Wes, As someone who is in one of the "BAD" industries, let me take a shot at this.
I work on an offshore oil platform just outside one of the most "Green" minded states. The current popular belief for the oil industry is that we pollute the environment constantly. There are more than a few groups down here that try to spin ANY leak into a major environmental catastrophe. This just isn't the case. #1 reason is MONEY. If these polluting companies get caught the fines (at least for us) run up to $100,000 per day per incident and up to 10 yrs in prison per day per incident. Not only that but if we lost a lot of oil into the water it is also lost revenue. We have our own "Cops" that govern how we do business in the industry, the MMS. MMS is the US dept. of Minerals and Mines Safety. There has to be records of tests run on any outfall water from any petroleum based operations. The water that is displaced MUST pass rigid guidelines setup by EPA and the DOT. These are federal guidelines that come before any state or regional rules. In my situation on the platform, just wanting to put pure salt water back into the ocean was a major ordeal, needing continuous testing for any contaminants. As the rules go now, if rain hits our platform deck we call it contaminated and must ship it all to shore for processing. A lot of what we hear in the media is rumor based on hearsay and second hand knowledge. We were once yelled at while getting on the helicopter to come to work, about how we were pouring oil into the ocean and killing all the sea life. If that were happening the Feds would be on us so fast it'd make all our heads spin. Not only that but all of us out there enjoy our outdoors and would do nothing to hurt it. There have been accidents, and there will always be accidents, but we do our best to make sure that they are very few and very far between. On the mention gas field though, my best guess would be they will have to install a desalinizing plant to handle the discharge as well as maintaining proper ph. and monitoring any sulpher content. Hope this helps a bit, Dave Wilson http://www.wilsonsworld.org
