Effects of oil spill reach North Carolina

Jack Cox gets most of his oysters from the Gulf of Mexico, selling them to restaurants across the country when North Carolina oysters aren’t in season.

Since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded April 20, his fishermen have been out of work as 210,000 gallons of oil spilled out of the ocean floor every day.

“It’s definitely affected our business tremendously, because we buy a lot of oysters out of the gulf,” said Cox, owner of Crystal Coast Fisheries, a wholesale fishing company based in Morehead City, N.C.

“We get (oysters) out of the gulf this time of year, so our oyster prices just skyrocket,” he said.

But his usual providers haven’t been allowed to harvest many oysters since the oil rig exploded, threatening to wash oil onto the shores of gulf states and infiltrate delicate ecosystems serving as the homes of profitable shellfish.

Even so, many gulf fishermen Cox knows are still in favor of offshore drilling, and so is Cox.

“Oil rigs are a great habitat for fish, a tremendous amount of seafood comes off those oil rigs,” Cox said, adding that he would support off-shore drilling in N.C. waters.

“They still want oil rigs, they just want them to be regulated so things like this don’t happen again and have the mess kept up,” he said of his fishing colleagues in the gulf.

The Obama administration had just lifted a ban on offshore drilling when the BP oil rig exploded.

Companies would’ve been able to apply for permits as soon as 2012 to drill off of the North Carolina coast.

But the moratorium is back on until at least May 28 as Congress investigates oil rig regulations.

Congress is working to better regulate the Mineral Management Service agency, which would lease North Carolina waters to oil companies.

The agency failed to inspect the Deepwater Horizon rig monthly, according to its own policy, and allowed BP to get by without reviewing its Deepwater Horizon disaster plan, according to Associated Press investigations.

In a survey released last week by Public Policy Polling, support of offshore drilling among North Carolina voters dropped markedly since the April 20 explosion.

“The support for oil drilling seems to have dropped more in North Carolina than we have found nationally,” said Dustin Ingalls, assistant to the director of Public Policy Polling.

Support dropped from 61 percent in April to 47 percent in May, with 50 percent of voters less likely to support drilling after the gulf oil spill.

“It’s too much of a gamble for our treasured coasts,” said Drew Ball, director of government relations with the N.C. Sierra Club.

“Virginia was poised to move, (to drill) and thankfully this moratorium has stopped that for the time being,” Ball said. “That is a serious threat to the N.C. coast­­ — so that’s a fight we’re going to have to wage.

“We’re not going to find the answer to our energy needs at the bottom of an oil well,” Ball said.

“North Carolina is poised to be a leader on wind energy off the coast … which is a much more long-term and sustainable investment for our state.”

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.