Oil and Natural Gas Drilling
Oil and natural gas drilling is allowed within the park due to the inability of Congress to approve the purchase of the mineral rights within the park's boundaries after surveying the land in 1957. This has caused some controversy because the land is a protected seascape under IUCAN and the necessity to use heavy equipment within the park as well as its transportation across beaches that are nesting areas for not only sea turtles but many birds, including the piping plover, least tern, and other animals that may nest within the park.
Read more about this topic: Padre Island National Seashore
Famous quotes containing the words oil and, oil, natural, gas and/or drilling:
“The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Eat what you can get.
Where’s the salt
in this dump of a village?
And, Lucky Man,
what’s the use
of a salty thing
if there’s no oil in it?”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man’s soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Don’t spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)