“It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.” ––President Barak Obama less than a month before the Deepwater Horizon blew up, killing 11.
The arrogance in that statement should have been a clue something bad was coming. It has that “What could go wrong?” faith in technology a certain sea captain expressed before his “unsinkable” ocean liner took off into the North Atlantic.
Yes oil rigs are very technologically advanced but not infallible. There have been a series of other explosions and leaks in the past decade. But a larger problem exists where the technology available to clean up after oil catastrophes is so un-advanced as to be practically non-existent.
To stop the spewing of oil isn’t a matter of political will or corporate responsibility, it’s a technology problem.
A former Shell Oil executive told viewers on CNN that everybody in the industry is working on the present problem, producing (so far) 180 different ideas, including artificial sand bars and to just blow the thing up and hope for the best.
For those not following the story, the depth of the well is where the challenge lies. Near the ocean’s surface, it wouldn’t be a problem to cap a spewing well, where people and equipment could reach it.
But at more than 5,000 feet down, no technology allows work on the busted end of that well by hands. Robotic equipment didn’t get the job done, and even the submarines that go that deep are only for exploration, not for repairing a shut-off valve now releasing thousands of gallons of oil under high pressure (pressure itself created by the depth).
The “top kill” has failed. The shut off mechanism is apparently damaged beyond use. Containment domes don’t work, and, according to the experts, there isn’t much left in the arsenal.
Simply put, the oil company (with full government approval) drilled something they couldn’t fix when it busted. Reports filed by government inspectors noted this but were ignored.
The most likely method to at last stop the oil flow is believed to be relief wells drilled at angles to the original bore of the flowing well. Those are underway but won’t be finished until August and aren’t a sure thing either.
“This is without doubt the worst environmental disaster in our history,” Carol Browner said on national Sunday morning television.
But the failure here didn’t happen a month ago. Events that led to this failure started when the agency supposedly regulating the oil/gas industries, the Minerals Management Service, was created in 1982.
Since that time, the agency has been mired in allegations of corruption and collaboration with businesses they were supposedly monitoring.
Allegations include a report that agency personnel accepted gifts, drugs and sexual favors from oil company representatives.
Reports of managerial irresponsibility and a lack of accountability at the agency have been released regularly.
When Ken Salazar took over as Secretary of the Interior, he declared “there was a new sheriff in town”. But apparently the sheriff didn’t load his six-shooter. Since the explosion in the Gulf, the head of the Minerals Management Service has been forced out, but much too little and much too late.
Complicating the whole regulation mess are ties the oil industry has to Washington through political donations. They are matched only by pharmaceutical companies in their lobbying. Former VP challenger Sarah Palin correctly noted Obama was the top recipient of BP donations in the last election cycle. But she might have expanded her comment to note virtually everyone in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats, have been on the take from oil companies for years. According to Politico.com, in 2009, BP spent $16 million to influence legislation and another $3.5 million in the first quarter of 2010.
Clearly the new sheriff has got plenty of work to do. BP’s own pre-filed spill plan for the Gulf site was so hacked together it included references to arctic wildlife. The company’s filing to get past an environmental requirement was little more than jargon obviously copied––as if by some frat boy borrowing chunks of someone else’s term paper to give to a professor he knows won’t scrutinize anything very closely.
There is an oily disaster in the Gulf we maybe can’t stop for months or years. But surely we can fix the failures at Washington with its slick treatment of the oil industry.
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