Gulf Drilling Must Stop

Would we be OK with Airliners if the Manufacturer, the Airline and the FAA assured us the On-Board Engine Fire Extinguisher System was designed (as a cost saving measure) to Function only 90% of the times it might be called upon? Deepwater Oil Well Blow Out Preventers are designed such that they are capable of Shearing the Drill Stem (the last and only way to stop a Blow Out) only 90% of the time (it can't Shear Joints which account for 10% of the length of the drill stem).


My Anger is as Towering as that Pyre which had been euphemistically christened "Deepwater Horizons". The Hubris of an "Industry", it's Tame Administration&Congress, and we Low-Information " Consumers" in allowing the Risk of permanent Injury or Death to the whole Gulf Ecosystem for a few Barrels of The Devil's Tears is unforgivable. It is clear that the Bush/Cheney Administration stacked the Minerals Management Service (the branch of Interior Dept tasked with "overseeing" Offshore Drilling) with Oil Industry Lackeys. Cocaine parties and Sex with Oil Industry "representatives" was the Rule-of-Day at the Bush/Cheney MMS, not checking out bogus claims of the "inconceivability" of a Disaster.


When BP finally released Video of the Oil Volcano there was realization of how bad it really is: Based on “sophisticated scientific analysis of seafloor video made available Wednesday,” Steve Wereley, an associate professor at Purdue University, told NPR the actual spill rate of the BP oil disaster is about 3 million gallons a day — 15 times the official guess of BP and the federal government. Another scientific expert, Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated the rate of flow to be between 840,000 and four million gallons a day. These estimates mean that the Deepwater Horizon wreckage could have spilled about five times as much oil as the 12-million-gallon Exxon Valdez disaster…. In an email to ThinkProgress, Dr. Wereley clarifies: “My analysis is based strictly on what is seen in the video, so only one pipe and only for that brief period of time. I’m making no claims about what happened earlier or what may happen in the future.”


All Gulf Drilling MUST STOP NOW. The maximum Development of those Reserves can only ever reduce the price of a Gallon of Motorfuel by a few cents ten to twenty years hence. Because Oil is Fungible there is no such thing as "decreasing our dependence on Foreign Oil". All Oil goes into the World Oil Market (which America invented) so any Barrel from anyplace is likely to be used by anyone on Earth. Politicians know this but Use Nationalism and Jingoism to Prey on Low Information American Voters in order to enable their Oil Patrons, their real Constituency. The purpose of "drill here, drill now" and of "Drill, Baby Drill" is only to promote the Profits of Oil Developers, 60%of which are Foreign Owned. Read it and Weep for America's loss of Moral Compass and of a sense of the Absolute Necessity of Strict Government Regulation of many Business Practices in order to guard&protect the Overwhelming Public Interest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/AR2010051202190_pf.html