Offshore Oil Drilling and the Oil Rig Disaster in the Gulf

[Bostech]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html

[Traveller]

Obviously I can't give an exact number, and my post wasn't an attempt to deflect any blame from the parties involved in the explosion/leak.  I'm sure the volume of dumped oil is incredibly small relative to volume of oil leaking.  I was just blown away when I heard people were using the leak as cover to pollute even more, although I suppose I shouldn't have been.  Trust me, I don't have any agenda here, other than to see the leak plugged immediately, the oil cleaned up ASAP, and the responsible parties held accountable.

[finehoe]

A federal team created to produce a more precise estimate of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico has determined that the rate is at least twice what was previously acknowledged and possibly five times as much, officials said on Thursday.

If the team's estimates are accurate, this spill would be far bigger than the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 and the worst in United States history.

Using two methods -- one based on the amount of oil on the surface and the other based on video of the oil emanating at the source -- the group settled on preliminary estimates of 12,000 barrels (504,000 gallons) a day to 19,000 barrels (800,000 gallons) a day, said Dr. Marcia McNutt, director of the United States Geological Survey and the leader of the team.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/28flow.html

[finehoe]

This would not imperil the coastline as you know.

Riiiiight....

[JaxByDefault]

That estimate could still be low. There is a consensus of researchers that also say it could be as much as between 20,000 to 70,000 barrels per day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/opinion/22macdonald.html

[finehoe]

This excellent piece by Deroy Murdock demolishes the Democrats' arguments against offshore drilling:

Offshore Drilling: Cleaner Than Mother Nature
“The technology of the drilling industry may have improved, but offshore drilling is a dirty business, and it still leads to oil spills due to failed equipment, aberrant weather, or human error on a frequent basis,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said in July 19’s Houston Chronicle.

Feinstein is correct. U.S. offshore oil drilling is not perfectly tidy. It’s only 99.999 percent clean. Indeed, since 1980 â€" as MMS figures indicate â€" 101,997 barrels spilled from among the 11.855 billion barrels of American oil extracted offshore. This is a 0.001 percent pollution rate. While offshore drilling is not 100-percent spotless, this record should satisfy all but the terminally fastidious.

Ironically, in terms of oil contamination, Mother Nature is 95 times dirtier than man. Some 620,500 barrels of oil ooze organically from North America’s ocean floors each year. Compare this to the average 6,555 barrels that oil companies have spilled annually since 1998, according to MMS. â€" Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTA1MTBlMjdhMjM4NWU4NDczN2IxM2RkNGExNWRjMDM=&w=MQ==

I guess we need to add another 800,000 barrels (and counting) to that 101,997.

[finehoe]

The deaths of "a handful of miners" is much more tragic than the shoreline. 

What about the deaths of oil rig workers AND a whole ecosystem?

[Lunican]

I love being able to review the accuracy of people's statements years later.

I actually think a thorough review of all of RiversideGator's posts will give us great insight into future catastrophes.

BTW, in Ock's California photos, the oil wells are on the beach.  Of course there will be some minor oil spills which affect beach goers in such areas.  The point is that now the oil wells will be far off the coast and far less likely to result in any oil reaching shore.

Yes.  And as I explained to you, these are minor spills which caused little environmental damage.

[NotNow]

In many ways we have been lucky.  Winds and currents have kept most of the spill out to sea.  I would like to see more and faster action on the beaches and marshes of LA, Mississippi, and AL as well as the dredge.  The government should also be building up massive clean up fleets and employ the fishermen who have been harmed. 

Other than that, I don't see where Obama could have done anything more besides waiting for more resignations from the MMS.  The drilling moratorium seems a wise and prudent policy until procedures are analyzed and reviewed.  The USG has no capability in stopping a blowout like this.  Everyone know that I am not an Obama fan, but I don't see this response as "failing".

[finehoe]

The "liberal media" does seem intent on trying to paint this as "Obama's Katrina" but I agree with NotNow.  What more could he have done?

[north miami]

The "liberal media" does seem intent on trying to paint this as "Obama's Katrina" but I agree with NotNow.  What more could he have done?

For many a prime motivation behind ardent support for Obama during the presidential election was an intense desire to remove the oil men from the White House.The 'media' dynamic and intrenched stupid politics remain.
We are lucky to have Obama and his administration at the helm.

[JC]

In many ways we have been lucky.  Winds and currents have kept most of the spill out to sea.  I would like to see more and faster action on the beaches and marshes of LA, Mississippi, and AL as well as the dredge.  The government should also be building up massive clean up fleets and employ the fishermen who have been harmed. 

Other than that, I don't see where Obama could have done anything more besides waiting for more resignations from the MMS.  The drilling moratorium seems a wise and prudent policy until procedures are analyzed and reviewed.  The USG has no capability in stopping a blowout like this.  Everyone know that I am not an Obama fan, but I don't see this response as "failing".

Why is it better that the oil is "out to sea" than on the beach, aren't the fishermen still going to be affected and isn't the threat of swimming in oil going to ruin the tourism industry? 

Just saying, this type of optimism is a little bizarre, because no matter how bad it could have been it could always have been worse!  But the point is it should never have gotten this far and the "we have been lucky" statements should be held until we know the true extent of the damage caused by this spill.

