Governor McDonnell Repeats Support for Offshore Drilling
Governor McDonnell is reiterating his support for offshore drilling after signals that the White House may be having second thoughts. Craig Carper reports.
In the wake of last week’s major oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs signaled yesterday that the disaster could impact what areas the government would open for future drilling.
Earlier this month the Obama Administration approved expanding offshore drilling for select areas along the east coast, including Virginia.
Governor McDonnell, who has been an outspoken advocate for bringing offshore drilling to the Commonwealth, said he believes there is plenty of time to implement technological and regulatory improvements before Virginia is scheduled to open for drilling in two years.
McDonnell: Everybody understands energy exploration is an inherently dangerous business, whether it’s gas or oil wells, coal mines, nuclear plants. What you don’t want to do is every time you have an incident in a coal mine or if an airplane were to go down, we certainly don’t say “well let’s stop flying.” What we do as Americans is find out what went wrong and how we can do things better.
McDonnell said he will continue to communicate his desire to go forward with the lease sale for drilling offshore with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and he remains hopeful that the auction will proceed as scheduled.
Craig Carper, WCVE News, Capitol Square.
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