Hurricanes don’t cause oil spills!
[Quote:]
• Mike Huckabee: “When Katrina, a Cat-5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast, not one drop of oil was spilled off of those rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico.”
• Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal: You know, that’s one of the great unwritten success stories, after Katrina and Rita, these awful storms, no major spills.
• John McCain: As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.
• George Will: “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill.”
• Wall Street Journal editorial: “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flattened terminals across the Gulf of Mexico but didn’t cause a single oil spill.”
• Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne: “When Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast where we have about 4,000 oil and gas platforms, 3,000 were in the direct line of the storms - the most significant storms we’ve seen ever - and 3,000 of those had to be shut down. We had no significant oil spill. The system worked.”
• Fox News’ Dick Morris: “And by the way, the safety concerns, Hurricane Katrina didn’t cause any leakage or any spill in the Gulf of Mexico oil wells.”
VERSUS
A report prepared for the federal government by an international consulting firm, state that damages related to Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from outer continental shelf structures with a total volume of approximately 11,104 barrels of oil and petroleum products. http://mediamatters.org/items/200806270005?f=h_top
Satellite image with detail insets showing oil slicks in Gulf of Mexico following passage of Hurricane Katrina. Image taken on September 2, 2005. http://skytruth.mediatools.org/node/19981
