What I am talking about is the leak/spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Previously issues of oil , oil prices, energy sources,etc have generated much conversation on the Forum, but “mums” the word when it comes to this disaster.
Myself I don’t think we have the technical ability to safely harvest oil in the conditions presented by the deep water. If it was required to have the resources in place and a plan drawn up beforehand the cost of recovering this oil would be prohibitive.
If the 75 million dollar damage cap comes off (impact on people mostly)“Drill Baby Drill” my not sound so attractive. Let’s hope that the shot on Wednesday goes good.
I don’t frequent the off topic section, but that would be a more appropriate place to post this, imo.
It is a little odd that the issue hasn’t come up. For myself, I can’t think of much to say about it other than 1) oh shiznit; 2) yes, I hope the plug goes well today; 3) “drill baby drill” has always given me uneasy chills.
One of my favorite scenes from the Matrix btw is when the head agent compares humans to a virus.
We All Want Energy. Can’t Drill On Land. Can’t Build Nuclear Power Plants. Can’t Build Dams. Coal Is Bad. Foreign Dependence Is Bad. We’re Putting Up Silly Little Feel Good Windmills & Solar Panels That Could Supplement Us In 15 To 20 Years If We Ever Put A Grid In Place.
Accidents and messes are part of our quest for energy. I don’t consider this a disaster. It is a mess ! Mother Nature will clean this up rather quickly. Hungry news folks like to whip everybody into a frenzy. The politicians try and figure out how to use this to a political advantage, rather than help with the problem at hand. I’ve never seen our government so ready and willing to beat up corporations, including our own U. S. major industries.
Like an engine oil leak in an airplane, a little oil leak looks like a catastrophe. This could wind up with benefits like reducing mosquitoes or whatever.
I sometimes envy the Amish (but only a few seconds a month). I don’t want that lifestyle so I’m willing to live with one we have chosen and a couple of glitches along the way.
It looks like there weren’t enough precautions put in place by the oil company or their subcontrators, but I think they’ve all learned a valuable lesson here. I don’t think more government regulation will help. It certainly didn’t help prior to this incident, in fact it probably helped cause it because we’re restricted in our quest for energy in too many ways already.
Drill Baby, Drill has never bothered me. Just wait until everybody starts plugging cars in without enough electricity to go around. That’s when the fun will begin.
Take your pick. Become Amish or live with it.
CSA
Here’s a good article today on what might have gone wrong:
One reason I didn’t start a thread about the spill was that I pretty much know where most of you stand.
CSA, who told you we can’t drill on land? We do drill on land. I can show you where Marathon Oil drills in Oklahoma. The oil companies own the drilling rights to a lot of land where they choose not to drill. They think they can make more profits drilling offshore than on land. It’s that simple.
One thing I can tell you is that we didn’t benefit from having an oil man in the Whitehouse for eight years. Whenever there was some kind of fuel crisis in the Bush years, fuel prices would spike. Now fuel prices seem to be pretty stable. I don’t know why this is. If I had to name one thing Obama has done to keep fuel prices down, I am not sure I could name one. However, if I was asked to name something Bush did to increase fuel prices, I would say invading Iraq didn’t seem to help. Perhaps the fact that Obama continues to follow Bush’s timeline for withdrawal from Iraq is making things more stable in the Middle East.
In my opinion:
Clean air and water are good. Polluted air and water are bad, which makes this an environmental catastrophe. Let’s look at this for what it is. Hard working Americans lost their lives. Many more hard working Americans are losing their ability to make a living. Many of the pristine resources that make the USA a tourist destination will be heavily damaged, further damaging local economies.
CSA, you and Rush Limbaugh can downplay this disaster all you want. If I had my way, that platform that exploded would never have been there. Perhaps our fuel prices would be higher, but at least the damages caused by high fuel prices can be overcome with American ingenuity. This oil spill is going to have long lasting economic and ecological repercussions that will leave permanent damage.
One of the things that I find most curious is that some of the same people who are most vocal about reducing the role of the government in our everyday lives are also the ones who are now criticizing the current administration for its lack of intervention in this mess.
The government does not currently possess the type of equipment necessary for capping oil wells or for cleaning up situations like this. That technology and equipment is held only by private industry–as it probably should be.
So–which is it?
Should we reduce the size of government and slash our expenditures as the Teabaggers demand, or should we add a new department equipped with vast amounts of very expensive equipment and thousands of employees, both of which would sit idle most of the time?
