Posted on 05/04/2010 6:43:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to do as much damage to U.S. energy policy as it has to the environment. Obama’s weeks-old executive order allowing for limited coastal exploration — which we never considered a sure thing — has been stayed and will probably be rescinded. There will be budgetary considerations as federal dollars are used to clean up the Gulf. And there will be legal concerns: What kind of responsibility do BP and Transocean bear?
The answers to the policy questions will depend on the extent of the damage and on the most important factual question: How did this happen? Others already have observed, correctly, that the risks involved in drilling off the coast of the United States are small in proportion to those involved in shipping oil across the ocean or drilling off the coasts of countries that do not treat safety and environmental standards with our own degree of care.
Oil remains the most cost-effective source of transportation fuel we have; as long as our economy is thriving, we will need to produce or import a lot of it. Global-warming alarmists and zealous proponents of alternative energy have already made the BP spill the new Exhibit A in their case against fossil fuels. In evaluating their claims, we should be mindful of the economic and environmental costs of the spill relative to those associated with their preferred alternatives.
Consider the cost of cap-and-trade legislation, for instance. It’s hard to know what the economic damages of this spill will be, but even if they exceed the estimated $7 billion that it cost to clean up the Exxon Valdez spill, that would still be a far cry from the estimated $161 billion annual hit to GDP that would result from enactment of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. On the environmental side of the ledger, will the damages from this spill outweigh the thousands of birds killed in wind turbines each year? Possibly. How about the slashing and burning of thousands of acres of rain forest that come as a result of ethanol subsidies? We doubt it.
It should also be noted that the rig in question was built to drill at depths of over a mile. Deep-water drilling is a newer technology, and this episode demonstrates that we still have a lot to learn about the associated risks. BP and Transocean will be saddled with enormous costs in the wake of this disaster, and investors in these rigs will think twice before putting money into similar projects in the future. In other words, the market will act as a check on deep-water exploration practices. At this time, it is not obvious that any new regulation would serve any purpose other than to let politicians claim that they’ve “done something” in response to the accident. As usual, overreaction is a significant danger: The reaction to Three Mile Island set the development of safe and clean nuclear power back for a generation.
As for the administration’s now-it’s-lifted, now-it’s-not drilling ban, most of the exploration and drilling that would take place if Obama actually followed through would be located in shallower coastal waters. The safety record of shallow-water drilling remains very impressive, and this deep-water calamity neither tarnishes that record nor indicates that it couldn’t be duplicated if Obama opened more of the coastline to exploration. In any case, the president’s moratorium on new drilling is a self-defeating proposition: New rigs will take years to construct and to begin production; their safeguards will incorporate whatever lessons we learn from the investigation of this catastrophe. If there is any present danger of further damage, it comes from existing operations, which the president, who has good political reasons to dread a spike in the price of oil, does not at the moment propose to restrict.
A word on conspiracy theories: It is unfortunate that the timing of this event, coming so soon after the administration’s drilling order, has led some commentators (of varying degrees of seriousness) to entertain some outlandish scenarios. The environmental movement did not sabotage the rig to further its agenda, nor did Big Oil do it to create artificial scarcity in the market for crude. Disasters happen, and this is one.
But it is not one that should not reorder our thinking when it comes to energy production. “Drill, baby, drill,” has lost whatever usefulness it may have had as a slogan, but offshore drilling remains a crucial source of energy — and clearing obstacles to future exploration is still part of the right policy mix.
My credo!
Ask them if after every plane crash we should stop flying?
Yes, but have those domes built and at the ready on a tender.
I’m really hoping that this dome thing which BP is going to try and use on the leak is a wild success. IF they can prove the ability to shut down even the most dire undersea leaks, then the only problem here will be proven to be the eight days of Obama thumb-twittering, and the public will again feel confident in the safety of offshore drilling.
How quickly can nature recover from this oil spill ? Some environmentalist whackos are now saying that this damage to the environment is IRREVERSIBLE and Mother Earth is groaning in pain.
Yes, Keep Drilling
My credo!
Mine too. There is nothing in life that is completely safe. I am looking at the spill in the Gulf as a learning experience for the future. Maybe new techniques will be learned or at least we know what can happens if terrorists go after oil rigs. But, the fact remains we can not depend on foreign oil period. Utopia does not exist that’s another fact.
How convenient for someone that wanted this outcome in the first place? Almost makes one wonder...
BS. Saddam dumped as much oil in the Persian Gulf during the 1st Gulf war. Has that area recover in the last 20 years from the effects of that act of vandalism?
Perhaps a more apt analogy is "did dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki irreversible damage the environment" No, they did not.
Oil is a natural product of the earth. Not some toxic poison.
1 Volcano does much more temporary environmental damage then all the oil spills in history combined.
The thing the Enviormantalist wackos ignore is that the Environment is a self regulating mechanism that absorbs, dissipates and removes the temporary impact of these sorts of events over time.There is no such thing as "irreversible environmental damage".
Would one 100 car pileup close all freeways forever?
I know, eco-nuts would like that.
B) Drilling, like any technological endeavour has an inherent risk / reward.The rewards far outweigh the risks.
C)Something is not “Kosher” here. This was a state of the art drilling rig with numerous safety redundancies to prevent such a disaster. Rigs don't just blow up with out any warning.Before making all these prognostications of dire consequences and firing blame at BP and Transocean, the “chicken littles” need to pull their collective heads out of their posteriors, let them contain the spill and investigate what really happened.
NObama, the Kenyan, and Congress have no jurisdiction beyond the 12 mile limit.
There are over 5000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico alone.
The economic exclusion zone extends 200 nautical miles. All of the US Waters falls under MMS for regulations on the production of resources. That is why BP and their partners leased this area from the Feds.
Check this out
copied from http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1367.htm
copiedMay 1, 2010
US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig
I live on the west coast of Florida and we are faced with not only environmental hazards but economic hazards as well because of this. Couple this spill with a hurricane that may be looming somewhere in the near future (June 1 starts hurricane season here), and this could have devastating consequences. Florida gets the majority of its revenue from fishing and tourism. This will crush an already weak economy here.
I’m not saying don’t ever drill...we need to drill...but we really have got to get some back up plans to back up plans to back up plans in place before we ever let this happen again. YOu would think after the Exxon disaster we would have figured out a contingency plan. Someone would have developed something that would stop this right away. This spill is devastating and it is sad to those of us who live along the coast and spend hour after hour on the beach every week. Recreational and commercial fishing will cease, God only knows for how long, putting people out of business. Crucial wildlife, coral reefs will die. Our waters and beaches will turn black, cutting tourism in half if not more.
This has been our biggest fear as far as drilling in the Gulf. This may take years to clean up and the environment won’t be the same. Trust me, I’m all for cutting the umbilical chord to Saudi and ME countries, but not at the risk of our oceans, our way of life, and our health. We must have all emergency bases covered. Even the Titanic disaster caused us to rethink the way we did things. We just need to do the same before we put more rigs out there.
Some of the initial oil spill control work was delayed by the Feds. There was a pre-approved plan for the controlled burns that the Feds delayed releasing.
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