What Gulf spill? Around the world, deepwater drilling keeps on keepin’ on

[G_j]

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-07-21-what-gulf-spill-around-the-world-deepwater-drilling-gulf-oil-bp

What Gulf spill? Around the world, deepwater drilling keeps on keepin’ on

by Randy Rieland

You might think, given the size of the muck monster moving around the Gulf, that other countries would put deepwater drilling on pause, at least until they felt confident that oil companies could prevent a replay of the BP disaster off their coasts.

But you'd be underestimating the power of oil addiction.

I can't quit you: Last week, the European Union's energy commissioner said he'd like a moratorium on new oil wells in the North Sea, but he's getting serious pushback from the British government. As Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson report in the Washington Post, the lure of oil lucre continues to trump worries about the high risks and potential catastrophes that come with deepwater drilling:

The strategy of continuing to exploit the economic opportunities of deep-water wells even as the hazards they represent becomes clearer is being pursued the world over. Other countries -- including Brazil, Canada, Nigeria, and Angola -- are also moving forward with drilling, lured by oil reservoirs they are discovering that are two to six times as big as the average Gulf of Mexico reservoir and taking advantage of new opportunities offered by the U.S. moratorium.

Here's what's happening in other countries that remain hooked on oil.

In too deep: It's the biggest oil producer in Europe. It's also a model when it comes to taking safety seriously. Norway's one of only two countries -- Brazil's the other -- that requires deepwater rigs to have a remote control acoustic switch on blowout preventers. (The football-sized switch, which uses sound waves to close a valve in the well, is the last resort safety measure that the Deepwater Horizon well did not have.) After the BP gusher, Norway was also the first country to stop issuing new leases for deepwater drilling pending results of the Gulf investigation. But even Norway, which gets more than a one-third of its income from oil, is allowing Royal Dutch Shell to start drilling an exploratory well 20 miles off the coast in water almost as deep as the Deepwater Horizon site.

..more..

[SugarShack]

1. They won't stop until they're forced

[anigbrowl]

2. statistcally, its safer than driving

Think about it - 4000 odd wells just in the gulf, but accidents are quite rare. BP had a reputation for poor safety, but that doesn't make every other well a disaster waiting to happen, does it? Same way we don't shut down the freeway system just because someone had an accident.

[G_j]

3. Big Oil Makes War on the Planet

http://www.alternet.org/environment/147588/big_oil_makes_war_on_the_planet/

Tomdispatch.com / By Ellen Cantarow


Big Oil Makes War on the Planet

Our addiction to oil is now blowing back on the civilization that can't do without its gushers and can't quite bring itself to imagine a real transition to alternative energies.

July 18, 2010

If you live on the Gulf Coast, welcome to the real world of oil -- and just know that you’re not alone. In the Niger Delta and the Ecuadorian Amazon, among other places, your emerging hell has been the living hell of local populations for decades.

Even as I was visiting those distant and exotic spill locales via book, article, and YouTube, you were going through your very public nightmare.

Three federal appeals court judges with financial and other ties to big oil were rejecting the Obama administration’s proposed drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico. Pollution from the BP spill there was seeping into Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans. Clean-up crews were discovering that a once-over of beaches isn’t nearly enough: somehow, the oil just keeps reappearing. Endangered sea turtles and other creatures were being burnt alive in swaths of ocean ("burn fields") ignited by BP to "contain" its catastrophe. The lives and livelihoods of fishermen and oyster-shuckers were being destroyed. Disease warnings were being issued to Gulf residents and alarming toxin levels were beginning to be found in clean-up workers.

None of this would surprise inhabitants of either the Niger Delta or the Amazon rain forest. Despite the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 and the Exxon Valdez in 1989, Americans are only now starting to wake up to the fate that, for half a century, has befallen the Delta and the Amazon, both ecosystems at least as rich and varied as the Gulf of Mexico.

..more..

[anigbrowl]

10. i see you choose not to address the point. oh well.

