Officials at NOAA told the Obama Administration that it was underestimating the rate and risk of spills before the President announced his controversial decision to open up coastal areas to drilling in March. Analysts also noted that there were serious problems in responding to spills.
For environmentalists, the dismissal of such concern reminds them of the Bush Administration, which tended to ignore advice that didn’t fit its political agenda. While the Bush Administration ignored data on weapons of mass destruction, the Obama Administration appears to have dismissed data on environmental mass destruction.
The White House is clearly not happy with the leaked warnings and NOAA officials have come out to stress that they were heeded on other warnings. Experts at the Congressional Research Service and other organizations are cited as warning that “[r]ecent annual data indicate that the overall decline of annual spill events may have stopped’ and that ‘[t]he threat of oil spills raises the question of whether U.S. officials have the necessary resources at hand to respond to a major spill. There is some concern that the favorable U.S. spill record has resulted in a loss of experienced personnel, capable of responding quickly and effectively to a major oil spill.”
For the story, click here.
Kudos: Elaine M.
France gets about 70% of it’s power from nukes. I dont see French wine and cheese glowing.
anyway it is not the extinction of the human race that they care about.
FFN,
A good part of opposition to drilling in Colorado comes from tourism interests. For some reason people don’t like going to other states that used to be pretty.
Yeah, damn environmentalists… trying to save the earth and all that… damn rabble…
If there’s a culprit for the failed US energy policy, it is certainly not those who are trying to avert the extinction of the human race by way of making the planet uninhabitable.
I am all for nuclear power and fuel cells. I like the idea of running my car by filling it up with watter.
someone said that oil is too valuable to burn it up.
If the environmentalists had not stopped nukes we would have most of our energy provided by atoms by this point.
Byron lol
Buhhda: I’m all for clean power. It’s the right thing to do.
Elaine:
thank you for proofing. I guess they store salt there for when you eat celery. 🙂
Byron:
The Navy needs sandy interior lands? LOL I think the government is pulling my leg.
I’m joking, I understand what you mean. We could pay off our debt to China with that stuff. But I wouldn’t want to do it because democrats cannot be trusted to stop spending money. Then we would still be in debt, still trampling the Constitution, and left without resources.
I’m for getting at that stuff AND changing over to clean means of running our cars and powering our homes.
Most people are, I think.
Tootie and Byron,
Yeah, we’re sure denying oil leases over here.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9483141
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14329071
Byron–
“But it was set aside in the first part of the 20th century for Navel reserves.”
Are you sure it was set aside for “Navel” reserves? Is that the location where the government stores excess bellybuttons?
😉
Or government could render oil practically obsolete by backing CO2 free hydrogen production technologies at companies like Hydrogen Solar or Areva, Tootles.
Hydrocarbons suck. They pollute when consumed and they pollute when extracted and mishandled. Economically, oil is the product of the enemies of democracy. Let’s reduce market demand for oil until the Saudis and the heads of Exxon, BP, etc. are forced to drink that Texas Tea to get rid of their overstock.
tOOTIE:
Big field in Utah, Wyoming, Colorado area. A few trillion barrels.
http://dailyreckoning.com/oil-shale-reserves/
This article says 1.5 trillion, I have seen estimates of up to 3 trillion barrels. Price of oil is at about 80/barrel depending on the date. Nov of this year has it at 87/barrel.
Cost of production of barrel in tar sands/shales according to the article would be $30/barrel. Worst case it costs you $25/barrel that leaves minimum 55/barrel as profit. National debt times about 4. No wonder Obama doesnt give a shit about the debt.
Unfortunately government owns 70% of the land. But it was set aside in the first part of the 20th century for Navel reserves.
We wouldn’t have to drill in a dangerous place like the ocean if the leftists would let us use our land resources. Apparently, we are the Saudi Arabia of shale oil.
JOHN KING, CNN: Let me ask you lastly. When something like this has people look back at political relationships. Of the top 20 recipients from the oil and gas industry ever in the Congress, you rank number 14th. In the 2008 campaign you were the number one Congressional candidate in terms of receipts from BP after only President Obama, then candidate for president Senator Obama, and Senator McCain. There are some who say if you’re going to be the watchdog you should give that money back.
SENATOR MARY LANDRIEU, (D-LOUISIANA): I’m not trying to be a watchdog for BP. I’m trying to be a good senator for this country and for Louisiana and to bring a balance to our energy policy, which is protecting our coast, fighting for energy security and a clean environment. I want to say again, John, this is important. We’ve drilled 1,000 deep-water wells in the gulf successfully. 1,000 except for this one. So the fact that do you it 999 right and then 1 wrong doesn’t mean you throw up your hands and run in hysteria. What you do is find out what went wrong —
KING: Even if an ecosystem is destroyed for ten years?
LANDRIEU: It may not be destroyed for ten years. We’ll see what happens. I know there will be environmental challenges but we believe we have the technology to clean it up to compensate for people. Look, if New Jersey wants to give up their oil, if Florida wants to give up their oil, fine. But they’re going to have a crash in their economy. We’ve got to transition to cleaner fuels, but we need to have the oil industry safe. Transition, use natural gas as a transition and then transition to wind and solar. Even the secretary of energy, who briefed us today in a speech, said it may take 50 years. It’s 50 years, not 5 years or 3 years, not 10. It’s 50 for this transition. Revenue sharing which I’ve been saying the leading advocate of saving our wetlands and saving our coast, this is a perfect example of why I think I’ve been right and the senators along the gulf coast to say we do receive 100 percent of the risk. Let us share a portion of those revenues to preserve our wetlands, to invest in technology and hold the industry accountable.
oops, Thank You all.
I am back in the flesh, much to my surprise.
AY,
Good to read your words. Welcome back.
AY:
Where you been? We were getting concerned.
AY,
Welcome back.
AY … I was worried but didn’t know what to worry about … good to see your post.