Compare & Contrast
5/4/2014
Should the Government Expand Off Shore Drilling in the U.S.?
The crude oil industry has become prominent since mid 19th century. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the development of drilling methods has brought oil into a drastically larger extent of mass production. Petroleum is one of the important extracted compositions of crude oil in the U.S. Until today, it is globally used mainly as fuels in transportation. Other uses include heating homes, powering industry, and providing raw material for plastic manufacturing. The great importance of oil to the country has led to the exploitation of its resources in the past century. Not only exploiting land resources, the government is also beginning to exploit resources under the sea. Off shore drilling is the method of extracting crude oil from the seabed. It has been a controversial issue in the U.S. of whether or not off shore drilling should be expanded. In this essay, I am comparing and contrasting the reasons why some people are supportive of off shore drilling in the U.S., and why some people are in opposition to it. I will discuss three major aspects upon this issue; the three aspects are national security, economy and environment.
The first reason why some people support off shore drilling is that they believe that off shore drilling will not harm the environment due to the vast improvement of technology. The biggest environmental issue that is often associated with off shore drilling is oil spills. People believe that as time is progressing, rapid advancement in technology will make it possible to conduct off shore drilling at the safest way in order not to harm the environment. Based on statistics by http://www.itopf.com, oil spill cases have declined over the past few decades, which prove that technology has become better.
In line with the advancement of technology, a complete recovery of past oil spills have been proven to be attainable. An