Proponents of offshore oil and gas exploration affirm oil spills are unlikely to happen. According to a report from British Petroleum in 2009, if a spill were to occur, adverse effects to the environment would not be expected. One year later, in 2010, Deepwater Horizon happened, a large, deep water oil spill that gushed “4.9 million barrels of oil” into the ocean. The oil spread across “665 miles of coastline flowing into the ocean “[f]or 87 straight days.”
Louisiana’s oyster and blue crab harvest dropped more than 30% and more than 20% of the fisheries closed their doors in the wake of the accident.The fishing industries economic impact tolled at $2.5 billion dollars. South Carolina currently has a struggling fishing industry, any type of spill would threaten the industry as a whole and threaten the already vulnerable jobs. The coastal job market in South Carolina is unstable and a fishing industry loss would certainly cause the unemployment to climb.
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