Myrtle Beach Sun News
December 22, 2017

Where I grew up we had a saying. “If you don’t like the weather, wait three days and it will change.” Our state senator seems to mirror that saying every time he advocates for testing/drilling for oil and gas off of our coast.

In one of his most recent opinion pieces (Sun News, December 17), he soft peddles the oil piece to concentrate on natural gas reserves that might be out there; and says we should do what we can to find it and extract it.

Unfortunately, in his zeal to write off those of us who oppose offshore testing/drilling as “environmental zealots who overlook real environmental issues in exchange for the almighty dollar,” the senator fails to reveal several important facts that make his op-ed piece yet another of his ever-changing arguments.

The “high-paying jobs” he says will benefit local citizens will not. If there are oil jobs, they will go to wildcatters who are skilled in the work and who travel back and forth where the oil rigs are to do the work. There will be no revenue sharing of oil revenues to pay for those roads, schools and public safety jobs he expects from oil drilling. The information about amounts of gas/oil out there will remain the sole property of those who fund the testing and not be made available to us. Finally, the senator forgot to reveal in his op-ed that if there are sufficient reserves to warrant production that might be there, by law, has to be extracted first before any natural gas can be extracted.

So, it is fine for the senator to champion natural gas production in lieu of the more controversial oil but you can’t get one (gas) without first extracting any oil that may be there; and oil and gas are usually found together.

In closing, I’d like to encourage all the town, city, county, state and federal officials who have gone on record opposing the testing/drilling for gas and oil off of our coast to publicly denounce the senator’s claims that they were somehow “duped” into making their opposition known; and that their opposition to such activity was not in the best interest of the State of South Carolina and its citizens.

Jim Mallow
Pawleys Island

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article191297414.html#storylink=cpy