Do we really want to add an entirely new function to the government for cleaning up the mess made by oil drillers who put speed and low cost of operations over safety and ecological concerns? The government regulators who were supposed to be overseeing the safety of operations like this have been found to have been (pick one or more):
Watching pornography on their gov’t PCs
Accepting free lunches and other freebies from oil companies and drillers
Looking the other way, rather than enforcing current regulations
I propose a thorough house-cleaning of that department, the appointment of a new supervisor, strict enforcement of current regulations, consideration of possible additional regulations, forcing BP to pay every cent necessary for both clean-up of their mess and reimbursement of fishermen who have lost their livelihood for an extended period of time, and the imposition of fines on BP/Transocean/Halliburton, once it can be determined exactly where the fault lies.
On the other hand, we could all adopt the attitude of Rand Paul, the GOP Senatorial candidate from Kentucky, who said that it is “un-American” to blame BP. He is the same person who, a few weeks ago, said that it was inappropriate to criticize the mining company in whose mine many West Virginia residents recently lost their lives. In both cases, “accidents happen”, says Dr. Paul.
Yes, accidents happen. However, responsible people and responsible corporations own up to their failings and do everything in their power to rectify their mistakes and make their victims and the victims’ families whole again. It seems to me that creating life-threatening situations and then attempting to mitigate one’s responsibility for that situation is what is truly un-American.
Whitey, Oldschool Asked For People’s Opinions And I Gave Mine. Why Do You Have To Try And Put Words In My Mouth And Then Attribute The Origin Of My Opinions To Others ?
The only half-way politically related comments I made were, " The politicians try and figure out how to use this to a political advantage, rather than help with the problem at hand. I’ve never seen our government so ready and willing to beat up corporations, including our own U. S. major industries."
I feel that most Americans would agree with that. I was not attributing this to one political party or another, on purpose.
Although I could launch into the politics of this mess, I chose not to because it would dredge up snide remarks (like the ones you made anyhow) and misconstrue what was being said.
The cartoons are cute and the photos are cool, too. They apparently represent your opinions. However, You are entitled to your opinions and I am entitled to my own opinion.
As a petroleum lover, I accept part of the responsibility for this latest mess and I would rather find solutions rather than find people to blame.
CSA
I thought politics were an important aspect of this event. We’ve broached the topic of politics before, and we were able to emerge unscathed because we seem to be capable of discussing political issues in a respectful adult manner.
What words did I put in your mouth? I thought that, overall, you downplayed the importance of this oil spill. I disagreed with that, and I stated my opinion. I didn’t think I put any words in your mouth.
One reason I didn’t hesitate to bring up politics is that I think there is plenty of blame to spread around to members of both parties. I think my choice of political cartoons indicates a fair and balanced approach to this issue.
Based upon how many resource discussion we have had over the past two years it seemed appropriate to discuss this. My strongest feeling (besides this event being called “the largest environmental disaster for the U.S.”) was how people are really talking about no offshore drilling. I seem to recall an interview with the CA. Govenor that implied this.
Should a “relief well” already have been drilled and been ready to be put to use in these cases? How much safety can we afford?
Curious that there does not seem to be a current link to any change financialy yet, perhaps bigger fish to fry (we have a lot going on right now that could affect oil prices).
If anything, this will make mosquitoes worse. Mosquitoes don’t live in the ocean, but a number of the birds and brackish-water fish that eat them are going to get clobbered. And I’ll be sure to tell the shrimpers and crabbers at my local farmer’s market that this is only a little mess.
We do need to explore for more oil. This is inescapable. But the same unrestrained laissez-faire exploration that will save you 5 cents at the pump wherever you are (and I’m assuming you’re not here on the Gulf Coast) is going to do some serious harm elsewhere.
“It looks like there weren’t enough precautions put in place by the oil company or their subcontrators, but I think they’ve all learned a valuable lesson here.”
I agree with the first half of your statement. Specifically, it appears that tests that would have detected the problem were cancelled. Technical people were overridden by the company men because the testing would have interfered with the drilling timeline. (Including, incredibly, a party for all of the bigwigs congratulating themselves on their safety record!)
The “valuable lesson” was learned years ago, though. A good parallel to this would be the Japanese nuclear power industry, which was more or less allowed to self-police through the 90s. A number of high-profile incidents caused enough of a public outcry that the government began an investigation. As it turned out, the industry had been putting on a good public face while concealing a number of leaks and accidents (Tokaimura and Monju are what really did them in). The industry had decided, rather astutely, that in the absence of regulatory attention, it was more profitable to cut corners and settle lawsuits where they arose than to follow established best practices.
