It was with unintended comedy that three Republican members of the state Senate would hold a press conference calling for offshore drilling in North Carolina on the first anniversary of the BP oil catastrophe. N.C. Sen. Bob Rucho of Mecklenburg County said the timing was ironic, though “tone deaf” may have been a more apt description.

The Gulf states are still reeling from an environmental disaster that showed oil companies capable of drilling holes in the ocean floor lack the skills and equipment needed should things go wrong. That is why a majority of the state opposes a similar risk along the North Carolina coast and why any effort to open the state to drilling should be fiercely resisted.

Residents along the Gulf of Mexico coastline held rallies and candlelight vigils on Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary of an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform that killed 11 people and injured 16 more. Some 4.9 million barrels of crude were released into the water before the well was capped nearly three months later, killing countless wildlife, contaminating fish stocks and devastating coastal communities in the nation's worst environmental catastrophe since the Dust Bowl.

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