This inability to make your case on the merits instead of via ad hominem attacks is why your concerns are marginalized. This is a great time to tighten and audit safety standards for the industry, but instead you want to wallow in drama...and so, nothing gets done.

[G_j]

14. huh?

ad hominem attacks, wallow in drama? Is that what posting an informative article is?

The point I meant to show is that despite your comparison to the statistics of auto accidents, oil pollution has done irreparable damage.
:shrug:

[anigbrowl]

16. I'm plenty informed, but don't care for copypasta

There's more to holding a conversation than just copying and pasting text from articles you like. Your assumption that I'm uninformed about the extent of the damage is incorrect. I think it's an epic disaster.

To assume that because someone disagrees with part of your reasoning that they just don't get it is as foolish as to believe whatever BP says on their own behalf. Please, think and write for yourself instead of just pasting all the time.

[Junkdrawer]

4. Judge Feldman, is that you? n/t

[justabob]

6. how can you compare deep water drilling to auto accidents?

Point taken about statistics, but the stats don't account for the impact of the accident. The consequences of Deep water Horizon are going to be with us for decades. The jack knifed truck on I35 is just going to make rush hour shitty for some people. Even if you count ALL the jackknifed trucks, all over the country at the same time, the impact is not the same as deep water horizon spewing oil and other crap into the Gulf for months.

[anigbrowl]

11. Quite true. However, that doesn't alter the probability of an accident elsewhere

We should of course be extremely careful because of the risks you describe. But a catastrophic failure (on an oil rig or on a driven vehicle) doesn't tell us anything specific about the probability of other failures. My point is that the probability has not risen just because of the deepwater horizon incident. What has changed is public awareness of the marginal costs of poor safety. But a rig that is operated safely has not suddenly become less safe.

[justabob]

13. I get your point about probability

and what you are saying about the BP disaster not making other operating rigs more unsafe. I just can't get past my belief that none of them are operating safely right now, whatever logo/flag they are flying. There is also the problem of what is "safe" and whose pov you are considering... you know? That there are at least three major oil related events currently ongoing that I can think of off the top of my head doesn't do my confidence any good either.

[G_j]

15. The Next Deepwater Horizon?

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/next-deepwater-horizon


The Next Deepwater Horizon?

Obama halted new offshore drilling, but allowed existing production to continue—including another BP Gulf rig flying numerous red flags.

— By Kate Sheppard

Fri Jun. 4, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

Last week, President Barack Obama put new deepwater drilling operations on hold for another six months. With the Gulf of Mexico spill entering its fifth week, this move was meant to show that the administration is taking a more cautious approach to offshore drilling, after it had announced a vast expansion just weeks before the BP disaster.

Many news accounts on the moratorium extension implied that all deepwater Gulf operations had been shut down. But that's not the case. The administration is allowing deepwater drilling operations already in production in the Gulf to continue—including some that may pose a greater risk than the Deepwater Horizon. Exhibit A: BP's other major Gulf operation, the Atlantis, which sits 124 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Kenneth Abbott, a project control supervisor BP contracted to work on the Atlantis, and the environmental group Food & Water Watch filed suit against the federal government on May 17 seeking a temporary injunction to force the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to shut down the platform. Abbott claims that his contract was terminated shortly after he alerted management to the rig's lack of crucial engineering documents in late 2008.


According to Abbott, the BP Atlantis lacks more than 6,000 documents that are key to operating the rig safely. Abbott has said that the vast majority of the project's subsea piping and instrument diagrams were not approved by engineers, and the safety systems are out of date. In March 2009, Abbott took his concerns about the rig to MMS, the Department of Interior office responsible for regulating offshore drilling. He says the agency requested some of these documents from BP, but failed to seek specific diagrams of key components necessary for ensuring the rig's secure operation.

An internal BP email that came out in the course of Abbott's dispute refers to the potential for "catastrophic operator errors" on the rig due to these lapses. The suit argues that without these documents, the rig operators "are flying blind, and have no way to assure the safety of offshore drilling operations." Food & Water Watch began pushing for lawmakers to intervene on the rig back in August 2009.

