There are 2 thoughts on offshore drilling. Old leases and new leases. Obama isnt for new leases, he wants companies to use what they have already. McCain wants to give companies cart blanche to drill where ever they want to, offshore.
I live in the center of a HUGE circle of gas wells. We had one due east of use drill last Jan, they put a flare stack up last month, didnt have enough chemicals to douse it and we had to lsiten to what sounded like an F-18 with afterburners on, for days. 24/7 , five seconds of blast, 5 seconds off. Now, that well is considered a 'sour well', it produces a lovely odor, a mix of rotten eggs and dog poop. Its bareable if there is a breeze, if there isnt, it will knock your socks off. None of us can sleep with windows open because of it, and we are in the country.
There is a well that just finished due west of us, both of these wells are close enough that I could hit their flag with a .22. Anyhow, west well is on a 1000 acre lease with a NICE creek full of petrified wood, I am probably the only soul that ventures out into it. So, what did they do with the waste water ( they dig a 50'x100' or so pit that they store water in that may have some silt but nothing toxic, or so they say) ? They are supposed to either haul it off or spray it into a pasture then disk it in so it wont wash into creeks/ponds. They didnt. They sprayed it out over the pasture, over trees ( a no-no) and out into the creek. This creek runs into a bass tourny lake. Creeks water is gooey, smelly and black. No life. No frogs, birds, snakes , nothing. Why did they do that? Because they probably would have gotten away with it, if i didnt go there. So I siced the EPA on them. Also besides the 4 weeks of noisy drilling. There are weeks of fracking the wells, where they pump pressurized sand into them, to fracture the seams so the gas is easier to drill. Fracking is a lot louder than the drilling.
Granted, out in public places these wells are treated differently. But where I am, if its out in the woods, those wells looks completely different than those public ones.
