76-11-14
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Argo Merchant
TranscriptLast December a Liberian tanker the "Argo Merchant" ran aground on the Nantucket shoals. Pounded by the heavy seas, it began to come apart like a wet cigar, spilling it's cargo of Number Six fuel oil into the Atlantic. The dread cry went up, "oil spill" and every ecological Chicken Little in the land took off to warn that the sky was falling. The director of the Environmental Protection Agency called it the "biggest oil spill disaster on an American coast in our history". The Senate held hearings and the networks gave it more coverage than they did the elections -- well, almost. One network, having supposedly consulted with experts, announced that the oil would sink to the bottom, spreading across the ocean floor like a carpet of black ooze smothering lobsters, crabs, scallops and flounder. Fishermen filed a 60 million dollar suit, charging that the spill had permanently robbed them of their livelihood. All in all, it was about as widely covered a disaster as never happened. The oil never reached the Georges Banks fishing grounds, and the lobsters, crabs, scallops and flounders are still doing whatever it is that lobsters, crabs, scallops and flounders do. The Coast Guard was a voice of sanity through the whole mess, but no one listened. Everyone was too busy waiting for the sky to fall -- or looking for scapegoats. The Coast Guard pointed out that Number Six fuel oil is lighter than water so it could not possibly become a black carpet of ooze on the bottom. If it reached the bottom at all, it would be as scattered tar balls, with hard outer shells, non-toxic and as harmless as so many rocks thrown into the sea. The oil did exactly what the Coast Guard said it would do -- floated around on the surface until it was broken up by the waves and blown out to sea. Before that happened, a few birds were recovered and cleaned of oil and two washed ashore dead. One of them was immediately immortalized on the front page of the New York TIMES. The only real tragedy is that none of the Chicken Littles ever bothered to admit that the sky didn't fall. There has been no explanation that the carpet of ooze never came to be, and many Americans who listened and read still assume that it did. Opponents of offshore drilling -- including members of Congress -- keep up the disaster talk to convince us there should be no offshore drilling for oil. There is no connection, of course, between an off-course tanker going on the rocks and a well drilled in the ocean floor, but if they can they'll keep the people from knowing that. That fact is Georges Bank is not only a rich fishing ground, it is also a potential oil field capable of meeting the fuel needs of an energy-hungry New England. And we don't have to choose between sea life and oil. We've learned in the Gulf of Mexico that fishing can actually be improved, with the hundreds of drilling rigs affording shelter to all manner of aquatic life. Riding into battle armed with the disaster of the "Argo Merchant" (which turned out to be a disaster only for the ship itself), opponents of offshore drilling have raised the spectacle of hundreds of "Argo Merchants" bringing oil into harbors from the offshore wells, with a good share of them cracking up like the "Argo Merchant", spilling oil from Maine to Manhattan. But what is the difference between tankers bringing the oil ashore from nearby wells or tankers bringing it thousands of miles from Araby. The number of ships will be the same and so will the number of barrels of oil they carry and they'll enter the same harbors. The "Argo Merchant" disaster didn't happen. The coldest Eastern winter in 100 years did. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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