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Sunday, May 16. 2010
Oil Disaster, Part II
It’s now been 27 days since the Deepwater Horizon blew up, caught fire and sank into the Gulf of Mexico, starting the worst marine oil disaster in the history of our planet, or at least recorded history. The shores along the Gulf may never fully recover from this tragedy. The scale of it has even dwarfed the loss of the eleven oil workers who died when the rig exploded.What’s equally frustrating is finding out that there had been a series of failures that led to the explosion, not the least of which was the spotty construction of the blowout preventer, which not only didn’t prevent a blowout, it appears to have made one more likely. I’m not a scientific guy, don’t have a bit of qualification as an engineer, despite my Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) in the Marine Corps, but I seems like the parts of this contraption that failed would insure a blowout and subsequent explosion.
British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward called the failure of the blowout preventer “unprecedented;” none have ever failed before this. In fact, jus a year ago the Deepwater Horizon platform had been hailed as a shining example of deepwater ocean oil drilling. Apparently the people who made that claim were mistaken.
According to the good CEO, the blowout preventer was “failsafe.” Apparently he was mistaken as well. What investigators found was a dead battery in the preventer’s core, leaks in the hydraulic system and a cutting tool that wasn’t strong enough to shear through the metal of the pipe when it came time to stop the flow of oil. In other words, British Petroleum and the company that actually owned and operated the oil well for BP, Transocean, Ltd, knowingly put a faulty piece of equipment into the ocean as a safety device. To me, that could actually be criminal fraud.
Mr. Hayward said his company would pay all “legitimate” claims associated with the spill, but will they ever be able to completely restore the wetland vital to the entire region? If the previous two marine oil disasters are any clue, especially the Santa Barbara fiasco, the answer is “no.”
One thing I overlooked in my rant about this last week was that Haliburton, the company that once employed former Vice President Dick Cheney as a vice president, also has a stake in this crime. That company cemented (whatever that means exactly) the blowout preventer and their own tests showed the device was not safe — in 2001 — nine years ago.
Clearly, the investigation has shown that there wasn’t enough government oversight—not enough inspections—of the oil platforms. Which brings to mind one of the first orders of business when Dick Cheney was sworn in as Vice President nine years ago: the secret meetings he held in the White House with oil company executives.
We still don’t know exactly who was present and which companies were represented, but that really doesn’t matter anymore. The damage has been done; an oilrig 65 miles out to sea is spewing 5,000-plus barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico everyday and the ones charged with preventing this, at this point, stopping this, aren’t even sure if their latest fix is working. But they do admit it isn’t a permanent fix.
The latest remedy: a tube has been put in place taking some or most of the oil spewing from the well and siphoning it into an oil tanker on the surface. In the meantime, a secondary shaft is being drilled into the ocean floor that will eventually reach the leaking shaft and — we hope — something will be placed in that shaft to stop the oil from reaching the surface of the ocean floor.
Well, maybe it does matter who was present in those secret White House meetings nine years ago, when it comes down to widening the net of who is responsible for this crime. The failure didn’t happen in a vacuum. To paraphrase an old hip-hop song: someone let the dogs out.
Eh, shouldn’t malign a piece of music, but, as the president said in his recent remarks from the Rose Garden, there is enough blame to go around, including the federal government which was charged with regulating and overseeing the industry, but clearly failed in that responsibility.
The president should just put an end to any further oil exploration and drilling in the ocean and forget his foolish idea that expanding exploration and drilling off our shores should be part of his energy plan.
This just in: scientists are now sure the oil has reached a “loop current” in the Gulf that will carry the oil through the Florida Keys and up the Eastern Coast. Now they are trying to assess how much oil has gotten into the current.
This is the worst man-made ecological disaster of all time.My dear friend Claudia, a waitress at the Oceanside, CA Hooters, has been competing in various Hooters bikini contests around San Diego and got to participate in the regional bikini pageant held in Long Beach, CA this past Friday.
Although she didn’t win the contest, Claudia did win the Viewers Choice Award! Congratulations my friend! I knew you would win that award because you are beautiful! You will always be this viewer’s choice! Besos!
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