Map out protections before drilling

Powerful forces in Washington are conspiring to turn Virginia into the nation’s test lab for offshore drilling.

Despite repeated cautions from the governor’s mansion, from leaders in Virginia Beach and from the Navy, energy interests and lawmakers in the nation’s capital are trying again to bring oil and gas drilling to a community that is — at best — ambivalent about it.

That well-financed lobbies can move Washington mountains is no surprise, especially with a goose from troubling economic times, but it doesn’t change one important fact: If offshore drilling were allowed in Virginia, the commonwealth and its taxpayers will be cheated in favor of every other state on the East Coast.

The reason is simple and mundane: In allocating shares of the Outer Continental Shelf to each state, the Minerals Management Service used a map that gives a teeny triangle of open ocean to Virginia.

The MMS came up with the map by using a formula that’s not designed to draw borders in open ocean. Bureaucrats have since steadfastly refused to change it. U.S. Rep. Thelma Drake has worked to get it altered, but there’s so far been little movement.

So, while she and others — including former Gov. Jim Gilmore, President Bush and Sen. John McCain — argue that America should begin drilling, and preferably in waters off a state like ours, the fact remains that until changes are made in a major federal bureaucracy, Virginians would get rolled. Cheated. Flim-flammed. Bilked.

Which makes the current rhubarb about drilling doubly galling.

After all, drilling for oil or gas off the coast of America won’t produce a drop of energy for years, maybe a decade. And about those millions in royalties Virginia has been promised for its beleaguered roads?

Despite years of looking for it — and even some exploration before the decades-old moratorium went into effect — little oil has ever been found off Virginia. Some natural gas is apparently out there, but that won’t do much to ease the cost of commuting.

The reason for targeting Virginia, truth be told, has nothing to do with gas prices. The point is to get a well — any well, no matter how useless — erected off any East Coast state. To put an end to a bipartisan moratorium on drilling that has lasted since 1981. Oil and energy interests want Virginia’s ocean simply to get a shot at other more lucrative coasts up and down the Atlantic.

Which is why Washington lawmakers and lobbyists keep pretending that Virginia can’t wait to drill. Except that just isn’t true — what Virginia has endorsed, under two different administrations, is exploration for energy, but not exploitation.

Virginia might’ve expected such from a senator like George Allen, who already had his sights set on the White House. But we can reasonably expect better from the current crop of legislators, including most of the Republican congressional delegation.

They should be standing with Virginians to oppose this presumption. After all, they know that nobody can say if there is oil off the coast of Virginia, or how much Virginia might benefit. They know that Virginia hasn’t invited drilling. They know that without big changes, drilling in Virginia means Virginians get cheated.

Their job is to represent the interests of Virginians. To ensure we get the best deal possible. There might be worse deals than the one now proposed to bring drilling to the commonwealth. But, at the moment, it would be hard to find one.