The Gulf Coast Oil Spill and the Future of Offshore Drilling
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-05-13/gulf-coast-oil-spill-and-future-offshore-drilling
The Gulf Coast oil spill calls into question future drilling plans: What the worst U.S. environmental disaster in decades could mean for new offshore drilling projects and prospects for a climate bill..
Guests
Neil King, Jr.
national reporter, "The Wall Street Journal"
Joseph Romm
senior fellow at the Center for American Progess; he runs the blog ClimateProgress.org and is the author of "Straight Up: America's Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions."
Scott Segal
Head of the Government Relations practice at Bracewell & Giuliani. He represents utilities, refiners and manufacturers.
Mark Schleifstein
Environment reporter for the Times-Picayune and co-author of "Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms."
Comments
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Oil Spill -
We DO have precedence for what happens with major spills in the Gulf and East coast areas, yet no one seems to want to look for answers from this source.
I went looking the other day and readily found online lists that helped me prove out my theory.
At the beginning of WWII, over 45 Oil Tankers were sunk along the Gulf and East coasts in 1942 alone. Add to this, hundreds upon hundreds of merchant vessels also sunk during the same period.
It must have had a dramatic effect on the coast lines. It is understood that environmental sensitivities were not the same then, so the "at the time" reaction was not the same as today, let alone the world being at war. no paid attention.
There IS historic precedence available. Did anyone ever study the after effects of all the lost shipping on the coastlines? Did no one study the effects these hundreds of sinkings had?
There are also cases of similar incidents in others parts of the world. What happened there after 5, 10 and 20 years?
I am not trying to downplay the potential and real damages, as jobs are and will be lost. (note that there is some serious money being poured into the recovery effort, so in a morbid sense there is a huge injection of cash as a result of this incident. ) The loss to the people if this area is very real and very scary.
What is the oceans capacity for scrubbing itself?
There are black smokers at the bottom of our oceans spewing tons of toxic substances into the oceans of the world every day. How does the ocean cope with that onslaught? Is there a comparison?
thanks for considering asking these questions....
Jason
It feels like it is more important to the media to run around saying the Sky Is Falling, than it is to really dig around for information about what this really means in the big picture.
How much oil extracted from the Gulf (or California or Alaska, etc.) remains in the US? How much of it moves on to other buyers around the world?
Diane,
It appears that BP's main directive is to keep the oil flowing with the word "Containment" from the well instead of plugging up the well. They could have placed tons of concrete blocks onto the well opening as they demonstrated their ability to do so last week. It's obvious that Lady Liberty weighs our economy, environment and lives, on one side, and BP's financial coffers on the other. We need to ask BP why they haven't plugged up the oil well. Is that oil more valuable than the environment, lives, and our economy? Thanks, Cari from Coopersburg PA
Given this huge spill that rivals the size of the Exxon-Valdez and the lack of preparation for it by the industry, why would we consider allowing this kind of drilling on our Atlantic and Pacific coasts and new areas off Alaska. These are currently pristine areas, yet President Obama wants to expand drilling off these places and the new climate bill introduced yesterday would actually give states incentive to allow drilling as close to their shores as this one. Why does that make sense?
A quote from an article today (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/bpsp-m13.shtml) raises the question of who should be in charge of the cleanup now: "Leaving BP to monitor its own cleanup activities is in keeping with Washington’s steady deregulation of industry and finance in the US over the past three decades. The same 'free market' nostrums that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster are now providing the operating principle behind the cleanup. This approach has greatly exacerbated the disaster."
We "the people" are not getting the full truth of how this happeneed. Shouldn't there be total transparency? How many oil rigs are still in the Gulf operating? Has anything been stopped or changed in the Gulf since April 20 besides BP's pathetic attempt to clean up their mess (and a lot of oil in the water)?
Apparently, there are nearly 4,000 oil platforms just in the Gulf of Mexico. (Something I doubt most Americans know.)
How many total oil rigs are there in the US: how many offshore and how many on land?
I wonder if the amount that is going to spent on this disaster and cleanup would have been enough to give each American homeowner a wind turbine or solar system for their home... Can you imagine the energy savings in this country?
Domestically produced oil gets sold on the open market so that there is no guarantee that it is going to be used domestically - doesn't it? This oil may have been destined for China...
Thank you for that stat, epastore. I had heard 3600 oil rigs in the Gulf. It seems a huge amount, but there doesn't seem to be much publicity about that. I also understand that there are something like 2600 spills each year (much smaller spills than this BP one, of course, but each spill does some damage and indicates how this oil drill and transport is not safe).
Isn't oil traded on global exchanges? If so, isn't it misleading and disingenuous to speak as though American oil will primarily benefit Americans? If the American people were more aware of how this works, it would change their cost/benefit analysis of the situation and their desire to drill, baby, drill...
If this was a terroist attack would we respond differently?
Cari from Coopersburg Pa
Your caller Henry should call this number to share his idea:
To submit alternative response technology, services or products: (281) 366-5511
This goes to the Coast Guard.
According to the New York Times (1) “the Deepwater Horizon (oil) rig” is currently leaking “hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil every day into the Gulf (of Mexico)” and is estimated to continue for months. Although this has had little effect on Arizona (unless you’re counting seafood, gas, and environmental ramifications), there are some questions that we should be asking… like who can we trust?
