Gulf's lesson for Virginia

When President Barack Obama proposed moving forward with oil and gas drilling off the coasts of Virginia and other Atlantic states in March, his plan was contingent on further environmental and military review.

A kind of environmental review is well under way - in the form of a catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that could wind its way around the Florida Keys and eventually drift our way.

The military review arrived this week in a less dramatic but equally damning fashion.

Not surprisingly, the Pentagon determined that oil and natural gas exploration on a 4,500-square-mile tract off Virginia's coast - targeted for leasing in 2012 - would interfere with the Navy's operations. Roughly three-fourths of the area would have to be declared off-limits for the Navy to continue training, testing and other activities, much of it emanating from Norfolk Naval Station.

The remaining one-fourth poses a huge economic obstacle. The area is heavily used by commercial ships traveling to and from ports in Hampton Roads and elsewhere.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, an enthusiastic supporter of offshore drilling, hopes a way can still be found for the military and drilling rigs to coexist. Indeed, there are places where they do. But a Pentagon official told the Associated Press that "we have every expectation that if we said we need an area... that they would fully honor that."

In the meantime, drilling advocates are urging Virginians not to overreact to the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf. Yes, they contend, the massive spill is an awful thing, but it's really quite rare, and more must be known before we veer from long-debated plans to expand exploration and drilling in the Atlantic.

If it's calm we need, here's an image to meditate on: A surface oil slick more than 140 miles long and more than 80 miles wide - and growing - and, in the water beneath it, another plume of oil at least 10 miles long, three miles wide and 300 feet thick. And growing.

That's what the Gulf looks like at the moment. If the oil gets pulled into a loop current and curls around the Florida Keys, we may get a closer look as the spill starts a shimmery tour up the Atlantic Coast.

It's not so relaxing an image, after all - unless your senses are dulled by delusions that offshore drilling can solve everything from U.S. reliance on foreign oil to the General Assembly's decades-long failure to fund transportation needs.

The appropriate - and calm - reaction to the environmental and economic nightmare in the Gulf is this: Stop. Expansion. Now.

As uncommon as such a spill may be, the evidence is overwhelming that the U.S. government and the oil industry were disturbingly unprepared to deal with such a catastrophe. There also were multiple breakdowns at multiple stages of the approval process for the well, and there have been recent reports that Deepwater Horizon is not the only rig without basic safeguards.

In other words, this could happen again. Perhaps soon.

Rather than drilling, it's far wiser to redirect our nation's long-term energy plan to scenarios that don't involve massive loss of marine life, seafood industry jobs and tourism dollars. Or, in light of the Pentagon report, major disruptions to - or potential displacement of - Navy operations.

Think this is overreaction?

Remember, it's been a month since the deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. More than 200,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf every day. This week, BP engineers managed to sink the equivalent of a giant straw into the opening to siphon oil into a tanker. Even that hasn't stopped the spill. Or capped the well.

And it certainly hasn't begun to rebuild confidence that the government or the industry has a clue how to prevent a repeat performance off Virginia's coast.