Despite the federal governments involvement in the gulf BP seems to have put a stop to the oil spill. The cap PB has placed over the well seems to be holding with a few minor leaks. BP says that the leak should be permanently stopped once the relief well is finished in about 2 weeks. We can only hope that this is the case. However even with the leak stopped we are still looking at a very long clean up. No one can argue that this disaster was handled well by anyone involved. I also fully understand that there needs to be some regulation and oversight by the government when dealing with oil spills. With that said the damage that this oil spill caused could have been significantly smaller if it was not for the gross incompetence of federal government. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill the federal government took complete oversight over all future oil spills. The company involved would still be responsible for coming up with a solution, cost and execution. However everything that is done must be signed off on by the Feds and coordinated with Coast Guard. For example, if the company wants to use a skimmer ship to suck up the oil they must first wait for the administration to approve the use of the skimmer ship and then wait for the coast guard to oversee the use of the skimmer ship. Everyone knows that the government is vastly inefficient and does not do anything quickly. One only needs to take a trip to the MVA to realize this.
I don’t want to diminish BP’s responsibility in all this (after all it was BP’s oilrig, well, and crew working it). When this is all over I am certain that there will be a full investigation into BP and their responsibility however I fear that it will be a sham and that nothing will ever come of it. Giving that BP was a large supporter of Obama’s presidential campaign and given that Obama will be running for office again in a couple years, I doubt that he would want to give BP a reason not to support him again. Although one thing is for certain the Feds will be trying to duck all responsibility.
When this all started the Obama administration was a thorn in the side of the clean up effort. They stopped BP from using dispersing chemicals (which months later the EPA said where safe and would not have had an environmental impact), prevented BP from doing a burn-off (until it was too late to do one), stopped the construction on sand berms (that would have helped prevented the oil from going into the marshes) and refused the aid of 13 different countries. They did not even let BP use more then a few skimmer ships when a fleet was on hand. At one point the coast guard stopped all of the ships from skimming oil for 24 hours with no explanation. Later they said that they needed to check the ships to make sure they had enough life jackets on board. On top of all this every time BP came up with a new plan they had to wait for the administration to sign off on it. Days and weeks went by in-between each new plan (such as the failed backfill idea, relief wells, many different caps, etc.).
My Jiu-Jitsu instructor was saying just the other day that when you take time off you do not stay the same. You actually get worse. If you are not going forward you are going backward. Nowhere is that more true then here. I think the worst thing in all of this has been the lack of action and letting the oil just keep pumping out while waiting for the administration to make a decision. If nothing else, they should have immediately sent skimmer ships to suck up the oil and built the sand berms while they figured out what to do. Then there would not have to be as large of a clean up afterwards and the marshes would have been protected. While we were waiting for the administration to make decisions things were getting worse.
Another thing that is driving me crazy is the blaming of bush for this and/or the oil industry as a whole. It would seem that no matter what the situation they will find a way to blame bush. This is ridiculous! Forget for a second that BP supported Obama in the last election. Forget that the Obama administration gave BP an award for excellence in safety on the very rig that had the problem. The bottom line is that it was the environmentalist that kept pushing the drilling into deeper and deeper water. If the oil well was in shallower water it may have been a very minimal problem. Most of the problems with stopping the oil have been from the great depth that only can be reached by unmanned druids. Not only could oil be drilled in shallow water but also there are many places on land such as ANWR where oil could easily be extracted.
If there is one thing that I have learned since starting at Crazy 88 it is personal-responsibility. You must be accountable for your own actions. It’s about time this administration stop pointing figures and to help to fix the problem. If I were to cry and blame the ref at a tournament my coach would probably tell me to stop acting like a child. Obama needs to suck it up and do what needs to be done. If getting out of the way and letting BP solve the problem is the answer the so be it. If Obama has a better solution then lets do that. Bottom line is that we can’t just keep holding everything up while the situation is getting worse.
I just found out today that another oil spill has started off the coast of China. I wonder what the clean up will look like there. Will they have the same problems with their government… oil company… or very little problems cleaning it up…
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