McCain in his attempt to convince the American people that offshore drilling is a good and safe thing, has said that Hurricane Katrina did not substantially damage the oil industry. To this I say, BS!

Hurricane Katrina damaged or displaced an estimated 58 Gulf of Mexico oil platforms and drilling rigs, according to the American Petroleum Institute.

Among those, 30 rigs and platforms have been reported lost. No company breakdown was available, said Tim Sampson, an API spokesman.

One of the more significant reported losses of platforms or rigs came from Houston-based Apache Corp. On Thursday, Apache said it lost eight platforms that produce 7,158 barrels of oil and 12.1 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

That’s about 10 percent of the lost oil production and 2 percent of the shut in gas reported earlier this week, said company spokesman Bill Mintz.

Earlier in the week, Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc.’s Ocean Warwick was found about 60 miles from its original position near Dauphin Island off the coast of Alabama. A photo of the displaced rig found its way on Internet sites and newspapers worldwide, creating one of many indelible images of Katrina’s strength.

Speaking of oil spills, SkyTruth images revealed significant spills covering a large area of the northern Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. At the time, nobody was talking about what had happened to the 4,000 offshore oil platforms – and 34,000 miles of pipeline on the seafloor – when Katrina ripped through the Gulf as a Cat 5 storm, followed a few weeks later by Hurricane Rita. Attention was rightly focused on the unfolding human tragedy, as well as the 7-9 million gallons of oil spilled from damaged pipelines, refineries and storage tanks onshore.

But for months after the storms, officials from government and industry repeatedly claimed that there were no “significant” spills in the Gulf. That line is still heard even now. Yet in May 2006, the U.S. Minerals Management Service published their offshore damage assessment: 113 platforms totally destroyed, and – more importantly – 457 pipelines damaged, 101 of those major lines with 10″ or larger diameter. At least 741,000 gallons were spilled from 124 reported sources (the Coast Guard calls anything over 100,000 gallons a “major” spill).