Blow Out

Hi Everyone:

Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the "drill baby drill" mantra now needs to be changed to "spill baby spill." The oil rig, called Horizon, out in the Gulf of Mexico, caught fire last week. Then it sunk and now is leaking oil at a rate of 200,000 gallons per day. British Petroleum who doesn't own the rig but owns the well and supervises the rig, originally stated that there was no leak from the well head. That then changed to: it was leaking about 1,000 gallons per day. Then that changed to 2,000 gallons per day. Now we are informed that the well head at the bottom of the gulf is leaking 200,000 gallons per day. In only a few weeks, this will become the biggest and more than likely, the worst environment catastrophe this country has seen since the Exxon Valdez split open and spilled some 11 million gallons of oil. That oil found its way to the pristine Alaskan shore line and did unbelievable damage not only to fish and game, but also the loss of tens of thousands of jobs connected to the fishing industry.

Today's blog is not about the fact the BP had tried numerous times to minimize the amount of oil leaking and any impact of environment damage due to a leak. Today' blog is about what BP did not do. What am I talking about? Well, no pun intended, (according to the Gannett paper), in 2009, BP filed a 52 page exploration plan with the federal Minerals Management Service for the Horizon well. In that plan, BP suggested it was unlikely, or virtually impossible for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill or do serious damage to the beaches, fish, mammals and fisheries. BP reiterated in another section of the plan that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities".

Well, well, well, those statements certainty turned out to be untrue. As I write this blog the oil has reached the outer marshes off Louisiana. In writing that plan, BP relied on 30+ years of off-shore exploration with no oil spills or leaks or any environmental damage. But what really pisses me off is that BP never planned for, in any way, shape or form for any oil spill of this magnitude. Even the unit that was suppose to turn off the well head failed which lead to this forth coming environment disaster. Since no oil spills had ever happened, BP probably thought why plan for something that hasn't occurred. So due to either: stupidity, ignorance, a bottom line mentality or just plain old lack of common sense, this country finds itself in the face of a man-made environmental disaster like we have never seen. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, but using common sense to be prepared for any kind of accidental oil spill is of the utmost importance.

So if I had any say in what is currently happening, the following would be my common sense approaches to this problem:

1) No new off-shore oil rigs would go online until the company has a plan for "giant" oil spills/leaks.

2) A better emergency, fail safe well head unit that automatically turns off the spigot due to any abnormal occurrence, must be installed in each and every oil rig, new and old.

3) Big oil companies together should devise and build some kind of "thing" that would capture the oil in either a minor or major leak. I have heard that right now a company is building a very large dome structure that would sit over the well head. This dome would capture the leaking oil, since oil is lighter then water. A pipe is attached to the top of the dome where the oil is pumped up and loaded into a tanker ship. Wow, what a great idea and it uses common sense to find a logical and practical solution.

Since the dome isn't fully manufactured yet, we can only hope that BP and/or the federal government can figure out a way to stop the uncontrolled flowing oil and to be able to clean up all of the oil that has leaked.

Til next week.