Geologist: Rigs not visible from shore

Oil rigs off North Carolina's coast would not be visible.

UNC-Chapel Hill geology professor Lou Bartek said that drilling rigs can be as tall as several hundred feet, but they would be 45 miles off the coastline. That means tourists would not be able to see them from state beaches.

But that doesn't mean they wouldn't affect the area.

"You would have boats running back and forth that are supplying the rigs, and you're going to have a pipeline of some sort to take what you're producing and get it to where it will be refined," he said. "That's going to have a footprint."

Bartek said that a big question would be where the pipeline goes. He said any natural gas processing would likely be done inland and not on the Outer Banks, but it would also require a deep port that could handle the ships to take the gas elsewhere.

"One of the problems we're going to run into is that there hasn't been a refinery built in this country in a long time," he said.