to the Legislature's lobbyist registry.
According to DOI, Virginia too has less than a week's worth of oil off its shores - 6.5 days to be exact. But that's not the truth that Bob McDonnell and his merry band of Flat Earth Society members want to run with. They'll continue to run with a "report" that the author himself doesn't want to claim.
And who are we kidding?!? Could you ever imagine Virginia's legislature actually ordering a report to support their policy decisions?!?
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