WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2018 – A damaged Taylor Energy oil site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast has been leaking as much as 29,400 gallons of toxic crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico every single day since 2004, according to a shocking new Washington Post report. Amid this revelation, the Trump administration is expected, as soon as this week, to green light hazardous seismic blasting for oil exploration as a first step to opening the Atlantic coast and other waters to the dangers of offshore drilling.
The following is a statement by Alexandra Adams, Legislative Director for the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council:
This is a searing indictment of the pretense that the U.S. has effective federal oversight of these inherently dangerous industrial operations at sea.
There can be no excuse for the government, over three administrations, not keeping the public fully informed about the Taylor disaster. Even now, 14 years after oil began gushing into the Gulf, the government has provided no estimate of the mounting damage this ongoing disaster is inflicting, on Gulf ocean habitat, marine life, coastal communities and all they support. Nor has Taylor Energy been held fully responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
We call on the Trump administration to halt, immediately and unconditionally, its reckless plan to expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and to subject our Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic waters and coasts to the risk of this kind of industrial ruin. The public deserves a full accounting for this disaster and swift and effective action to make sure nothing like this scandalous cover up can happen again. Any plan by the Trump administration to forge ahead and expose more of our oceans and coastlines to this kind of catastrophe would be irresponsible and wrong.