After BP oil spill, is it time to abandon offshore drilling?

But refusing to drill here doesn’t mean that offshore drilling doesn’t happen. It just happens elsewhere, where oversight is perhaps even more lax and from which crude must be transported in vulnerable oil tankers. Nigeria, for one, has seen a major oil spill every year since 1969, according to the New America Foundation’s Lisa Margonelli. The net effect of closing down American offshore drilling, observes The Economist’s Lexington columnist, is probably even more pollution. It’s arrogant of Americans to continue to consume vast amounts of oil while refusing to take on any of the inevitable environmental risk, instead exporting that risk to countries ruled by regimes that care rather less about the environment.

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