<snip>


http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/28/bp_oil_spill_confirmed_as_worst




BP Oil Spill Confirmed as Worst in US History; Environmental Groups Challenge Continued Oil Operations in Gulf Excluded from New Moratorium

Although President Obama has extended the moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits for six months and halted operations at thirty-three deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico, some oil rigs are continuing their operations. The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a lawsuit to halt forty-nine offshore drilling plans in the Gulf of Mexico that were approved without full environmental review. Meanwhile, the group Food & Water Watch is leading an effort to shut down the Atlantis, another BP oil rig in the Gulf. The group warns an oil spill from the Atlantis could be many times larger than the current spill and even harder to stop. (includes rush transcript)

<snip>

WENONAH HAUTER: Well, the first thing that needs to happen is that the BP Atlantis platform needs to be shut down before we have another accident. For the last year, we’ve been trying to get MMS to act on this, and we now believe that it’s President Obama who needs to take action in shutting down this very dangerous platform. We filed suit last week against MMS, demanding that the platform be shut down. And we’re asking people to go to the website www.spillthetruth.org and ask President Obama to shut it down immediately.

AMY GOODMAN: Just one minute on this issue of Atlantis. I don’t think most people realize that these oil—deep sea oil drilling sites are continuing now, as they talk about moratoriums and the closings of, shutting down of these in the Gulf of Mexico. Wenonah Hauter, where is the Atlantis deep sea oil drilling rig?

WENONAH HAUTER: The Atlantis is 150 miles offshore from New Orleans, and it’s 7,000 feet deep. So it’s much deeper than the Horizon. And none of the safety documentation has been verified. So we’re very concerned that there could be an accident at any time.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of this particular platform’s importance to the general Gulf oil production, how big is it? And why is there such a resistance to looking at it?

WENONAH HAUTER: Well, it produces 8.4 million gallons of oil every day. And so, if there were to be a spill, it would be five—it could be five times larger than the Horizon spill within five days. And the thing is that we have a lot of evidence about what’s going on with BP Atlantis because of a whistleblower, but we suspect that this is the case with all of the deepwater platforms. <snip>

[blindpig]

5. 'Oil-addiction' is a manifestation of capitalism.

Our society's 'oil-addiction' is a result of the purposeful manipulation of our economy by the big players in the post-WWII with the help of the government every step of the way. They were stimulating the economy, doncha see? The automobile culture, suburbia, were not accidents.

Kill Capitalism

[G_j]

7. The US military is the biggest purchaser of oil in the world.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13199


The US military oil consumption
by Sohbet Karbuz

The US Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest oil consuming government body in the US and in the world

“Military fuel consumption makes the Department of Defense the single largest consumer of petroleum in the U.S” <1>

“Military fuel consumption for aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities makes the DoD the single largest consumer of petroleum in the U.S”

According to the US Defense Energy Support Center Fact Book 2004, in Fiscal Year 2004, the US military fuel consumption increased to 144 million barrels. This is about 40 million barrels more than the average peacetime military usage.

By the way, 144 million barrels makes 395 000 barrels per day, almost as much as daily energy consumption of Greece.

The US military is the biggest purchaser of oil in the world.

In 1999 Almanac edition of the Defense Logistic Agency’s news magazine Dimensions it was stated that the DESC “purchases more light refined petroleum product than any other single organization or country in the world. With a $3.5 billion annual budget, DESC procures nearly 100 million barrels of petroleum products each year. That's enough fuel for 1,000 cars to drive around the world 4,620 times.”

..more..

[blindpig]

8. That's certainly part of it....

What a racket, America 'needs' oil so the military is deployed to secure access thereof, using vast quantities of the same stuff. It's an oil baron's wet dream come true. It is obscene, people talk about America's 'oil-addiction' but what about the pusher?

[G_j]

9. exactly

it's the same sort of relationship, an "endless" cycle that feeds on it's self.
(though just as cancer kills it's host, this relationship can't really be endless)

[Subdivisions]

12. Since oil production is in decline, deepwater drilling will continue. Period. n/t