We're not hearing much from the "Drill, baby drill!" crowd these days. Just look what one accident on an offshore oil rig can cause. Eleven men dead. 95,000 barrels-4 million gallons-and counting. Shrimp, crab and sport fishing industries imperiled and likely ruined for some time to come.
The estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day that are leaking into the Gulf have added up to a total value of $6,650,000 at $70 a barrel. If the improvised containment devices don't staunch the flow, a relief well currently being drilled will take three months to reach the oil-bearing strata. The cleanup operation is already expected to run into the tens of billions of dollars. This for a well that produces about $75 million dollars of oil a year. So if the cleanup and damages amount to $30 billion, that will surpass what the well would have earned in more than 400 years. But of course we know the well would have been pumped dry long before that. Before this is over it will probably surpass the 11 million gallons of the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, the largest to date.
All this demonstrates the foolishness of relying on this form of energy production. That we, thirty-seven years after the first OPEC oil embargo, are still wedded to this diminishing, polluting, increasingly expensive and internationally volatile energy source is one of the greatest derelictions of national policy in world history.
Why was there no capping technology at the ready to plug an accident like this? For the same reason the Massey coal mine in West Virginia was allowed to operate with over 400 safety violations. It's because these wealthy and powerful companies buy their way out of appropriate oversight and regulation with their influence, their lobbyists and their campaign cash.
We have been hearing more talk of a greater reliance on nuclear electricity lately too. Once again, are we ready to take that risk? One catastrophic accident there could kill thousands of people and leave an area uninhabitable for thousands of years. Solar panels and windmills may not be glamorous but once in place they continue to produce and do not pose the kinds of threats fossil fuels and nuclear plants do. What we have here is another wake up call. The limp-minded drilling advocates have been shut up, at least for the time being. That presents an opportunity. It is time we got busy doing what we should have started in earnest in 1973.
3 comments:
On another note, I assume you'll have time, Steve, to run us through the California propositions before the June election? Reading the official pamphlet is only partly enlightening.
Absolutely, Don. Now that ballots are here, I'll get on that!
Not that this makes things any better but with profits of $5.6 billion in the first quarter alone of this year at least we know that BP has no excuse to not pay for the cleanup of their mess.
Again there is not a bright side to this but I'm curious to look up the severity to which the Ixtoc-1 spill of 79 affected the environment and wildlife of the gulf coast; that spill was estimated in the millions of barrels.
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