This about says it all…
These valves and shears were the last line of defense. The federal Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore oil and gas production and collects reports on spills as small as a single barrel, was so confident of the system that it exempted BP from filing an environmental-impact statement for the Macondo operation.
The MMS commissioned studies on creative ways to cope with massive well blowouts and never implemented them. It promulgated rules and allowed the oil industry to obey them on a voluntary basis. “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” Obama said on April 2. “They are technologically very advanced.”
The above is an excerpt from a report on Bloomberg.com (read the full article here). What does this say about the governance of our country and society? Money, it seems, is capable of turning anyone into a glutton, an idiot, and a scoundrel. At a time when many empty vessels (e.g. these folks) rant loudly about the money wasted on environmental and biological research, rant against support of research into the causes and mitigation of climate change, and imply that scientists are out to rip off our society, one wonders: “How much do federally commissioned studies, that fail to implement and enforce regulations, cost our country?” I assume that stalwarts of the American Dream, such as Wall Street or the petroleum industry have ready answers for me.
thank you for this.
What a mess, in so many ways. This situation certainly has brought to light how money does currently control action as well as non-action.
The thing that keeps on nagging me today is that BP and the other decision makers in this case are not planning to *fix* the oil gush, they are arranging their action plan around collecting the oil.
The “containment vessels” are not to seal the gush. they are essentially upside-down funnels which will enable BP to resume siphoning. Granted, siphoning would sure be less harmful to the gush-affected areas, but to me it seems like a high-tech high-risk carnival game to place the contraption where it needs to go.
I’m also disturbed about the major lag in response time, the decision that BP should not only be responsible for the cost of repair/cleanup, but they should be put in charge of planning it all. To me, it seems giving control to a corporation that is in a business which creates further pollution of our planet is probably not the best choice for a rescue/cleanup type of event. Today I read the material data sheet for one of the ‘dispersants’ that has been dumped into the water. (found in the Deepwater Horizon Response site’s “Fact Sheets” section) and wow! that stuff is really toxic! I sure wouldn’t want it in my environment.