This past week, it has become a looming reality that the oil rig which exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico, spilling thousands of gallons of oil a day, is not under control and poses vast environmental risks for the area.
Similarly becoming clear is that this newly acknowledged national disaster will re-shape the national discourse on energy policy concerning domestic and off-shore drilling specifically. As the world watched the oil slick grow to the now epic expanse of 130 miles long, an off-shore wind farm was approved in Cape Cod, Massachusetts after 9 years of mucking around in the legal system. Leaving the almost ironic contrast of these two pieces of energy news aside, a more fundamental question resounds in my brain: Is the Government ultimately responsible for the direction of and oversight of our national energy pursuits, and is this reality only tacitly acknowledged in situations where massive catastrophes occur and the private sector that profits from our energy pursuits proves to be incapable of dealing with the consequences?
Wordy, yes, but goddamn important to raise. As in the case of the oil rig, whose consequences in terms of area and volume effected have tripled in just the last day, it is overwhelmingly clear that the Federal Government (DoHS, DoD, Coast Guard) needed to act to control the spill. I say this because even Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal has asserted that oil giant BP, whose rig it was that initiated this disaster, cannot handle the clean up and mitigation efforts: “I do have concerns that BP’s resources are not adequate,” (BBC 5/1/10).
Despite these mounting concerns that big oil cannot handle the consequences of their endeavors, the company has repeatedly downplayed any suggestions of such, with their COO Doug Suttles saying “[it had mounted] the largest response effort ever done in the world,” (BBC 5/1/10)
Continuing along that vein though, the COO’s admissions as to the stark reality of tampering with such dangerous, uncertain oil exploration leaves much to be wanting in terms of clean energy in this country:
Officials from BP and the federal government have repeatedly said they had prepared for the worst, even though a plan filed last year with the government said it was highly unlikely that a spill or leak would ever result from the Deep Horizon rig.
“There are not much additional available resources in the world to fight this thing offshore,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, in an interview. “We’ve basically thrown everything we have at it.”
Mr. Suttles said BP’s efforts did not change after it was disclosed Wednesday night that the leak was estimated at 5,000 barrels a day, five times larger than initial estimates had suggested. He said BP, which is spending roughly $6 million a day and will likely spend far more when oil reaches land, had already been mobilizing for a far larger spill. However, he did not deny that BP initially thought the slick could be stopped before it reached the coastline.
“In the early days, the belief was that we probably could have contained it offshore,” Mr. Suttles said. “Unfortunately, since the event began we haven’t had that much good weather.” (NYTimes 5/1/10)
Veiled in the sympathized PR magic that any oil company must possess is the inability to ignore the fact that even when risk is assumed to be minimal, that risk is relative to the forces at play. BP, for all their planning, resources, and expertise in these deep-ocean drilling operations, now owns the fallout from this spill. 6$ million a day is a lot to spend on attempting to clean an ocean of oil, but this shit is just now reaching land and that land happens to be protected wildlife reserves. On top of that, there have been nearly 24 hr relief efforts underway for the last 9 days, with the Coast Guard at the helm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issuing statements and dedicating time to the relief efforts by setting up a second command station in Mobile, Alabama, the Department of Defense now dedicating resources and time, and fianlly President Obama will be heading to Louisiana tomorrow to see the fallout firsthand and issue another public response.
Whoever bears the final costs seems negligible at this point, even though it is likely that BP’s shareholders will suffer more than BP’s executives, because the damage caused by BP’s work will be irreversible. Burning layers of oil off the surface of the ocean, an unfettered well 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean gushing 210,000 gallons of oil a day, and now thousands more gallons of sub-surface dispersant (whose environmental effects are unknown) are being deployed to attempt to prevent oil from reaching the surface of the ocean.
Of course, the question politicians of all stripes are rushing to answer is: what does this spill, this imminent environmental disaster, imply for future off-shore oil exploration?
At the heart of that question, and ultimately the un-spoken truth revolving around this issue, is that the Federal Government must own their energy policy and its consequences.
If Sarah Palin is to get her way and we “drill here, drill now”, the risks of future catastrophes such as this one becomes multiplied by some unknown factor (even if rigs are determined safe, anything can happen because the forces at play are larger than BP’s pursuit of drilling permits). The proponents of this approach seem, however, to label epic environmental catastrophe as a consequence they are willing to accept in pursuit of a Federal energy policy that favors any and all available forms of resource extraction. I find this distasteful at the least and reckless at the most. Sarah Palin’s habitat will not be the ones covered in rusty, sweet crude oil because of that decision, nor will it be our energy future that is secured by such a move – it is merely a stop-gap, a band-aid that gives the appearance of proactive government intervention while disguising its inherent risks as weighing less than the benefits.
But what should not get lost in this conversation is our nationally accepted perceptions that the Federal Government needs to direct our nation’s and our economy’s use of natural resources.
So my question becomes, why drive a train down dead end tracks? Why should we invest our country in a short-term, low-benefit, high-cost solution?
Is it for the wind-fall profit taxes that we can use to reduce our debt? Or is it for the sake of garnering the good graces of extremely moneyed, well-connected special interests for the next 2 decades or so – to provide in campaign donations and non-adversarial policy campaigns?
And if either of these are the case, no one has yet to prove that any humble citizen’s life will improve because BP gets access to formerly protected areas. To be sure, there are negative consequences inherent in any energy policy decision made at this point, but what has been fundamentally ignored in many’s consideration of expanding domestic drilling is how marginally, if at all, the positives outweigh the negatives.
As such, I will be following the ensuing debate over how to realign our energy policy in recognition of these consequences, and whether anyone will be so bold as to offer viable alternatives that don’t amount to appeasement of special interests.
And damnit, our country doesn’t need any more stock photos of little helpless animals or shorelines coated in oil. What are we going to do about that?
