The Chesapeake Bay Foundation released a statement opposing President Barack Obama’s decision to allow offshore gas and oil drilling, suggesting that drilling off the coast of Virginia could endanger various species, including the blue crab.

The CBF considers this action a contradiction to the executive order signed last May, which reaffirmed the president’s commitment to restoring the Chesapeake Bay. In a blog post by Tom Pelton on CBF’s Bay Daily, Pelton says that drilling in the Atlantic has “long been banned by the federal government, and for good reasons.”

“America needs to break its addiction to oil,” he wrote on March 31, the day the president announced his new energy plan. ” And you don’t break an addiction by increasing your supply.  To make an analogy, if America had an alcohol problem, you wouldn’t solve the problem by hunting around for liquor stores where you could buy more and cheaper vodka.”

On the Washington Post’s Planet Panel blog, Dr. Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, explained the amount of oil off the Mid-Atlantic coast will supply the United States’ consumption needs for just a few weeks. Boesch, like many other scientists and experts, suggested the nation should cut its dependence on oil by seeking more efficient sources.

Pending the release of details about the offshore drilling plan, it is hard to fully assess the potential environmental impact. Yet clearly, there are tensions between preserving environmental resources and developing sustainable energy sources. It will be interesting to see how these tensions unfold and what drilling off the shore of Virginia will do to the already dire state of the bay.