On June 11, 2010 Rolling Stone magazine published an account of the oil spill crisis. I have severely shortened and rephrased it so for the full story, just click on the link. I couldn’t bring myself to include disturbing images of poor oil-soaked birds so I have whimped out with a more abstract image.'On May 27th, more than a month into the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, Barack Obama strode to the podium in the East Room of the White House. For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak’…..but now, ‘sounding chastened’ the president admitted that ‘his administration had failed to adequately reform the Minerals Management Service, the scandal-ridden federal agency that for years had essentially allowed the oil industry to self-regulate’…… tantamount to putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. He also said that he was far too ‘credulous of the oil giants’ in their ability to act adequately and efficiently in worst case scenarios. That’s why he is now saying ‘the buck stops with me’. One goverment scientist has observed that ‘the effect of leaving BP in charge of capping the well..... has been "like a drunk driver getting into a car wreck and then helping the police with the.....investigation”.
'By the time Obama spoke, it was increasingly evident that this was not merely an ecological disaster. It was the most devastating assault on American soil since 9/11'. And ‘like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings’. These warnings were ignored and instead ‘Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency's culture of corruption’. Is this sounding like the financial crisis all over again? Does the word ‘cowboys’ keep coming to mind?
There has been much conjecture about just how much oil is being released each day, from an initial, deliberately understated 5,000 barrels to 100,000 - 'the median is now 55,000', which is ‘the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez every five days’. This is because it appears that BP has ‘unleashed one of the 10 most productive wells in the Gulf’ and have basically ‘screwed up a really big, big find’. That means that ‘if they can't cap this, it's not going to blow itself out anytime soon’.
‘Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world's largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon’. This is such a concern that 26 congressmen have ‘called for the rig to be shut down immediately’.
Both the US government and BP ‘have reasons to downplay the extent of the spill. For BP, the motive is financial: under the Clean Water Act, the company could owe fines of as much as $4,300 for every barrel spilled….For the Obama administration, the disaster threatens to derail the president's plan to expand offshore drilling. "It's crystal clear what the federal response to the tragedy ought to be," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who chairs the Senate subcommittee on environmental health. "Bring a dangerous offshore drilling pursuit to an end".'
What is particularly concerning for us here on the south-west coast is that BP wants to drill off Margaret River. It is ironic and difficult to comprehend, though not surprising, that the oil spill and plans to continue drilling are in the news at a time when we really should be looking for alternatives. I ask again - why are all the idiots in control of the world?