[finehoe]

Slimy doings weren't all at the oil well

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, May 26, 2010; 11:22 PM

Sounds as if it may be time for a top kill at the Interior Department.

A mile below sea level in the Gulf of Mexico, BP was trying on Wednesday to jam mud and concrete into its leaking oil well -- the so-called "top kill" -- to choke off the flow. At the same time, lawmakers on Capitol Hill were puzzling over how to contain the flow of corruption that has been oozing in recent years from the Interior Department -- specifically its Minerals Management Service, which is supposed to regulate oil drilling but instead seems to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry.

MMS -- "it now stands for Misconduct, Mismanagement and Spills" -- posited Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) -- has kept the Interior Department's inspector general quite busy of late.

A year and a half ago, inspectors found MMS workers in Lakewood, Colo., engaging in sex and drug use with oil industry representatives, taking payments from oil companies, and rigging contracts for them.

On Tuesday, the inspector general came out with another report, this one on the MMS office in Lake Charles, La. This time, MMS inspectors and family traveled to the Peach Bowl in Atlanta on a plane owned by an offshore oil company; took free meals, hunting trips and fishing trips from companies; and in one case negotiated a job with a company while inspecting its facilities.

More troubling than the infractions, though, was the explanation given by the MMS district manager. "Obviously, we're all oil industry," he said. "Almost all of our inspectors have worked for oil companies out on these same platforms."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took the few-bad-apples approach to defending the MMS before the House Natural Resources Committee. "My belief is that most of the employees of MMS are good public servants," he said. He added that "there are bad apples within the organization, and what we have done is we have taken appropriate personnel actions."

Salazar granted that the Peach Bowl outing and the rest "are reprehensible," but, he made sure to add, they "predated this administration." He and his colleagues, he said, "came into this department to clean up that mess."

Republicans weren't about to let the blame-Bush argument go unchecked. "You and others keep harping on what MMS did or didn't do in the previous administration," countered Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.). "Why aren't we talking about the here and now?"

"Unlike the prior administration," Salazar shot back, "this is not the candy store of the oil and gas kingdom which you and others were a part of."

Republicans on the dais smiled and shook their heads.

Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado, went on to say that "there was a coziness with industry where industry was running the show. We have changed that."

Salazar is right that industry was running the show, but he's kidding himself if he thinks his fixes -- disciplining the "bad apples" and carving up the MMS into pieces -- will solve the problem. While the majority of MMS employees no doubt are honest, the agency's problem is clearly more than a few bad apples.

Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) told Salazar that what's happened at the MMS is "scaring me." Said the veteran legislator: "I've been in government for 45 years, and when you can see a bad cop, it breaks your heart, but when you see a culture developing within a department, then you have a very, very serious problem."

The woman Obama brought in to run the MMS, Elizabeth Birnbaum, is a former congressional staffer who is free of oil industry taint. But she doesn't exactly seem to be the type to enforce a cultural change at the agency. Her testimony to the committee, a couple of hours after Salazar's, largely defended the MMS's industry-friendly ways.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) asked whether, before the BP spill, the offshore oil rig's "blowout preventer" was tested within two weeks of it actually blowing out.

"Uh, we believe that it was," Birnbaum said. She explained that "blowout preventers are tested by the operator, not the MMS."

"So if BP says, 'We've tested it, take our word for it, it's great,' that's what you do?" Gohmert asked.

"We observe some tests. We do not observe them all," Birnbaum answered.

That could not have reassured lawmakers who already had doubts about MMS. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said that the agency "went to hell in a handbasket" and that its assurances "aren't worth spit."

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) agreed with Democrats that "there may be a culture that leads this agency to be a dysfunctional agency." Coffman said he doubts that "MMS is capable of doing this job going forward" and proposed that "these functions need to be reorganized and moved outside the Department of the Interior."

Salazar saw that Coffman was attempting a top kill of his department. He assured the congressman that "when you look back at the history and the safety record, there has been a lot of good."

Just skip over the sex, drugs and football games.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/26/AR2010052605925.html

[Bostech]

Obama should have mobilize EVERYONE to keep cleaning and should have been more outraged instead of playing golf and doing fundraisers.
Hes not doing that because its obvious hes in bed with oil companies just like Bush and all other politicians.
Nothing new in DC.
This is HISTORIC disaster and he should act like that,if nothing to show people of Gulf that he cares and he supports them.
All those politicians are more concerned about getting elected and relected then doing a right thing.
Then again his masters might have told him not to get involved too much.

[Timkin]

Bostech....

Your post is infuriating , and so incredibly true.  It is sad that our nation's so-called leader is on vacation pretty much ,instead of executing his oath of office and taking care of a major major problem.  It is a half hearted ,pretty much slap in the face to the American people.. and I hope it costs him re election , to be perfectly honest. 

I am so tired of the thieves and crooks in government from the local level , all the way to the top.

We need a president who G E N U I N E L Y has the best interest of the American people and defending of our soil and country first and foremost.   Someone like that is out there, but Obama is a major disappointment IMO... and he is not handling this very urgent and important issue as he should or could.