Like most of us who stay informed on current events, I have followed the continuing saga of the big oil drilling platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, and the subsequent daily reports on the movement of the slick and the efforts to stanch the flow. But I hadn't seen anything that prompted me to blog about it until now.
A couple days ago I was astonished to hear the President pressuring BP to move faster or "move aside" so the federal government could take over. Then his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, repeated pretty much the same thing. Not long after, Louisiana state officials, including Governor Bobby Jindal, announced that both BP and the USG had better hurry up or the state would push them aside to mount its own containment effort.
What were all these people thinking? What, did they think, was the alternative to BP? It's possible the federal government has some experts in the control of underwater oil wells run amok, but what physical and financial resources would they be able to deploy? The state? Even more of a joke. Other private concerns? They'd surely do the same things BP is doing.
Luckily, yesterday evening at least one administration official, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen (who is actually in charge of the government's piece of the effort) had the good sense to see --and say -- that BP's stepping aside really wasn't an option: "To push BP out of the way would raise the question of: Replace them with what?" Well yes, exactly.
No, unfortunately I think we have to accept that the current situation is one of those events it was impossible to plan for; a perfect storm in which not only did a disaster occur (the original explosion) but the safety mechanisms that were supposed to prevent it from getting out of hand failed to function. There will be investigations; there will be recriminations; but we should remember that underwater drilling has been going on for many years; the well that exploded wasn't new.
All the elements of this disaster were in place years ago -- the wells, the policies, the regulation or lack thereof, the poor organization that had the same government agency responsible for overseeing the industry also being partly funded by it. And for years no one had thought to go looking for a problem where none seemed to exist, when there were so many glaring problems that needed attention. Accidents happen. Blaming Obama, (or Bush!) or the current BP corporate leadership, or the Interior Secretary, won't help a bit. After all, we don't really even know yet what caused it to blow.
Priorities should be getting the leakage stopped, of course; but along with that, somebody -- and this might be a good government role -- should be looking right now at what needs to be done to prevent the next blow-out. How many of those potentially malfunctioning shut-down valves are out there? We may survive one disaster like this every twenty years or so, but not one every year.
The only silver lining I see is that this event may drive home some of the unforeseen risks to which our continued reliance on fossil fuels subjects us. Much the same could be said of the two mining disasters in the past year.
- Maybe the advocates big oil will stop telling us it's too costly, or just plain unnecessary, to invest in renewable energy.
- Maybe the "People of the American Petrolum Institute" will stop running those annoying ads about how just one oil platform on the ocean surface can run octopus-like conduits to as many as eight or ten wellheads. Do they realize now, as any reasoning being did long ago, that it's not about the visibility of the platforms? (Actually, I think they did stop running those - I haven't seen one in a week or two.)
- And maybe (though I doubt it) oil-state politicians will think twice about preaching that the answer to our energy needs is more oil, and more oil again. Earth to Sarah Palin: How's that "drill, baby, drill" thingy workin' out for ya?
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