Category: Environment

US oil regulator ‘gave in to BP’ over rig safety

Firm allowed to drill without devising plan to cope with blow-out

By David Usborne, independent.uk, US Editor — Friday, 7 May 2010

As crude oil continued to pour out of control into the Gulf of Mexico yesterday, questions were being asked over the relationship between BP and regulators in Washington amid allegations that the company was allowed to drill the deepwater well without filing plans for how it would cope with a blow-out like the one now in hand.

Okay I admit it. I don’t get it. Sorry.

Show You Care, Send Your Hair

I saw this group get a quick mention on GMA this morning and it seems to be making the rounds, this idea. Spearheaded by matter of trust dot org, they have flyers,posters, and a youtube, along with this announcement:

Apparently its all the rage…

Now at the Gulf Coast, people are stuffing booms. Hair and fur coming in from our thousands of member salons and groomers into recycled nylons coming in from all 50 states and around the world! Salons and beachlovers all over the Gulf Coast are organizing Boom making parties – They’re calling them BOOM B QUE’s – We love the South!

Uhm…. Okay. I’m sorry, I really kinda just don’t get it.

funny cartoon video here

I mean, good on them, I guess, but… huh? In fact, I wondered the same thing this person did:

What do they do with the oil soaked hair

…afterwards?

by {redacted} on Wed May 05, 2010 at 12:27:12 AM CDT

Gulf Oil Slick: May, 4 NASA

Seriously, only in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of U.S. national politics would a fossil fuel disaster make it less likely that we would get a bill designed to wean us from fossil fuels!~emphasis mine~

Climate Progress

We watch the unfolding of a historically catastrophic event. The explosion that rocked and sunk the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana is transforming from a horrific disaster at the outset to something much more toxic and deeply profound. The oil quickly spreading across the waters into the conscience of the American people is a wake up call. The metaphors reaching deep into our psyche is clear and will have ramifications for a long time. The metastasizing spill is slowly beginning to kill.

This was a stunner.  

With all the hoopla about how America desperately needs to become “Energy Independent” — and SO the “urgent need” to Drill off OUR Shorelines — well it turns out, all that Drilling and Spilling, is just for Barrels of Oil, destined for resale on the World Markets!

Turns out — “Our” Gulf Oil is just another “fungible global commodity“!

Huh, what?  Fungy-what?   Does that mean it’s “more fun”?

No.  Fungible simply means something is “interchangeable”.  That One unit of something (like a barrel of Oil) is worth just as much as any other Unit of that same something.  One Ounce of Gold, is exchangeable with any other Ounce of Gold.

Or as Chris Hayes succinctly put it:

There’s NO barrels marked somewhere, “Foreign.”

Say What?  I thought we were risking our precious Ecosystems, to “free ourselves” from the need of Foreign Oil — to increase our “Domestic Reserves”?

If British Petroleum, can pump it and dump it, on the Global Marketplace, where one Barrel of Oil is identical to every other Barrel (assuming no disastrous spills of course) —

Then what the Hell is the Point?

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

John Sherffius, Comics.com (Boulder Daily Camera)

The giant oil spill caused by an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico is wreaking ecological havoc on the Gulf Coast.

A Coast Guard report that the leak could be five times bigger than previously thought has sparked fears that this may become the “biggest oil spill in the world”, far worse than the Exxon Valdez spill. [1]

This heart-wrenching disaster highlights the danger of President Obama’s plan to open vast expanses of pristine ocean for the massively polluting oil industry.

Tell President Obama not to open 167 million acres of ocean to offshore drilling.

If you’ve already sent a letter, invite 5 friends to take action to protect our oceans.

President Obama’s plan to open the ocean to Big Oil will mean more emissions, more spills, and more pollution of our irreplaceable ecosystems.

It’s not just whales and birds that are threatened by offshore drilling expansion – it’s the entire planet.

Tell President Obama today: don’t open 167 million acres of ocean to offshore drilling!

Notes:

1. “Gulf of Mexico oil slick said to be five times bigger.” BBC, April 29, 2010.

I feel a bit late to the party writing about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Had I chosen to focus on this subject a few days ago, I might have been inclined to draft a personal narrative about the summers I spent on Alabama’s Gulf Coast as a boy and young teenager.  My post would have certainly have been in good company; it heartens me to recognize just how many people have an emotional and personal connection to the region.  I myself didn’t realize how much the warm salt water and white sand meant to me until I began to contemplate what both might look like covered in oil.  It is very unfortunate that tragedies like these have to happen before we ever seriously consider the long term consequences.  Off-shore drilling was, until very recently, touted as some kind of snake-oil panacea or fix-all curative.  One hopes that we now understand the complexities and potentially catastrophic drawbacks in tapping the reserves present in our coastline.  

BP’s containment problem is unprecedented

The company must stop a relentless gush of oil nearly a mile below the surface, in a situation that hasn’t been dealt with before.

By Jill Leovy, LATimes — April 30, 2010

The problem with the April 20 spill is that it isn’t really a spill: It’s a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing, black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch, impossible for divers to endure. Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.

[…]

And “everything is bigger and more difficult the deeper you go,” said Andy Bowen, a research specialist who works with undersea robotics at the Woods Hole center. “Fighting gravity is tough. It increases loads. You need bigger winches, bigger cables, bigger ships.”

An analogy, he said, is the difference between construction work on the ground versus at the top of a mile-high skyscraper.

Gee … sounds kind of Dangerous …

March 24, 2009

RIKI OTT:  […] Exxon promised to make us whole. You know, “You’re lucky you have Exxon.” We hadn’t even gone to court by 1993. We had fish run collapses, bankruptcies, divorces, suicides, you know, domestic violence spikes, substance abuse spikes. The town was just unraveling. And we were waiting for somebody to help us: the State of Alaska, the federal government, the court system, Exxon. Nobody. And–

AMY GOODMAN: There were 33,000 plaintiffs.

RIKI OTT: There are 32,000 claims, 22,000 plaintiffs.

[…]

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said that is not just an environmental disaster, but a crisis in democracy.

RIKI OTT: It is a democracy crisis. The question we started asking as our lawsuit went on and on and on, and we didn’t get paid, was how did corporations get this big, where they can manipulate the legal system, the political system? What happened here?

[…]

AMY GOODMAN: How many animals died?

Riki Ott, author, community activist, marine toxicologist and former fisherma’am. She is author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill.  

People try to make us drill,

Just to try to get a gill.

The things they do look awful bad

I hope it stops before it gets more mad.

     In the face of HUGE profits made by Big Oil it is time to stop subsidizing them with taxpayer money NOW. The American people are suffering. The Big Oil firms and their extremely wealthy executives are not. With the deficits left over from the Bush/Cheney Administration still harming our nation, the easiest way to cut back wasteful government spending would be to stop subsidizing immensely profitable Big Oil Corporations.

     Americans are spending nearly $3 billion more on gasoline due to higher gasoline prices. And taxpayers are spending billions of dollars in tax subsidies to Big Oil. These subsidies will cost the U.S. government about $3 billion next year in lost revenue and nearly $20 billion over the next five years. The next dollars we spend should go to companies that provide genuinely clean and safe fuel. The costs are too high.

thinkprogress.org

    More below the fold