America's Energy Held Hostage

Enter now a properly scientific study by Dr Bob Shipp, professor at the Marine Sciences department of the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama, and currently, the vice-chair of the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council. “The Red snapper catch changed radically in the 1950s, (when the first offshore oil platforms went up off Louisiana). More recently, the red snapper catch from the northwestern Gulf (Louisiana, with it's oil platforms) is currently estimated 6 to 7 times greater than the catch from the eastern Gulf (Florida, without oil platforms.)"

It gets better: “oil platforms as artificial reefs....support fish densities 10 to 1000 times that of adjacent sand and mud bottom, and almost always exceed fish densities found at adjacent natural hard bottom. Evidence indicates that massive areas of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico were essentially empty of snapper stocks for the first hundred years of the fishery. Subsequently, areas in the western Gulf have become the major source of red snapper, concurrent with the appearance of thousands of petroleum platforms”... [snip]

A recent CNN poll showed more than 73 percent of Americans in favor of offshore drilling. But the House Speaker can keep the issue from even reaching a vote, and Pelosi seems bent on just that...

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