Think a Western corporation wouldn’t make the same calculation if left to its own devices? How about the Ford Pinto memo? For that matter, how about the ~2,000 active oil spills in Nigeria, courtesy of Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and others?
Speaking of history, there’s an excellent YouTube documentary on the Piper Alpha disaster that focuses on the organizational factors behind the explosion - most of which came down to business decisions and conflicts of interest.
You speak of how regulations didn’t help in this case. It’s worth noting that the most significant response by the UK gov’t to the Piper Alpha disaster was to move safety oversight from the UK Dept of Energy (also responsible for collecting royalties, etc.) to the Health and Safety Executive, due to the obvious conflict of interest. In the US, we’re using the same system that failed spectacularly 22 years ago in the UK. So while regulations may (or may not) have been the problem, certainly the system could use some improvement.
I wonder how long it will take before my little essay is flagged as being inappropriate.
Perhaps it is un-American!
My first reaction was shock about the oil rig blowing up and sinking with loss of life from crew members. These things have gotten so massive I guess I got in a “Titanic” mode thinking they were unsinkable and could handle any storm.
The inability to stop the leak is something I just can’t believe. I thought there would have to be safe guards against an oil leak like this, and certainly equipment capable of working on the ocean floor to fix the pipes and cap off the leak. We can fix the hubble telescopic in space, but this leak can’t be stopped?
It is interesting that when any bad news hit on the topic of oil or oil delivery disruption it would signal an immediate and significant spike in crude prices with a similar run up in prices at the gas pump. Not the case here, that seems odd. How do you explain that?
BP is looking very bad. Proponents of more off shore drilling and drilling in sensitive areas are looking bad. Any administration in power is going to look bad, so not good for Obama. And the regulatory agencies and oversight government watchdogs were not doing their job and allowed many oil companies, drillers, and distributors to be lax in their policies and practices.
Since I have a real distaste for the Bush administration energy policy “use all the gas you want, we’ll drill more and refine more as there is plenty of oil still in the ground”. The policy was great for Haliburton and big oil companies. It had the auto makers convinced that big cars and trucks were the ones to build and our whole economy hinged on more oil consumption this year than the year before. This oil leak disaster seems to be the final blow to discredit the old Bush policies. It is leaving the current republicans scrambling to come up with a new energy “no oil” policy that finally recognizes we need the alternative energy sources that they rejected so forcefully in the past.
I’m not that worried about it. While it’s bad that it happened, the end result will be that the leak will eventually be stopped and within a couple of years no one will ever know that it happened. The Bay of Campeche is an example.
Considering the huge number of offshore rigs working around the world, I’d say the oil industry has an extremely good record when it comes to the accident ratio.
And just think; Gov. Arnold in CA and the army of lawyers descending on Lousisiana all move their, respectively, Hummers and BMWs on fuel produced from those rigs.
Well, the moderator decided it didn’t need to be flagged after all - since it looks like your original post is back in.
I sure would like to know who flagged it and why.
EDIT: I guess I will never find out. I guess whoever flagged my post as “inappropriate” isn’t man enough to explain why.
I’m inclined to agree that we don’t currently have the technology…or perhaps the will…to deal with deep water drilling disasters such as this. And I think the impact of this is being undersetimated. The environment will eventually cleanse itself, but the impact to the fishing industry, the tourist industry, and all the secondary and tertiary industries will be devastating.
I said we don’t have “the will” because I suspect that if BP were willing to stuff explosives in the hole and let them rip the weight of the ocean above would close the pipe. I’m guessing that BP is trying to not lose the supply, and for them to allow this continued disaster in order to not lose the oil is IMHO unconscionable.
I view the explosives technique sort of like using a nuke to stop the comet that we know is going to impact the Earth any day now (I saw the data on the History Channel it must be true). That is, with the comet (or meteor) we will have many smaller pieces and with explosives on the ocean floor instead of a leak from exactly one place we may have a 50 meter circle of constant seepage. I need to hear more on how the explosives deal works.
You may be right. My theory is based on having read that the “failsafe” system to shut off a failed pipe that allegedly did not work was supposed to detonate and blow the end of the pipe shut.
Regarding, “let’s not try to put the blame on anyone”…
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/26/1649292/after-long-argument-bp-official.html