l  A steady stream of pollution from offshore rigs causes a wide range of health and reproductive problems for fish and other marine life.
l  Offshore drilling exposes wildlife to the threat of oil spills that would devastate their populations.
l  Offshore drilling activities destroy kelp beds, reefs and coastal wetlands.
Over its lifetime, a single oil rig can:
l  Dump more than 90,000 metric tons of drilling fluid and metal cuttings into the ocean;
l  Drill between 50-100 wells, each dumping 25,000 pounds of toxic metals, such as lead, chromium and mercury, and potent carcinogens like toluene, benzene, and xylene into the ocean, and
l  Pollute the air as much as 7,000 cars driving 50 miles a day.

History of accidents and violations

l  In May 1992, Chevron USA pleaded guilty to 65 violations of the Clean Water Act and paid $8 million in fines for illegal discharges from the company's production platform of the California coast.
l  In March 1997, Chevron was fined 1.2 million for operating a well off the coast of Ventura with a broken ant-blowout valve, a key environmental protection on an offshore oil well.
l  In 1998, a rupture in Torch Oil's pipeline spilled 21,000 gallons of oil, damaging a rich ocean fishing ground and killing wildlife in the delicate coastal ecosystem at the mouth of the Santa Ynez River.
l  State and local authorities repeatedly cited the Venoco Corporation for releases of deadly hydrogen sulfide gas at its Goleta platform in 1998-99.

l  An ARCO pipeline ruptured in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, spilling 193,000 gallons of oil into the Santa Clara River.

Global oil extraction history

l  Since 1859, 800 billion barrels of oil have been burned worldwide.
l  The oil industry spends approximately $150 billion annually to search for new drilling sites.
l  There is an ecological limit to the use of oil: scientists warn of serious global warming as we continue to burn more and more oil.
l  Since 1988, the oil industry has drilled more than 100,000 exploratory wells, threatening frontier forests in 22 countries, coral reefs in 38 countries, mangrove swamps in 46 countries, indigenous people on six continents, and global climate stability worldwide.

   A South Korean environmentalist held a mallard covered in oil after a tanker was punctured early Friday. The oil is washing ashore and blackening an 11-mile stretch of scenic coastline. The 2.7 million-gallon oil spill is Korea's worst. (Korean Federation for Environmental Movement via Associated Press)
Mendocino Environmental Center:

Web resources for activism:  
California Public Interest Research Group: www.calpirg.org/CA.asp?id2=3881&id3=CA&;  
Natural Resources Defense Council: www.nrdc.org/land/wilderness/arctic.asp;
Rainforest Action Network: http://www.ran.org/oilreport/ www.mecgrassroots.org;  
Surfrider Foundation: www.surfrider.org; 
Global Response: www.globalresponse.org/gra_index/gra0201.html