The oil-rig disaster off Louisiana has slowed prospects of offshore drilling in Florida but a key Senate advocate Wednesday refused to declare the proposal dead.
Senate President-designate Mike Haridopolos, who with incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, helped spearhead the drive toward opening Florida waters to drilling in the Legislature, said the Gulf of Mexico explosion and subsequent oil spill has stunned many proponents.
Following the session’s scheduled close this week, Haridopolos said he and Cannon want to tour the site of the rig which caught fire and collapsed last week about 50 miles off Louisiana.
The two lawmakers have supported allowing drilling as close as three miles to Florida’s gulf coast. “We’re going to take the entire summer and fall to see, first and foremost, what happened in the Gulf,” said Haridopolos who added, “It gives me great pause. But a tragedy does not stop all progress.”
Haridopolos acknowledged the difficulty officials face in capping the leak and cleaning the spill surprised him.
Through months of hearings in the Legislature, industry officials emphasized to lawmakers that technology had vastly improved drilling safety, diminishing the risk of a major spill such as that now fouling Gulf waters.
“We thought the technology would prevent something like this from happening again,” Haridopolos acknowledged. “You’re going to have to do a lot of convincing of me,” Haridopolos said. “The capping has not happened, and I’m very concerned about that…Was it human error, was it sabotage, was it just the inherent risk of the operation? I don’t know at this point.” He added, “We’ve not had an incident like this in American waters since 1969 in Santa Barbara. This is very rare….so let’s find out what happened.”
Source: News Service of Florida
