Did anyone who truly loves his country not feel a sick, sinking feeling when bulletins came across last week about yet another offshore energy well burning in the Gulf of Mexico? We pray not.

While some liberals in Congress have already threatened to turn this episode into another indictment of the offshore oil industry, we believe this would prove a further waste of time on Capitol Hill. Nor do we believe anyone in the White House should use this as an excuse to extend the ongoing moratorium on deep-water drilling, especially since this incident didn’t take place in several thousand feet of water. Rather, this production platform stood in only 340 feet of water.

They all survived

To quote a spokesman for the owner, Mariner Energy, the offshore rig platform fire was the sort that occurs occasionally in the Gulf with little or no attention: “There was no blowout, no explosion, no injuries, no spill.”

Indeed, the 13 platform workers leaped into the water when the blaze erupted and threatened to consume the rig. All survived — a happy outcome compared to the 11 deaths of the Deepwater Horizon rig in April that fouled the Gulf of Mexico and the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Plus, subsequent investigations indicate all safety shut-off valves were, indeed, closed by workers before they abandoned the Mariner platform and that no leakage is evident.

If politicians hope to use this as more evidence for a moratorium, banish the thought. Idle deep-water rigs in the Gulf mean both they and those who man them could be lured elsewhere and thus be unavailable when the moratorium is finally lifted. Production costs for the 31 idle floating rigs now in the Gulf: up to a half-million dollars a day per rig.

Our nation’s consumption of oil remains enormous. It will remain so for decades, no matter what strides are made in the near future in solar and wind power. We continue to believe the moratorium is a bad idea, especially when federal inspectors could be visiting offshore wells and clearing them, one by one, to continue oil exploration, rather than plugging up the production line for a world addicted to oil.

What happened over the summer in the Gulf made us think twice about offshore drilling. Regulations are an absolute must, but it might help greatly if far more scrutiny was regularly given federal agencies in charge of enforcing those regulations and inspecting those wells. Doing so would ensure that these agencies, too, are free of the conflicts of interest that made the Deepwater Horizon rig such a likely candidate for widespread disaster and death.