Environment, Politics, Society

Drill, Baby, Drill

As expected, President Obama is planning to lift the drilling moratorium and to return to his planned drilling program off pristine areas of the East Coast. While Obama is no longer claiming that oil rigs really do not spill much, it really does not matter much. Bureau head Michael Bromwich has announced that the six-month ban is unlikely to be renewed in a blow to environmentalists. One lasting change? The Obama Administration changed the name of the scandal-laden Minerals Management Service to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.


The Administration has been putting on a full court press with officials expressing relief that they can find no large amounts of oil left — brushing over the millions of gallons of toxic chemicals that they allowed BP to dump into the ocean to disperse the oil. Experts have objected that the Obama Administration has been actively downplaying research showing these chemicals remain in the food chain for many years. Administration officials have said that the health impact of these chemicals remains uncertain — leading others to question the decision to dump millions of gallons into the ocean.

The recent public offensive appears calculated in part to lift the ban. In the ultimate example of “out of sight out of mind,” Bromwich insists that he can “see no information so far that would justify extending the moratorium.”

Source: CNN

280 thoughts on “Drill, Baby, Drill”

  1. Byron you doin O.K.? I been real busy with my Tropical Forecast.

    TD 7 upgraded to T.S. Earl as of 5:00 and should have Fiona in about 72-96 hours. Huge High building over the Mid Atlantic starting this weekend means look out below. Should have four named systems by ths time next week. Three in the Atlantico and one in DA Gulf de Mehico. Tu inteindes ?

  3. Change you can believe in.

    Speaking of GW

    Despite the fact that President Obama made Cap and Trade and other green policy plans a focal point of his early days in office — not to mention his campaign for president — the White House has quietly scrubbed from its official website many of Obama’s promises and green initiatives. I guess the era of Obama really is “change you can believe in.”

    http://bigjournalism.com/wthuston/2010/08/22/obama-scrubs-white-house-website-of-climate-change-promises-media-mum/

  4. Bdaman:

    “Obama is likely to lift the drilling ban in October, ahead of its scheduled Nov. 30 expiration . . . ”

    just in time for the mid-terms. what a joker.

  5. Bdaman:

    why? a good deal of what you post is verifiable and usually turns out to be true. Especially your global warming info. I just saw a show that said the earth was a “snowball” for a good many years and that life was developing in deep sea vents.

    If earth can be a snowball it can certainly become a hot house, which it was during the time of the dinosaurs. I also heard that one of the reasons insects and other creatures were so big was because of the higher oxygen content of the atmosphere at that time. I think the jury is no where near to being able to come to a conclusion, but I think it more and more looks like a natural process that is being used for political/economic reasons.

    Have you seen that movie “Con of the Wind”? I saw a trailer and it looks rather interesting. Anything government has to subsidise to make people buy is probably not worth having. You don’t have to subsidize pizza and beer or I-pads to get people to buy.

  7. Drillers May Face Months of Waiting Even After Obama Lifts Deep-Water Ban

    Oil and natural-gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico may remain idle for months even if President Barack Obama’s administration agrees to an early end for its moratorium on deep-water drilling.

    “In some ways it doesn’t matter when the moratorium comes off, because there are other impediments to drilling now,” Jim Tisch, chief executive officer of Loews Corp., said in an interview today at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. Loews owns 50 percent of Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc., the largest U.S. deep-water oil driller.

    Obama is likely to lift the drilling ban in October, ahead of its scheduled Nov. 30 expiration, said Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies, an oil-industry consulting firm in Washington. Heightened regulatory scrutiny of drilling’s risks may delay the resumption of operations by companies such as BP Plc and Apache Corp. until mid-2011, McKenna said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-25/drillers-may-face-months-of-waiting-even-after-obama-lifts-deepwater-ban.html

  8. Aye yo Adrian, U talkin ta me. Bada Bing, u got a problem wit dat.

    I tell ya watt, how’s bout you put it up your nose wit a gahden hose, Vinnie Babarino style.

  9. Sometimes the truth looks one in the face and they still can’t comprehend what the facts are that make it so.

  11. I watched a Bob Marley biography last night and just wanted to simpatico. I think it was Dominican.

  13. Byron,

    I have to agree with Buddha’s sentiment here – friends share 😉

    The fact that oil leaks out naturally doesn’t mean that there wont be any increased impact from a spill that is likely orders of magnitude bigger. Add in the dispersants (which I agree will probably turn out to have been a big mistake) and I don’t think that we can say the gulf leak hasn’t and wont do much damage. And while I would be willing to entertain the argument that the marginal pollution of offshore drilling might be small compared to the ‘natural’ pollution, calling offshore drilling ‘environmentally friendly’ is ridiculous…

    Elaine,

    I won’t be eating seafood from the gulf anytime soon, either.

  14. Buddha,

    I’m not planning on eating an seafood from the Gulf if I can help it! How about you?

    **********

    Byron,

    “…maybe we shouldn’t have placed dispersants and just tried to collect the oil.”

    I can agree with you on that point!

  15. Elaine,

    I didn’t know salmonella could cause diarrhea of the mouth. 😉

    One learns something new every day.

  18. Byron–

    What happened to animals that blundered into the La Brea Tar Pits???

    What’s the source of that “interesting fact?”
    **********

    “Seems like the gulf leak will not cause much damage after all.”

    Don’t worry–be happy. What you been smokin’?

  19. Slarti:

    here is an interesting fact:

    “Most of the oil in the Santa Barbara Channel and on nearby beaches comes from natural leakage of buried reservoirs, not man-made spills. Europeans who visited the area in the 16th century reported the sea was covered by a “sheen of oil, visible for as far as the eye could see,” and that local Indians waterproofed baskets and canoes with tar collected on beaches. It is estimated that, yearly, these seeps release the equivalent of one third of the oil spilled by Exxon Valdez.

    Seeps of oil are common in coastal California, having given rise to such place-names as Oil Creek, Oildale, Brea (Spanish “tar”) and Coal Oil Point. By far the best known is the La Brea Tar Pits, located in downtown Los Angeles.

    Authorities believe the only way to reduce leakage in the Santa Barbara Channel is to reduce pressure in the reservoir by pumping out as much oil as possible.”

    Bdaman posted about huge “tar” volcanoes off the coast that are some 30,000 years old. Seems like the gulf leak will not do much damage after all. It also tends to imply that maybe we shouldn’t have placed dispersant’s and just tried to collect the oil.

    Another point is that oil drilling would be an environmentally friendly thing to do off the coast of California.

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