I’m disgusted over the political blame game being played over the oil spill accident of Deepwater Horizons in the Gulf of Mexico. As at least 5,000 barrels of crude daily gushes a mile below the water surface, the confluence results in everyone, including wildlife, has an advocate.
It is depressing that I am accused of being an alarmist when I quote knowledgeable sources that the oil leak could become the worst ecological disaster in man’s limited time of recorded history.
Yes, it could be under the worst case scenario. What engineers for Deepwater and the platform operators British Petroleum LCC are trying to do is something that never before has been attempted. It is a two-fold experiment in real time.
In the next several days the first effort will be sitting a steel dome over the source gusher exposure. A second effort is to install a shut-off valve under the sea bed to stem the flow. The final venture will be drilling 8,000 feet below the surface parallel to the old piping and then reach it with a 90-degree turn.
There are no guarantees any of these capping efforts will work. Based on the advanced technology of deep-water oil drilling improvements, I am confident that one or all of these frantic efforts will be successful.
But until all of the leak is contained, the oil slick will be washed ashore by winds and Gulf currents not only from Texas to the Florida Panhandle but around the Florida Keys and northward along the Atlantic seaboard.
Yes, chemical dispersants and shoreline booms will dissipate and capture some of the oil. But those efforts in the long run are no better than the Dutch boy sticking his finger in a hole to stop the leaking dike.
As for the damage on shore, I must remind readers that residual effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez leak of 10 million gallons of oil in Alaska’s Prince Edward pristine shoreline exist to this day. I was witness to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil leak and that was not a pretty site.
I still recall tears rolling down my cheeks as I saw volunteers dip rags into a bucket of Dawn soapy mix and clean the tar off feathers of a petrified sea gull that could barely breath, his eyes bulging wide.
Yet despite all these images past and present of man’s mistakes committed on nature, I do not believe a knee-jerk response is to arbitrarily suspend off-shore oil drilling as my environmental friends and some politicians demand.
As we are learning from the Gulf of Mexico inquiry, engineers left to their own devices would have mitigated or prevented the Deepwater Horizons leak by installing all the safety devices they recommended.
We are learning that costs for installing these devices were balked at by the companies who sold a ration of crap to federal regulators that waived normal procedures such as an environmental impact report.
To me, it doesn’t matter which political party was running the administration, the leak still occurred and if you believe the engineers could have been avoided.
Even the most effeciently operated off shore oil platform has experienced leaks, small fires and structural malfunctions. That’s the nature of the business. It is a minor trade-off for producing fossil fuels to prime the energy pump of our nation’s reliance on oil.
The only way to stop the leaks is to convert the nation to cleaner sources of energy. That cannot be done by waving a political magic wand and overnight the problem is solved.
And until that happens, shutting down our domestic off-shore oil platforms will only increase the cost of our fuel by buying it from foreign suppliers.
I recommend reading this update in Thursday’s New York Times on the efforts to cap the gushing leak.
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Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.