Offshore Oil Gusher incident shows a lack of preparedness.

Date:   5/7/2010 4:46:46 PM ( 14 y ago)

We are all watching with interest as BP, or "British Petroleum", the oil company in charge of the leaking offshore oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, is about to lower a newly built containment chamber over the leaking well head 5000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

We should be asking this question - "Why are you trying this out for the first time now?"

If they were truly prepared for spills, blow-outs, or malfunctions in their equipment they would have tried this before, at least in a test run. It is obvious in hindsight that it would be a good idea to have one of those "containment chambers" on hand, ready to be deployed in case of a problem like this on any offshore oil rig.

It is very important to note the oil industry did not have ANYTHING that could stop a leak at the well head in deepwater drilling. They had total faith in their "blow-out preventer", which automatically closes in case of a blow out... but the blow out ruined the blow-out preventer. I say DUH!! - of course the blow-out preventer will be twisted and ruined and useless if a blow out does any damage to the structures above it, such as the riser pipe. They never imagined it could happen?

Add that "failure of imagination" to the list of reasons why we cannot trust the oil industry to do deepwater offshore drilling safely. Other reasons are the attitude of the oil people, including politicians who are up to their knees in oil [and oil money] - attitudes that we are hearing from supporters of the oil industry such as Rush Limbaugh - "crude oil is natural as ocean water", suggesting that crude oil is harmless. Ideas like that can only come from willfully blind ignorance or brown-nosing to the industry in question. With attitudes like that, it would be silly to trust them to do offshore drilling safely.

We should not be putting our faith in offshore oil drilling.

There are other solutions to the energy problem that could be employed, together with a new way of doing things where continued growth and consumption are curtailed and therefore we live sustainably. Efficiency alone can take care of any growing demand for energy, and we can install renewable energy capacity to gradually replace fossil fuels. That is the simple outline of the course that we could take if we want to preserve the best parts of our way of life. To carry on as we are now is to risk much more than we could possible lose by reducing our dependance on oil, including offshore oil.

As this tragedy shows us, "Necessity is the Mother of Invention", and instead of putting our creative energies into offshore drilling it makes more sense to tackle the energy problem by first squeezing off the supplies of oil so that we will be forced to find other answers. I truly hope the moratorium on offshore drilling will be in place for the next 50 years, because I am sure we will find other ways to meet our energy demands but only if oil supplies are not adequate.



 

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