The McClatchy newspaper chain, which has provided some of the best and most critical commentary on the horrific oil spill, reports that the Obama administration approved 31 deepwater drilling plans similar tho those of BP. All called major spills and environmental damage “unlikely.” Astonishingly enough, 14 of those 31 plans were approved AFTER the BP spill began!
To its credit, the Obama administration has plugged this hole in its six-month ban on deepwater drilling and has ordered oil companies to overhaul and resubmit their exploration plans. Of course, it is still a problem that the administration has not outright banned deep drilling permanently since it is now apparent that we do not possess technology to make this kind of drilling safe.
From McClatchy’s excellent article,http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/02/95246/obama-orders-oil-companies-to.html#ixzz0pkoYWjOy “Obama orders firms to Resubmit Drilling Plans Similar to BP’s”:
The action came after McClatchy informed the White House and Interior officials that it had reviewed 31 deepwater exploration and development plans approved for the Gulf under the Obama administration and found that all of them downplayed the threat of spills to marine life and fisheries.
The language scarcely varied from company to company, suggesting that the plans were pumped out like boilerplate. Of the 31 plans McClatchy reviewed, 14 were approved since the April 20 explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig,
The administration had failed to include the plans in its moratorium, and experts told McClatchy that the filings could clear the way for drilling new wells when the ban was lifted. Following inquiries by McClatchy to White House and Interior officials, the Bureau of Land Management announced late Wednesday that oil companies would need to resubmit the plans with additional safety information before they’d be allowed to drill new wells.
…While the moratorium had blocked new wells and freezes new drilling permits — the last step before drilling begins — it didn’t stop companies from taking the earlier step of filing exploration and development plans. These plans include the most thorough environmental studies that companies must conduct during the entire approval process.
Experts say these plans are often filled with incomplete or overly hopeful statements about the likelihood of spills, blowouts and ecological damage.
…”Interior has very doggedly refused to address this core problem because they realize that’s where the rubber meets the road and the real reform begins,” said Kieran Suckling, the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has studied the issue.
The McClatchy story is an excellent read and indicates, for example, that on May 18, almost a month after the BP blowout, the Interior Department’s MMS approved a plan for Petroblas America that permitted drilling at a depth of 7,150 feet underwater. That’s almost one-and-one-half times deeper than the depth at which BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig drilled and exploded. According to the same article:
The Petrobras plan states: “In the unlikely event a blowout were to occur during exploratory operations, the well would most likely bridge over very quickly considering information known about (rock) formation types in the Gulf of Mexico.”
The article is full of details about such proposals by oil companies; all rubber stamped by MMS.
Again, the Obama administration deserves credit for asking for new plans AND for putting a 6 month moratorium on offshore drilling. It also deserves credit for forcing the head of MMS from her job.
Here are other steps it should take:
- Make the offshore drilling ban permanent, especially in deep water. Is it not now clear, more than 40 days after the BP disaster began and after 3 efforts by BP to stop the leak, that we do not have technology to drill safely in deep offshore waters?
- Further clean up MMS and the Interior Department getting rid of incompetent regulators, many of whom may have been on the take. Start at the top and fire Ken Salazar. He has a long history of being in bed with special interests and Obama’s selection of him to be Interior Secretary was greeted by dismay from environmental protection groups. Replace Salazar with a nonpolitical, true steward of the environment.
- Put a tax on all drilling so that oil companies pay money into a fund that can be used to clean environmental messes that are a result of their actions.
- Have the Justice Department look into criminal wrongdoing not just at BP, but also within the MMS and the Interior Department. The New York Times ran a series of articles showing that regulators were getting freebies and that they allowed oil companies to fill out forms in pencil, and they then just wrote in ink over this!
- The Obama administration should return any money it received from BP (they received boatloads of it in 2008). Otherwise, with all of those waivers, it sure looks like “pay to play” has gone from Chicago to Washington.
- As a form of penance, wouldn’t it be nice to see the CEO of BP and his family, and President Obama and his family, give up their vacation time and instead put in a week or so in the cleanup effort? That would give them some real insights into what their misguided policies, and corporate greed gone rampant, have done.