Both our current (as early as March 2010) and last president believed offshore drilling was a great plan for America. But in one tragic day British Petroleum has proven both Presidents wrong. So why are Americans still listening to corporate bought analysts, like Bill Kristol, tell us that (2)“the off shore drilling of oil has become incredibly quite safe” even as this off shore drilling tragedy is unfolding.
On February 16th, 2010 (according to ABC News)(3)“President Obama… said that safe, new nuclear power plants are a “necessity” as he announced more than $8 billion in federal loan guarantees to build the first nuclear power plant in three decades.
Can you imagine if it wasn’t the Deepwater Horizon that exploded, but the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant here in Arizona? So how many solar panels do you think $8 billion dollars would buy?
1 - http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/05/06/06greenwire-interior-suspends-pl...
2 - http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004290054
3 - http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/02/obama-says-safe-nuclear-...
In the petro chem industry it is very common to use fault tolerant PLCs [industrial computer]. This involves three instruments measuring the same process point feeding three separate signals into the PLC which has three microproccessors running control algorithms taking information from these instruments to control the process.
The idea that this oil spill happen because of a dead battery is absolutely ludricous. You simply monitor the voltage off that battery and SHUT DOWN when the power begins to detriorate. Transoceanic are criminals. When are we going to start to treeat corporations the way we treat irresponsible individuals?
HEAR HEAR
RIGHT ON
zoomer: "The idea that this oil spill happen because of a dead battery is absolutely ludricous. You simply monitor the voltage off that battery and SHUT DOWN when the power begins to detriorate."
Strangely, they claim the battery was operating a dead-man switch. Which itself is independently ludicrous. The whole point of a dead-man switch is that if anything goes wrong, it cuts off. (The name itself comes from the idea that a person is holding a switch open. If he dies, his hand loosens and the switch closes, enacting the safety protocol.)
The idea that a dead-man switch could fail because of a battery failure is pure nonsense. A battery failure should trigger the dead-man switch, not hinder it.
And on a separate note, the idea that a major environmental catastrophe could be one dead battery away is downright chilling.
Thank you, Diane, for not allowing the story of what's happening in the Gulf to disappear. The spin surrounding this has been maddening. The Republicans are embarrassed by it because they were mindlessly chanting 'drill, baby, drill'; the White House & Democrats are embarrassed because they have also been supporting offshore drilling; so news channels just aren't reporting on it as much as the situation warrants. The only ones not embarrassed are BP, Halliburton, et al. You are the only one I've heard who has been as outraged as everyone should be at the brazen callousness and disregard for consequences that all the companies involved have shown. As someone who grew up on the Gulf Coast and who still loves it, that is very much appreciated. Please, for all of us Americans whose voices are drowned out by those with money and power, keep up the good work.
Consider the concept, design and engineering of an oil absorbing sheet; the kind that can be applied to the skin so as to remove excess oil from the skin’s surface.
I ask that you apply such a design to another design: the design of a highly efficient fluid and materials exchange system. An example of such a system may be found in the layers of villi and microvilli that line the interior surfaces of the gastro-intestinal tract. Like the fractal, and nature’s correlate to the fractal, the tree, villi and microvilli derive much of their efficiency in moving materials across and between the intestinal lining from their repeating and self-similar structural compositions.
My proposal is to employ an oil absorbing technology, such as the oil absorbing sheet, towards removing oil from our oceans, rivers and lakes. I also propose to apply the design, manufacturing and engineering principles of such sheets to the design, manufacturing and engineering principles of systems that successfully transport chemical, molecular and physical substrates across and between barriers from which containers may ultimately be built.
Why not wrap oil absorbing sheets into cones and/or tubes, so as to increase their surface areas, thereby increasing the efficiency with which they absorb oil? And why not, for that matter, embed those oil absorbing cones and/or tubes into larger (and smaller) networks of self-similar oil absorbing sheets, cones and/or tubes? Would not such an oil absorbing ‘fractal’ remove oil from our waterways?
I know that art would gladly receive and employ such an idea towards useful ends; is it so difficult to imagine scientists, engineers and corporations as doing the same?
Sparta, NC
This spill is a catastrophe, of which only a tiny minority of the cost can be put in dollar format, the rest will be measured by future biologists as "biodiversity loss". The ultimate responsibility for this disaster is the consumers. We are completely dependent and addicted to oil and the lifestyle it affords us, and therefore the finger of blame should be squarely pointed towards the American people and our inability to change the way we consume. After a few years in the energy industry, it is now clear to me that if we chose to, we could nearly eliminate our consumption of oil. But instead, we choose to discuss energy policy as if it didn't apply to us, as if there are "others" dealing with the problem, or as if the solution is right around the corner. The real solution is a proactive, mobilized public capable of both making decisions and acting on them.
For example, a few weeks ago I went to a middle school earth day event, meant to teach kids about alternative energy, waste reduction, and the real long term risks of environmental destruction, mismanagement, and ignorance. It was great, and it seemed like some of the kids got the idea. Then we ate lunch... disposable plates/forks/spoons holding low quality processed food. The school seemed to be spewing environmentalism from one side of the mouth, and garbage from the other.
Say what you believe. Do what you say. Teach what you do. Then take responsibility for all of it.